After the expulsion of the seven employees of the private Orizont high school network, no Moldovan authority can say who is guilty of violating the rights of Turkish citizens or who should take responsibility for the European Court for Human Rights (ECtHR) verdicts condemning the state. While the authorities have just opened a criminal investigation involving two public officials, the families of Turkish teachers are increasingly losing hope that they will see their relatives again. 

After the extradition of the Turkish citizens in 2018, the then Bureau of Migration and Asylum along with the Information and Security Service leadership avoided offering a public explanation. Instead, the then head of the Parliament, the democrat Andrian Candu, organized hearings on the subject.

“According to what the Security and Intelligence Service has reported, the institution has complied in full with the Law on the Regime for Foreigners, from the moment the asylum was requested, during the asylum application rejection, to the moment teachers were declared undesirable persons and the procedures that followed regarding their expelling. 

I think this is not the last meeting on this subject. The Bureau for Migration and Asylum, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the General Prosecutor’s Office information will be heard. The Security and Intelligence Service carried all its actions under some prosecutor’s supervision, as we’re talking about criminal cases,” Andrian Candu declared on September 8, 2018, after the hearings. However, the former government made no statement on the subject. 

In June 2019, the ECtHR issued a decision, regarding the five Turkish citizens forcibly expelled from the country, ordering Moldova to pay them each 25,000 euros. The ECtHR declared that Moldova has violated the right to liberty and security (Article 5.1) and the right to respect for private and family life (Article 8) from the European Convention on Human Rights. 

Subsequently, the ECtHR had a different opinion on the case, regarding the legality of the expulsion of the five from seven Turkish citizens, and the actions of the Security and Intelligence Service.  

“It appears in the present case that the Moldovan authorities not only failed to give the applicants a choice of jurisdiction to be expelled to but deliberately transferred them directly to the Turkish authorities. 

The materials in the case also indicate that the joint operation of the Moldovan and Turkish secret services was prepared well in advance of 6 September 2018. The fact that the applicants were transported to Turkey in a specially chartered aeroplane for that purpose is only one of the elements that support that point of view. 

The facts of the case also indicate that the operation was conceived and organized in such a manner as to take the applicants by surprise so that they would have no time and possibility to defend themselves,” the ECtHR’s decision stated.  

“The Court notes that Moldovan law contains norms regulating expulsion and extradition, despite that, the applicants were removed from Moldova by way of an extra-legal transfer which circumvented the guarantees offered by domestic and international law,” the ECtHR decision said.  

Nicolae Frumosu, the lawyer of the Turkish teachers, said that Moldova’s government agent showed no evidence that the plaintiffs would present a threat to public security.    

In June 2019, the ACUM Bloc and the Socialist Party formed a governing coalition. The coalition moved the Security and Intelligence Service under the control of President Igor Dodon. The head of the Security and Intelligence Service became Alexandr Esaulenco, named by the President for a five-year term. 

After Esaulenco took office, the government requested a report on the Turkish teachers’ expulsion process.

On July 5, the Parliamentary Committee on National Security, Defense, and Public Order received a report, signed by Esaulenco regarding the Turkish teachers’ expulsion. 

Neither the Parliament nor the Security and Intelligence Service made the information public, invoking state secrecy.  

However, the Commission later organized hearings on this case, calling out Vasile Botnari, chief of the Security and Intelligence Service in September 2018, Alexandru Baltaga, former deputy director of Security and Intelligence Service, and Olga Poalelungi, who has currently been relieved of her duties as Bureau for Migration and Asylum chief.

After the hearings, Chiril Moţpan, deputy from the ACUM Bloc and Parliamentary Committee on National Security, Defense, and Public Order president, said they have not yet established all the circumstances. 

When asked about the President’s involvement, Moțpan said that President Dodon did not have any affiliation with the case. Dodon’s name did not appear in the report nor in the framework of the statements made by the board of Security and Intelligence Service and Bureau for Migration and Asylum.

However, a year ago, one of the ACUM Bloc leaders, the current Prime Minister Maia Sandu, declared that Igor Dodon was behind the expulsion.  

“It’s unacceptable that the Republic of Moldova has decided to ignore human rights and individual freedom in exchange for money to rebuild the president’s building. This is one more proof of the rule of law collapse in the Republic of Moldova and the anti-European, authoritarian regime created by Plahotniuc and Dodon,” Maia Sandu declared. 

On August 2, the General Prosecutor’s Office announced that it had opened a criminal case for abuse of power and overstepping authority committed by the employees of the Bureau for Migration and Asylum and the Security and Intelligence Service.

