Turkish Couple Facing Deportation to Kosovo Win Swiss Asylum
A Turkish couple who are members of exiled Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen’s network were granted asylum in Switzerland on February 10, after facing deportation to Kosovo, BIRN has learned.
“The State Secretariat for Migration recognized X and Y as refugees and granted them asylum. The authors thus no longer run the risk of being sent back to Kosovo,” the Justice Ministry wrote in a letter on February 14 to the UN Committee against Torture, UN CAT, which BIRN has seen.
The ministry added that the decision has been taken in accordance with the UN CAT’s previous advice that Switzerland should not deport the couple to Kosovo, citing a risk that they could be transferred to Turkey and face torture.
“In its decision of 11 November 2022, the UN CAT found that enforcing the removal of X and Y to Kosovo would constitute a violation of Article 3 of the Convention against Torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. The Committee invited Switzerland to inform it, within 90 days of the date of transmission of the above-mentioned findings, of the measures taken in accordance with them,” the ministry wrote.
Ali Yildiz, a lawyer represented the couple to UN CAT, told BIRN that the decision shows “Switzerland acted upon the decision of the Committee Against Torture”.
“Otherwise, Switzerland’s non-compliance with a decision that was adopted by a UN human rights body hosted by Switzerland would be a shame,” he said.
According to Yildiz, the decision of the UN CAT and its swift impact is a reminder of how important the UN system is in protecting and upholding human rights. “Victims and human rights practitioners should protect the UN human rights mechanism as well as further the impact of their decisions,” he added.
The couple, who had worked in Gulen-affiliated schools in Kosovo as teachers, applied for asylum in Switzerland in 2020. Their request was rejected and it was decided that they should be deported to Kosovo.
The UN CAT’s decision also confirmed that Kosovo is not a safe country for people affiliated with the Gulen network, Yildiz said. “The decision of the UN CAT has very significant importance as it has established that Kosovo may not be accepted as a safe country for members of the Gulen movement,” he noted.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government accuse Gulen and his network of orchestrating a failed 2016 putsch and define the network as the Fethullahist Terrorist Organisation, or “FETO” for short. Gulen denies any involvement in the failed coup attempt.
A Kosovo parliamentary commission probing the controversial deportation of six alleged Gulenists to Turkey in 2018 said that this deportation had breached 31 Kosovo laws and procedures.
Switzerland previously defended its earlier decision to deport the couple to Kosovo, while adding that if Kosovo transferred them to Turkey, “such a course of action would in fact be likely to jeopardise the proper functioning of bilateral cooperation with Switzerland, which is not in Kosovo’s interest”.
Thousands of institutions – universities, schools, banks, media companies, NGOs and private firms – owned or run by alleged members of Gulen’s network have been seized in Turkey since the authorities crushed the attempted coup in 2016. Hundreds of thousands people were investigated, detained and prisoned due to their alleged ties to Gulen.
The Turkish government continues to press other countries to do the same.
So far, however, apart from a few states in Africa and Asia with autocratic governments, Gulen schools have continued to operate and most countries have resisted or ignored Ankara’s demands for extradition of Gulen followers, excluding Kosovo, Albania and Moldova in the south-east Europe region.
