Nury Turkel

Nury Ablikim Turkel (Chinese: 努里·特克尔, pinyin: Nǔlǐ Tèkè'ěr; b. 1970) is an American attorney, public official and human rights advocate based in Washington, D.C. He is currently Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

Turkel was born in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

In 1991, he was admitted by Northwest A&F University in Shaanxi Province, China.

After finishing his undergraduate in 1995, he moved to the United States.

He is former president of the Uyghur American Association and is currently serving as the chairman of the board for the Uyghur Human Rights Project.

In 1995, Turkel received his BA and went to the United States for graduate education, never returning to China.

He has a MA in International Relations and a JD from American University.

On March 10, 2003, Turkel made a statement to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China on the worsening human rights situation in East Turkestan (Xinjiang) in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

In 2003, Turkel co-founded the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) and has served as its chairman of the board.

Between 2004 and 2006, Turkel served as president of the Uyghur American Association.

In March 2005 he organized and led a campaign to advocate for the release of Rebiya Kadeer.

In May 2009 he defended a group of 17 Uyghurs who had been held in Guantánamo Bay since 2002.

He wrote that Uyghurs have faced discrimination and are not a threat to U.S. communities.

In July 2009, after the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, he condemned alleged Chinese oppression of Uyghurs in Ürümqi, saying that "the Uyghurs literally lost anything that they had, even their native language and their own cultural heritage that they had been proudly adhering to. The economic pressure, social pressure, political pressure made the Uyghurs feel they had been suffocated by the communist regime.''

In April 2012, Turkel praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for showing support and sympathy for the Uyghur people surrounding his trip to China in a way that was seen as rare among foreign leaders.

In early 2017, Turkel had considered visiting his hometown of Kashgar, but was advised by the US government not to travel.

On August 10, 2018, the United Nations said that it has credible reports that China is holding a million Uighurs in secret camps.

After that, on August 22, 2018, the BBC interviewed Turkel regarding the reeducation camps issue in Xinjiang.

He told BBC it was true that one million or more Uighurs are being held in so-called internment camps in his homeland and said that internees do not have access to legal rights or access to medical care.

In September 2018, Turkel testified about the Xinjiang re-education camps before the United States House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and Nonproliferation.

Turkel successfully represented and provided legal assistance for Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, restoring Isa's travel privileges to the United States and removing Isa's name from Interpol's Red Notice list.

In September 2019, Turkel testified to the U.S. Congress that Uyghurs were being swept into a vast system of forced labor.

Turkel said persons in the Xinjiang re-education camps are often moved to factories.

Turkel urged Congress to ban the importation of cotton and textile products from Xinjiang until the end of internment and forced labor policies and the establishment of conditions for due diligence.

In 2020, Turkel was appointed a USCIRF commissioner by then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Turkel is the first U.S.-educated Uyghur lawyer and the first Uyghur American to be appointed to a political position in the United States.

In 2020, he was included on Time's list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

He is the author of No Escape: The True Story of China's Genocide of the Uyghurs.

Turkel was born in a detention center in Kashgar (Kashi) during the Cultural Revolution.

Turkel's grandfather had been associated with Uyghur nationalists and his mother was interned when she was six-month pregnant.

Turkel lived in the detention center for the first four months of his life.

Turkel's father was a professor and his mother was a businesswoman.

He completed his primary and middle school in his homeland.

However, in July 2020, Turkel

criticized Turkey for deporting Uyghur refugees to countries that then deported them to China.

In May 2020, Nury Turkel was appointed a commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom by then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who said of Turkel, "I am confident that he will continue to be a powerful voice for the Uyghur people and for the cause of justice around the world."

Later that summer, Turkel thanked Trump for signing the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act and further wrote that "It's a great day for America and the Uighur people."

Turkel supported a July 2020 United States Department of Commerce announcement sanctioning eleven Chinese companies involved in alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang commenting that the decision, "will help ensure that the fruits of American innovation and industry are not inadvertently fueling outrageous religious freedom and labor violations."

Turkel commented in July 2020 about the U.S. sanctions imposed on the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) saying that they were a significant step and that for years Uyghur human rights advocates had been calling for sanctioning the organization.

Regarding sanctions of the XPCC, Commissioner Turkel commented that, "Now, no business can claim ignorance of China's oppression of the Uyghur people. We hope the sanctions signal to other Chinese officials that there are costs associated with taking part in the Communist Party's repression of religion. The world is watching and we know which officials and entities are responsible for the abuses against the Uyghur people."