On September 6, 2019, the General Prosecutor’s Office announced the detention of the former deputy director of Security and Intelligence Service, Alexandru Baltaga, as well as criminal charges against Olga Poalelungi, the then- chief of Bureau for Migration and Asylum.

On September 9, Baltaga Alexandru was placed under house arrest for 30 days and Poalelungi was suspended from the position of Minister for Migration and Asylum. 

Nicolae Frumosu is one of the lawyers who represented the interests of the Turkish citizens at the ECtHR and currently represents their interests in national court disputes.  

Frumosu does not have up-to-date information about court proceedings in Turkey. However, he states that four cases are ongoing in Moldova.  

Three of the four cases challenge decisions by which the Bureau for Migration and Asylum refused to grant refugee status for Tufekci, Celebi and Riza Dogan. The fourth case challenges the decision of Huseyin Bayraktar declared an “undesirable” person and his removal under escort.

“There are only four cases ongoing. The other applications have long been rejected on procedural grounds, in most cases because we did not have direct powers from the Turkish citizens, in other words, they did not sign the lawyers’ mandates. The Moldovan authorities also rejected the plaintiffs. Solutions for rejecting applications are irrevocable at the national level. One year has passed since the four cases were opened, but we are in the preparation stage of the court hearings. We have some difficulties in managing all the problems. 

The Security and Intelligence Service’s notices that we take an interest in are secret documents, with a secret state nature. Lawyers do not yet have access to state secrets. We’re trying to get access, but first, we need national courts to admit, the administration of these evidences. 

When the national court will accept the evidence, the lawyers will get access to state secrets. Then besides the judge, the Security and Intelligence Service, and the Bureau for Migration and Asylum representative, the lawyers will also be able to manage the evidence,” Nicolae Frumosu explained to ZdG’s lawyer.

“I do not necessarily believe that the opening of internal investigations and criminal cases comes as an effect of the ECtHR decision, rather, as an effect of the change of the government,” answered Nicolae Frumosu, when asked to comment on the authorities’ actions following the ECtHR’s decision.   

Frumosu added that if the criminal investigation will be completed and there will be persons convicted for overstepping their authority, then the applications filed in the interest of the Turkish citizens challenging the refusal to grant refugee status and the decision through which they were declared undesirable can be reviewed.

Galina Tufekci is a citizen of the Republic of Moldova and the wife of Fericit Tufekci, the director of the Ceadîr Lunga Orizont high school. She has three children and one of them is underage. 

“The state provoked an emotional trauma for the entire life for my children. The two that are already adults understand the situation and they don’t ask about their father, because they know it’s a painful situation. The twelve-year-old child doesn’t understand why his father is not close to him, for him it’s harder,” said Galina.     

When asked about the court hearings in Turkey Galina replied “There were only six or seven court hearings. Each time, the hearings are postponed and new charges are brought. The last meeting took place on August 9, and the next is due for October 8th. The situation is the same as in Moldova.

No charges have been issued in written form, but verbally he was accused of allegedly preparing a terrorist act on September 6. When I requested the presence of the allegations in written form, other accusations were brought forward, that he could be behind a terrorist group, and that he is behind media promoting terrorism, ” added Galina.

One year after the extradition, the Orizont high school leadership declared that Moldova failed in proving that it has the rule of law. 

“We will never be the same again as before September 6, 2018… Seven families were destroyed, they were left without a father. An incredibly insolent and monstrous act. Five of these persons had a status of asylum applicant. In accordance with the Geneva Convention from 1951, they should have received protection from the country. The Republic of Moldova did not pass this test, we could not show that we have a rule of law,” the leadership of the Orizont high school declared.   

In May 2017, during an official visit to Moldova, the Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim asked Moldova’s then Prime Minister Pavel Filip to close the Orizont high school. According to the Turkish Prime Minister, this school (one of the top schools in Moldova) was part of a terrorist group led by Fethullah Gülen – a cleric who has been living in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, as a result of his strained relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.  

On September 5, 2018, Olga Poalelungi, the director of the Bureau for Migration and Asylum (an institution subordinate to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) signed decisions declaring the seven Orizont high school employees and Turgay Șen “undesirable” on Moldova’s territory.

The seven Orizont employees were escorted by the Secret and Intelligence Services to the Airport, and they were taken from there to a former military airport in Turkey on a plane chartered by Air Moldova. 

• Moldova’s Extradition of Turkish Citizens: One Year Later

Marina Ciobanu, marinaciobanu.tv@gmail.com