On July 25, officers from Turkey’s police and security agencies did not allow Turkmen journalist Ruslan Myatiev to enter the country.Myatiev is editor of the turkmen.news website, one of the few independent information and human rights resources on Turkmenistan.
Myatiev and his family were going on a summer holiday, but he was told at the airport in Antalya that he posed a threat to Turkey’s national security.
After several hours of questioning Myatiev was deported from the country under escort.The request to put the journalist on the banned list had come from Turkmenistan.Ruslan Myatiev and his family had flown on holiday to Antalya, a popular resort in the south of Turkey.
While he was checking documents at the airport, a police officer made a call, closed his passport inspection window, and took Myatiev to a separate office to see the senior duty officer.Having checked Myatiev’s passport again on the computer, the police officers said to one another in Turkish that code G-82 had been entered against his name “activity against national security.” Myatiev had last visited Turkey exactly a year ago with his family and gone to the same place.
He did not make any private or work trips to the country throughout the year.The police officers told the journalist that the ban had been introduced two months after his summer visit, i.e.
in September-October 2023.At this time Tajigul Begmedova, head of the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation, had not been allowed entry to Turkey.She too had been assigned code G-82.
Until that time the Turkmen human rights defender had worked intensively with Turkmen labor migrants and activists in Turkey.The Turkish police officers told Myatiev that he was refused entry and would be deported from the country.
After this, the police called the Turkish special services.Two officials in plain clothes arrived and initially behaved aggressively, thinking they had caught an enemy of their country.The interrogation began: “Who are you?
Where are you from?Why have you come to Turkey?What harm have you done to our country?” They studied Myatiev’s passport for a long time, checked it against something on their computer, had a written exchange with someone on WhatsApp, and as a result were sent photographs of some kind of documents… Then the officers let slip that the ban was linked with Turkmenistan and had come from there.Realizing that this had nothing to do with Turkey, one of them, presumably the senior officer, left and did not come back.
The second one began to ask about the journalist’s connections with the UN: did Myatiev work officially for the organization, did he receive commissions from it, how often did he go to the UN, etc.
He was interested in the journalist’s studies and his trips abroad.After several hours of questioning Ruslan Myatiev was given a document refusing him entry to the country and bearing the note “an entry ban is in place”, and he was escorted onto the plane for the return flight to the Netherlands.This type of cooperation between the two countries began in spring 2020.
At that time a powerful hurricane had struck Mary and Lebap regions of Turkmenistan, leaving thousands of people homeless.There were reports of dozens of people dead.However, the Turkmen authorities did not say a word about the destructive natural disaster, and the population did not receive any help from the state.
These events, coupled with the closure of borders because of the coronavirus pandemic, prompted a wave of protests by Turkmen labor migrants in Turkey.Several activists emerged and quickly became popular.
Without concealing their names or faces, they spoke openly on social media against the regime in Turkmenistan, brought together their supporters, and held demonstrations outside the consulate in Istanbul.
One of the largest political actions took place in the district of Aksaray, popular with people from Turkmenistan.Activists put up anti-government posters in many places and led a march of dozens of Turkmen migrants.However, the Turkmen special services and diplomats now command the total loyalty of the Turkish authorities.
Over the past four years practically the entire protest movement has been crushed: some of the activists were extradited to Turkmenistan, while others were forced to flee to Poland and seek political asylum there and in other EU countries.
A few activists who could not leave put a complete stop to their opposition activities.Nothing at all is known of the fate of three extradited activists Farhat Meymankuliev, Rovshen Klychev, and Serdar Durdylyev.It looks very much as though refusing Turkmen journalists and human rights defenders entry into Turkey is part of the cooperation program between the two countries.