Transnational Repression: a Threat to Rights and Security in the United States Written Testimony By Enes Kanter Freedom January 17, 2024 Thank you, Chairman Pfluger, Ranking Member Magaziner, and members of the Committee for giving me the opportunity to testify today on the very important issue of Transnational Repression. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s long arm has reached tens of thousands of Turkish citizens abroad while Turkey has been experiencing a deepening human rights crisis since a coup attempt on July 15, 2016. The Turkish government has been carrying out an extraordinary campaign of transnational repression against its critics overseas since the failed coup. The State Department's 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in Turkey reported that the Turkish government increasingly coordinated with other authoritarian states to forcibly transfer more than 100 Turkish nationals to Turkey since the 2016 coup, and more than 40 individuals were put through abduction, rendition, and forcible return. Turkey’s campaign has mostly targeted people affiliated with the Gulen movement. The movement is a globally respected faith-based civil society inspired by Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, focusing on promoting interfaith dialogue and education throughout the world. The latest annual human rights report on Turkey by the US Department of State sets out violations by Turkey including ‘politically motivated retaliation against individuals located outside the country’ and ‘kidnappings and transfers without due process of alleged members of the Gulen movement’. Turkish intelligence abducted Selahattin Gulen who was a teacher in Kenya, and Orhan Inandi who was the chairman of a successful school network in Kyrgyzstan. They were abducted and faced torture in prison. They published his pictures on Turkish media with a broken arm. Most recently they abducted Koray Vural who was a businessman in Tajikistan. The list goes on and on, as the reports say more than 100 individuals abducted by the Turkish intelligence faced torture in prison. Turkey is also pressuring other countries to close many successful math and science academies. As the State Department reported on the Human rights country report in 2022, The government applied bilateral pressure on other governments to secure their assistance with renditions without full due process and couched such requests as cooperation on countering terrorism. Some observers attributed the abrupt closure of a popular Gulen-affiliated school in Albania in September with pressure from the Turkish government. A letter sent to the Turkish government in 2020 by the responsible UN Special Rapporteur condemned "the systematic practice of state- sponsored extraterritorial abduction and forcible return of Turkish citizens from many countries." In this letter, UN representatives stated that victims were first spied upon in the host country and then abducted: "Victims remain missing or incommunicado for weeks before being deported. During this time, they are often subjected to pressure, torture, and humiliation to pressure them into consenting to be taken to Turkey or into confessions for trial in Turkey. They are denied access to medical care and legal