Over the past three weeks, Shirali Abdurehim, a 39-year-old Uyghur honey seller in Istanbul, has been detained in an immigration detention center.
Abdurehim, a father of nine children, has lived in Turkey with his wife since 2013 as a refugee after fleeing repression in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China. He is one of at least a dozen Uyghurs who have been detained in recent weeks, according to detainees, lawyers and rights advocates.
VOA has also seen at least four posts on the social media site Facebook calling for the release of family members since last weekend.
"Turkish agents came to my residence on July 4 and said there was an allegation against me that I conspired with other foreigners from Uzbekistan to produce and sell counterfeit Turkish passports," Abdurehim told VOA in a phone interview.
"They were very polite when they took me for interrogation. They first said they would immediately release me after taking a statement," he said.
Family facing eviction
During the interrogation, Abdurehim says he denied the allegations, claiming that the accusations were fabricated by the Chinese government or Chinese agents in Turkey.
"After that interrogation, they said they couldn't release me and instead transferred me to an immigration detention center, where I joined six other recently arrested Uyghurs," he said. "My wife and nine children are desperately waiting for my return. They can't survive without me, and now they face eviction from the apartment we rent."
VOA emailed the Turkish Interior Ministry's Immigration Department for more information regarding the cases of Abdurehim and the other Uyghurs detained in recent weeks. The ministry has yet to respond.
Abdurehim's wife, who asked that her first name not be published to protect her relatives in Xinjiang, told VOA that the family had been living day-to-day on her husband's honey sales. "Our landlord demanded six months' rent in advance, but we can't afford it. With my husband in indefinite detention, we're also struggling to put food on the table."
Turkish flag T-shirt
Abdurehim says his troubles trace to 2010 when Chinese authorities arrested him in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.
"I was arrested for months in 2010 for wearing a T-shirt with a Turkish flag," Abdurehim said. "It was a time when many Uyghurs felt grateful for [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan's statement in 2009."
Unrest had broken out in Urumqi in July of that year amid protests over government inaction following reported killings and injuries of Uyghurs by a Chinese mob in Guangdong province. Initially peaceful, the protests escalated into clashes when Chinese armed police intervened. Subsequently, Uyghurs faced accusations of attacking unarmed Chinese individuals, resulting in arrests, disappearances and detentions.
Erdogan had characterized China's actions toward Uyghurs as "genocide," a sentiment that resonated within the Uyghur community.
Fleeing China
After his release, Abdurehim fled the country without a passport. Because of China's historical restrictions preventing many Uyghurs from obtaining passports legally, he sought assistance from human traffickers in Yunnan province in southwest China.
"In 2012, I journeyed from Yunnan through Vietnam and Thailand, eventually arriving in Malaysia. It was there that my wife, our only child at the time, and I received humanitarian travel documents from the Turkish Embassy, enabling us to relocate to Turkey in 2013," he recounted.
"For the first time, I felt liberated from government repression in a country I came to cherish deeply, a place I was prepared to sacrifice everything for, including my life."
After arriving in Turkey, Abdurehim opened a grocery shop in Istanbul. However, in late 2018, he was detained by Turkish authorities on unspecified allegations. He was released in early 2019 without any charges.
"I spent three months in detention due to baseless accusations, which I believe were influenced by Chinese authorities or their agents in Turkey," Abdurehim recounted.
"Thankfully, Turkish authorities eventually recognized my innocence and released me. However, the ordeal forced me to sell my grocery shop to cover legal expenses and defense fees."
Refuge in Turkey
Turkey is home to one of the largest Uyghur diaspora communities outside China, with a population estimated at 50,000 to 75,000, according to Uyghur groups there.
Since the 1950s, Turkey has been a refuge for Uyghurs fleeing what they describe as severe repression by the Chinese government, including allegations of genocide, mass arbitrary detention affecting over 1 million people, forced labor, forced sterilization, torture and other abuses.
China denies all those allegations, but in recent years, the U.S. and several Western parliaments have officially labeled China's recent policies and treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang as genocide. The U.N. human rights office has suggested that these actions may constitute crimes against humanity.
Initially denying these accusations, China later referred to the facilities holding Uyghurs as "re-education centers" aimed at countering "extremism, terrorism and separatism." China continuously describes accusations of Uyghur human rights abuses as "lies fabricated by U.S.-led anti-China forces" to contain China's development.
China-Turkey ties
Memettohti Atawulla, an Istanbul-based senior project manager at the Washington-based Center for Uyghur Studies, notes that the recent surge in arrests of Uyghurs in Turkey came shortly after Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan visited Xinjiang.
During the trip, "Turkey expressed its commitment to cooperate in what China terms as 'anti-terrorism,' a label that masks China's harsh policies targeting Uyghurs," Atawulla told VOA. "This may be a significant factor contributing to the increased arrests of Uyghurs in Turkey."
During his visit to Urumqi, Fidan emphasized Turkey's support for China's anti-terrorism efforts in a meeting with Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Ma Xingrui.
"We support China against armed terrorist groups. We do not approve international initiatives seeking to incite strife in China and to stop China's economic development," Fidan said in China. He also urged China to respect Uyghurs and let them "live their values."
The Turkish Foreign Ministry didn't respond to a request from VOA for comment on whether the recent arrests were related to "anti-terrorism" cooperation between the two countries.
Recent uptick
According to Jevlan Shirmehmet, an Istanbul-based lawyer advocating for Uyghurs, the reasons for the recent arrests extend beyond accusations related to terrorism.
He said it is hard to determine the total number of Uyghurs detained, but he personally knows of at least five detainees and was meeting with one detained Uyghur in a prison in Istanbul when VOA spoke with him.
He added that arrests of Uyghurs are not new, but that there has been a recent uptick.
"This issue of Uyghur detentions in Turkey has persisted over several years, and I have personally seen a variety of cases," Shirmehmet said.
"One common scenario involves allegations conveyed by China, while another type accuses Uyghurs of espionage for China. Additionally, there are cases related to civil crimes that occur in any community."
