The Turkish government has asked for the extradition of a Turk living in Brazil who is part of a movement opposed to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in yet another case that lawyers and human rights organizations say is about political persecution.
Businessman Yakup Sagar, 54, belongs to Hizmet, an organization linked to Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, a former ally who has become an enemy of Erdogan and is now considered a terrorist by his government.
In addition to carrying out a purge of members of the movement within the country, with the dismissals and imprisonment of thousands of civil servants, judges, journalists and intellectuals, the Turkish president has sought the extradition of Hizmet supporters who have gone into exile in other countries.
This is the second case of its kind in Brazil: in 2019, Ali Sipahi, a Turkish naturalized Brazilian and owner of a restaurant in São Paulo, was the target of similar accusations. He was arrested, but at the end of the process the STF (Supreme Federal Court) unanimously denied Turkey’s request.
Sagar spent 19 days in provisional custody, but was released on Tuesday (21), after STF judge Alexandre de Moraes accepted a defense request for him to respond to the case in freedom. He had to hand in his passport and will wear an electronic ankle bracelet until the trial, which has yet to be set.
In the extradition request, Ankara states that Sagar is responsible for crimes such as “attempt to destroy the State of the Republic of Turkey or to prevent the State of the Republic of Turkey from functioning”, “qualified fraud by the abuse of religious convictions”, “act against the Terrorism Prevention and Financing Act” and “belonging to an armed criminal organization”, all provided for in the Turkish penal code.
He reportedly committed these crimes in 2005, in the city where he lived, Zonguldak, in the north of the country. Eleven years later, the Superior Court of the region issued an arrest warrant against him. The year 2016 marked a new chapter in Erdogan’s relationship with Hizmet, a civil movement that had great penetration in Turkish society, having founded schools, cultural centers, newspapers, hospitals and foundations.
The president blames Gülen’s followers for a failed coup attempt against him that took place in July, leaving 250 dead and 2,000 injured. The cleric, who has been in exile in the US since 1999, denies it.
According to international organizations, more than 90,000 people were arrested, and 150,000 civil servants were fired, most of them accused of terrorism. Fearing retaliation, thousands of Hizmet supporters have left the country, like Sagar, in São Paulo with his wife and daughter since December 2016.
In September 2017, he requested refuge from the Brazilian government, but his case has not yet been evaluated by Conare (National Committee for Refugees). In 2019, after Sipahi’s arrest, he told his story to leaf, saying he was worried about the possibility of being the target of a similar process.
A Hizmet spokesman in Zonguldak, where he had a shirt factory with 200 employees that was later confiscated by the Erdogan government, he said that four days after his departure, 84 businessmen from his town were arrested on charges of terrorism. At the clothing store that opened in the central region of São Paulo, which now has 20 employees, he defended Hizmet. “It’s a movement focused on education. I’m not a terrorist, I’ve never taken up arms,” ​​he said.
That year, a part of the Turkish community decided to leave Brazil, for fear of suffering extradition requests such as Sipahi’s. Sagar preferred to stay, saying that he had just started his life and business again and that he trusted the Brazilian justice system. “When the police arrived at our house, my father was calm,” says Sevinç Sagar, 22, Yakup’s daughter. “We are sad seeing the bad things from Turkey arriving in Brazil, it was almost 19 days that we didn’t see my father. But we also think that thank God he has already left there, thank God we live in the Brazil, in that country, there is still justice.”
The young woman, who has just graduated in international trade, says that parents of friends were arrested and tortured in Turkey. “When they left, none of them were in good health. As a family, we avoided thinking about this possibility in relation to my father. If they investigate us, they will see that we are decent people, that we have nothing to do with terrorism.”
The lawyer defending Sagar, Beto Vasconcelos, says that extraditing him to Turkey would mean submitting him to an exceptional court. “We are facing a case of evident extraterritorial persecution by the Turkish government of political opponents through the extradition mechanism. The applicant is a state in which there is democratic erosion, with the reduction of Parliament’s powers and interference in the Judiciary”, he says.
Vasconcelos was also active in the case of Sipahi. “It was a unanimous rejection and not exclusively related to the specific case of Ali, but with an analysis of the situation in the Turkish government. The case [de Sagar] is paradigmatic of what will happen from now on to all those persecuted by the Turkish regime in Brazil.”
Sagar’s defense gathered letters of support for him and Hizmet in Brazil, written by representatives of entities such as the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation, the Israeli Federation of São Paulo, the OAB (Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil) and the Cáritas Arquidiocesana de São Paulo Paul.
There is no extradition treaty between Brazil and Turkey, but the Turkish government can request this procedure through a promise of reciprocity — a commitment that it will act in the same way in relation to an eventual similar request by the Brazilian government.
Pretrial detention is customary in cases of this type, to avoid the risk of escape. In the Sagar release permit, Minister Alexandre de Moraes considered the “stability of his presence in the country, including proof that he carries out lawful business activity, has a fixed residence and family ties in Brazil, in addition to not having any criminal record” .
The Federal Public Defender’s Office filed a request to monitor the process as friend the House of Lords (Friend of the Court). “We carried out a survey in our international area of ​​various reports that the Erdogan government stigmatizes Hizmet as a terrorist for reasons of political persecution. We understand that these immigrants are in a vulnerable situation and we do not want them to feel unprotected”, says Gustavo Zortea , the federal public defender who made the request.
Other side
In reply to leaf, Turkey’s ambassador to Brazil, Murat Yavuz Ates, stated that Hizmet is not a political or social pacifist movement, but an “obscure and insidious” terrorist organization.
Erdogan’s government refers to Hizmet as the FETO, short for “Fetullah’s terrorist organization.” “Through schools and preparatory courses in recent decades, FETO has brainwashed the minds of young people in Turkey and other countries, under the guise of supposed training activities, indoctrinating a group of radical followers,” the ambassador said.
According to him, “FETO followers have infiltrated the most critical institutions of the Turkish state, defrauding exams and using other illegal methods”. “Once inside the system, they eliminated other people considered an obstacle to the organization. They used conspiracies involving illegal recordings, blackmail and the fabrication of false evidence.”
Ates claims that the 2016 coup attempt was organized by Gülen and operationalized by members of the group infiltrated by the army, who “bombed the Parliament building (with parliamentarians inside) and the presidential complex, placed tanks in the streets and killed civilians innocent people”.
He also claims that all major political parties in the Turkish parliament, including the main opposition parties, issued a joint statement in 2019 warning of the danger of the organization considered to be a terrorist. He also mentions that Hizmet was declared a terrorist in resolutions of the ICO (Organization of Islamic Countries), the Asian Parliamentary Assembly and the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
“FETO is a threat to the security of the countries where it is active,” he said. “The terrorist organization is using propaganda methods to influence NGOs and international public opinion against Turkey. But there should be no doubt that the Turkish criminal justice system is impartial. (…) The right to a fair trial is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey.”
Since 2014, Erdogan has been calling on the US to extradite Gullen, but Washington says Ankara has not presented enough evidence to authorize the process. In 2019, there were rumors that then-President Donald Trump was considering accepting the Turkish request, but the White House denied it.
Turkey has asked for the extradition of other Hizmet members who have taken refuge in European countries, the US or Canada, but the requests have also been denied by these governments. A well-known example is the NBA basketball player Enes Kanter, who is publicly critical of Erdogan’s government and is the target of nine arrest warrants for defamation and terrorism in his home country.
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