Turkey bars Kurdish lawmaker from traveling with German passport

Uca, the first Ezidi MP to have been elected to the Turkish Parliament as a member of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), is a dual Turkish-German national.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – It was revealed this weekend authorities in Turkey were not allowing the Yezidi (Ezidi) Kurdish lawmaker Feleknas Uca to go abroad neither with her Turkish passport nor with the German one she holds.

Uca, the first Ezidi MP to have been elected to the Turkish Parliament as a member of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), is a dual Turkish-German national.

Uca’s lawyer Reyhan Yalcindag told the Kurdish feminist news website Sujin that customs officers did not let her client fly from an Istanbul airport to the Swiss city of Basel last May.

When she arrived at the airport’s customs area on May 18, officers informed Uca her Turkish passport was invalidated, and she could not use the German one as there was a travel ban preventing her from flying abroad.

The invalidation and travel ban were imposed despite the absence of a court ruling.

A government decree issued by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan canceled the passport, Yalcindag explained.

There are several ongoing judicial investigations against Uca who prosecutors charge with “terror-related” crimes for speeches she made and events she attended as part of her political campaigns in 2015 and 2016.

Prosecutors have asked for up to 15 years of imprisonment for Uca who Turkish police briefly arrested in April in a continuing massive crackdown on the Kurdish political movement.

The lawyer took the case to an administrative court in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir which Uca represents at the Turkish Parliament.

The court said there was no legal travel ban on Uca, according to Yalcindag.

Yalcindag described the de facto cancellation of Uca’s German passport by the Turkish authorities a “scandal,” adding no country could revoke another country’s passports.

 

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany