Freedom House beginning in the early 2000s, the government viewed Turks living abroad both as a potential source of domestic political support and as a resource for advancing its foreign policy priorities.270 But stark divisions within the diaspora—reflecting divisions within Turkey between Turkish nationalists and Kurdish nationalists, and between leftists and Islamists, among others—were exacerbated by the state’s more overt politicization of such communities. These rifts sometimes erupted into street clashes, and Kurdish and leftist activists in particular reported feeling threatened by the state.271 The threats were not necessarily imaginary. In January 2013, three Kurdish exiles, including a cofounder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an outlawed militant group, were murdered at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris, France. A Turkish man who was arrested following the killing died in custody before he could stand trial, leaving allegations that he had been an agent of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) unresolved.272 There were also signs that Turkey’s international posture was changing as President Erdoğan consolidated power, especially after 2013. As he pivoted away from his formerly moderate image and toward hard-line Turkish nationalism, the Turkish government strengthened its ties to overseas nationalist groups like the Osmanen Germania biker gang, which was accused of spying on and threatening Turkish exiles, and which German authorities banned in 2018.273 Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, commonly known as the Diyanet, which oversees imams and mosques for the Turkish diaspora, also became an instrument for surveilling exiles.274 Rapid escalation after the coup attempt The failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016, triggered a transformation in Turkey’s use of transnational repression. Almost immediately after a night of violence in which coup plotters in the Turkish military killed more than 250 people but failed to seize power, Ankara initiated a “global purge” that mirrored its domestic crackdown.275 Both operated on the basis of guilt by association, condemning people for their real or suspected connections to the Gülen movement, often with little effort to link them directly to the coup attempt itself. The result is that many targets of renditions have been teachers or education administrators who worked at schools that the Gülen movement runs around the world.276 The main tactics of the global campaign have been mobility controls, detentions, and illegal renditions. Turkey’s government says it has returned 116 people from 27 countries in connection with the coup attempt.277 In a letter to the Turkish leadership in May 2020, UN experts referred to “at least 100 individuals … subjected to arbitrary arrests and detention, enforced disappearance and torture.” In its own research, Freedom House was able to identify 58 people rendered from 17 countries. Family members of the victims, in addition to dozens of people rendered in mass cases who have not been individually identified in public sources, likely make up the difference between this number and the Turkish government’s statements. From the perspective of the Turkish state, all of these people are legitimate counterterrorism targets. After the Gülen movement and the AKP split politically in 2013, but long before the coup attempt, the government designated the movement a terrorist organization, dubbing it the “Fethullahist Terror Organization” or “FETÖ” and ascribing to it a variety of far-fetched plots. The designation is now embedded in Turkish law and practice, continuing a long history of abuse of the terrorism label in the country. At the international level, in imitation of Interpol’s color-coded notification system, Ankara has released its own list entitled “Terör Arananlar,” or “Most Wanted Terrorists,” which includes about a thousand suspects. Most are alleged to be affiliated with the PKK, but others are Gülen movement members, members of minor leftist groups, and in a handful of cases, members of Islamist militant groups like the Islamic State.278 Adopting the United States’ terminology, the progovernment English-language newspaper Daily Sabah regularly features articles on the campaign in a section of its website called “The War on Terror.”279 All 110 of the physical transnational repression cases that Freedom House catalogued as having been perpetrated by the Turkish state involved accusations of terrorism. No other country has conducted such a large number of renditions, from as many host countries, during the coverage period. Turkey’s top officials openly claim credit for the kidnapping offensive against the Gülen movement, and praise the role of the MİT in the renditions.280 State media articles describe freedomhouse.org 39