Two days ago another Turkish citizen had been expelled from Bulgaria to Turkey. This time it was the 39-year-old Selahattin Ürün, a political refugee and activist for the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and a former mayoral candidate of the city of Uludere. He was driven on the 18th of September 2020 from Kazichene prison in Sofia suburbs (a part of Sofia central prison where he has spent 9 month) in a car of the Bulgarian border police to the Bulgarian-Turkish border and handed over to the Turkish authorities just before he was able to appear in front of the administrative court for the trial about his refugee application. On the very same day the EU Commission approved a sum of 12.8 million euro extra funding to Bulgaria which should support additional border guards participating in operations at its southern external borders.
The group that supported Mr. Ürün in Bulgaria reported that he has several charges in Turkey, all of which are based on the accusations of “spreading terrorist propaganda”. Already last year, on the 18th of December 2019, Mr. Ürün was caught at Bulgarian-Romanian border of Russe-Djurdju/Danube bridge during his attempt to cross to in Western Europe. He was detained in Russe police station and after 20 days moved to Kazichene prison. Afterwards he was charged for “illegal crossing the border“ and became a nine months sentence. Mr. Ürün had asked for asylum in Bulgaria and regarding to that he was awaiting a trial which was scheduled for the 29th of September 2020.
The supporters group reported that Mr. Ürün was sure that he was not threatened by any deportation and that he will be released on the 18th of September 2020 to be brought to the immigration prison in Lyubimets at the Bulgarian-Turkish border. On that day around 12 o`clock Selahattin Ürün was released from Sofia Central Prison, but instead to be fully liberated or transferred to Lyubimets detention center (until his court session on the 29th of September), he was taken by a car of the Migration border police department and around 4 o`clock p.m. to the Bulgarian-Turkish border where he was handed over to the Turkish authorities. The supporters were not informed by the authorities about the deportation. Later on the very same day Mr. Ürün’s wife informed the supporters group that Mr. Ürün is already in Turkey in the Edirne police station. Before this information was finally revealed Ürün’s lawyer, the well-known Bulgarian migration lawyer Valeria Ilareva, was not allowed to talk to the Migration Directorate about her client.
The case was brought the first time to public by MEP Ivo Hristov (BSP) on Facebook. After several Bulgarian media outlets reported about the case, the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior (MoI) released a statement in which it claimed that Mr. Ürün was deported under “a readmission agreement of the EU and Turkey“. Furthermore the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior clarified that since 2016, following an alleged readmission agreement between the EU and Turkey, officially 431 people were deported from Bulgaria to Turkey (Interestingly there is no public document existing about the mentioned EU-Turkey agreement by the MoI from 2016 where Bulgaria plays a role). Bordermonitoring Bulgaria (BMB) already mentioned several similar cases in its former statements and reports in the last years. Furthermore Asylum requests by Turkish passport holders in Bulgaria had a disapproval rate of 100% in 2018 and 2019.
At the beginning of this week, the German magazine SPIEGEL published an investigation, citing secret documents from the Turkish embassy in Sofia. According to the article, the Bulgarian premier Boyko Borissov, the Bulgarian secret service and the former special attorney of Bulgaria, General Sotir Tsatsarov, have helped Turkey to prosecute several Turkish opposition members in Bulgaria. BMB claims that such legally unratified procedures are violating the Non-refoulement principle and the responsible EU authorities should immediately start an investigation concerning this matter.