Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish preacher who has lived in voluntary exile in the US since 1999, on Tuesday criticized the deportation of six Turkish citizens from Kosovo to Turkey in an operation conducted by Turkish state intelligence, likening it to a hijacking.
The European Union on April 3 criticized Kosovo’s deportation of six Turks who were political foes of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, saying it “raised questions” about both Pristina’s and Ankara’s “respect” for human rights.
Gulistan Educational Institutions has declared that they will continue their activities despite their abducted teachers. 5 of their teachers were abducted by Turkish Intelligence Agency in cooperation with Kosovo’s intel agency, which shocked the global education community and protested in many countries including USA, Canada, and UK.
Kosovo’s prime minister on Monday pushed back against threats made by Turkey’s president over a probe into the arrest and deportation of six Turkish citizens with ties to schools linked to the Fethullah Gulen movement, which Ankara blames for a failed 2016 coup.
The Pristina abductions are merely the latest episode of Turkey’s global purge, the government’s campaign to pursue its opponents all over the world, which began in 2014 but has accelerated dramatically since the coup attempt of July 2016. In this time, Turkey has repeatedly resorted to extralegal means to target its perceived opponents abroad.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, on Saturday tweeted that six Turkish nationals who were arrested by Kosovar police on Thursday and apparently spirited out of the country by Turkish intelligence later in the day would face the risk of torture and abuse in Turkey.
Alaaddin Duman, a teacher in Malaysia who was abducted by Turkish intelligence agency over his links to the Gulen movement in 2016, has been subjected to beating, torture and death threats during pre-trial custody in Ankara, according his cellmate.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday lashed out at Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj for dismissing the interior minister and the secret service chief over the abduction of six Turkish nationals to Turkey, threatening that he would pay for it.
More importantly, is there any role played by President Hashim Thaçi who is known to be very close to the Turkish government? After all, it seems that Turkey’s Erdogan has a parallel state in Kosovo that executes decisions without the the knowledge of the incumbent prime minister and minister of foreign affairs.