Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Co-Chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, today chaired a congressional hearing exposing the shocking human rights abuses and aggressive transnational repression of the Government of Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

            “Since 2016, the government of Turkey has, according to the US Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, ‘arrested or imprisoned more than 95,000 citizens, and closed more than 1,500 nongovernmental organizations…primarily for alleged ties to the movement of cleric Fethullah Gulen,’” said Smith.

            “This Commission—and the US Congress—considers itself a friend of the Turkish people,” Smith continued. “And when the Government of Turkey commits grave human rights violations against its own people, this friendship means that we stand with the people,” said Smith.

            “We call on the government of Turkey to change its course of human rights abuses,” said Smith, who cited a host of shocking abuses of human rights by the Turkish government, including arbitrary killings, suspicious deaths of persons in custody, forced disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrest and continued detention of tens of thousands of persons, and severe restrictions on freedom of expression and press freedom.

            Among the experts testifying at Smith’s hearing was Enes Kanter Freedom, a human rights activist and former professional basketball star who was fired by the NBA for protesting the horrific human rights violations of the Chinese Communist Party.

            In his testimony, Freedom shared personal encounters with Turkey’s transnational repression after he began speaking out against human rights abuses committed by President Erdogan.

            “The Turkish government asked the US government to extradite me, canceled my passport, put my name on an Interpol list, imprisoned my father, and set a $500,000 bounty on my head,” said Freedom. “In 9 years, I received 12 arrest warrants and countless death threats.”

            “They tried to attack me in front of a mosque in Boston, run social media campaigns against me, and pressured American universities, NGOs, and political groups to cancel their events with me,” said Freedom, who recounted two instances in 2017 in Indonesia and Romania where local officials tried to kidnap and arrest him to send him back to Turkey.

            Other experts testifying at Smith’s hearing included Abdulhamit Bilici, the former Editor in Chief of Zaman who shared his own experience as a victim of Turkey’s transnational repression, and Nadine Maenza, the President of IRF Secretariat and former Chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

            “I personally experienced both national and transnational repression as a journalist,” said Bilici. “I was the editor in chief of Zaman daily, the largest newspaper in Turkey. The Erdogan government brutally raided my newspaper in March 2016, five months before the coup attempt, and they shut down the paper after the coup attempt together with 200 critical media outlets.”

            “When Erdogan regime took over the paper, the first thing they did was to fire me and to appoint a pro-government editor who converted the newspaper into a regime mouthpiece in 24 hours,” Bilici continued. “Facing serious threats, I had to leave the country for my safety.”

            Maenza spoke to Turkey’s severe violations of religious freedom, including its persecution of Christians: “The government refuses to grant legal personality to many religious communities and continues to block the reopening of the Greek Orthodox Halki seminary. Many religious and ethnic minorities face harassment and discrimination, including Alevis, the largest religious minority in the country. Their houses of worship are not recognized by the government and are subjected to vandalism and attacks.”

            “Turkey continues to criminalize blasphemy under article 216(3) of the Penal code,” Maenza added. “This is generally politically motivated against those accused of insulting or mocking Islam and to intimidate or retaliate against critics of President Erdogan.”

            Smith, who meets regularly with people persecuted by foreign governments that target and pursue them inside the United States, urged his colleagues to support his Transnational Repression Policy Act (HR 3654) in response to the Biden Administration’s weak response to foreign governments’ attempts to harm, intimidate, silence, abduct, or spy on members of diaspora and exile communities within the US and other countries.

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