Just who is Ali Osman Zor? And why doesn’t Turkey want him anymore?
Kyrgyz security forces arrested the 46-year-old Turkish citizen in Bishkek in May at the request of the Turkish Embassy, which accused him of membership in the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders Front (İslami Büyük Doğu Akıncılar Cephesi, or, IBDA-C), a terrorist group that allegedly aims to overthrow the government in Ankara.
For a time, observers expected Zor to be extradited to Turkey. That process was delayed, however, by his application for asylum: Zor claimed he had been persecuted as a journalist in Turkey. As expected, on July 15 Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Labor, Employment and Migration rejected his request. Yet Ankara never followed-up on the demand for extradition and Zor is languishing in limbo in a State Committee for National Security (GKNB) detention center, reportedly on hunger strike, according to Sabyrjan Mambetov, a spokesperson for the Taza Din (Pure Faith) movement, which has taken an interest in the case.
Turkey is usually vigilant when it comes to alleged Islamic radicals. Coercing Kyrgyzstan into extraditing Zor is also an easy way for Ankara to show off its influence in the region. Why then did Turkey not make more of an issue of Zor, an accused al-Qaeda sympathizer?
A writer for Islamist-inspired publications, Zor hardly elicits sympathy at home. But, his extradition would have focused unwanted attention on Turkey at a time when the democratic credentials and commitment to human rights of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) are under scrutiny.
In Kyrgyzstan, the case took a bizarre turn when Taza Din made some extravagant claims about Zor and Turkey’s unlikely role in last summer’s ethnic clashes between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks.
“We believe that Ali Osman Zor is under arrest because he possesses information proving the involvement of Turkish intelligence in the tragedy in southern Kyrgyzstan,” Mambetov said in comments carried recently by Bishkek’s 24.kg news agency. “The state media of Turkey has repeatedly accused Kyrgyz authorities of crimes against Uzbeks,” Mambetov continued. “Ali Osman Zor on the contrary had another opinion. He was objective.”
And that’s why the Turks were out to get him. Or something like that.
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