OUT OF SIGHT,
NOT OUT OF REACH
The Global Scale and Scope
of Transnational Repression
CASE STUDIES
Turkey
Former Turkish prime minister, and current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses Kosovo citizens at a rally in Pristina. Image credit: Samir
Yordamovic/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.
T
he Turkish state’s current campaign of transnational
repression is remarkable for its intensity, its geographic
reach, and the suddenness with which it escalated. Since the
coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in July
2016, the regime has pursued its perceived enemies in at least
31 different host countries spread across the Americas, Europe,
the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The campaign is also notable
for its heavy reliance on renditions, in which the government
and its intelligence agency persuade the targeted states to
hand over individuals without due process, or with a slight
fig leaf of legality. Freedom House catalogued 58 of these
renditions since 2014. No other perpetrator state was found
to have conducted such a large number of renditions, from
so many host countries, during the coverage period—and the
documented total is almost certainly an undercount.
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@FreedomHouse
Ankara’s campaign has primarily targeted people affiliated
with the movement of religious leader Fethullah Gülen, which
the government blames for the coup attempt. Recently,
however, the effort has expanded, applying the same tactics
to Kurdish and leftist individuals. As Turkey has shifted toward
a more consolidated authoritarianism under Erdoğan, with
overwhelming power concentrated in the presidency, its
practice of transnational repression has grown more extreme.
Before the coup attempt
Prior to 2016, Turkey’s government had increasingly sought
to use its diaspora for political ends, but it did not engage in
extensive transnational repression activities. Under Erdoğan’s
Justice and Development Party (AKP), which held power
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