Nury Turkel is an Uyghur American activist and attorney from Washington, D.C.. He was born in Xinjiang, which is also known as East Turkestan. After his undergraduate graduation in 1995, he moved to the United States. He was president of the Uyghur American Association and is currently serving as the Chairman of the Board for the Uyghur Human Rights Project which is Washington, D.C. based human rights project for Uighur human rights research and documentation. Turkel has published commentaries in The Wall Street Journal, The Independent, and Foreign Policy as well as appearing on major media outlets including CNN, BBC, Fox News, Al Jazeera, Australian ABC, Sky News, France 24 and TRT World. In 2020, Turkel was appointed a commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom by Speaker of the HouseNancy Pelosi. Turkel is the first U.S.-educated Uyghur lawyer.
Early life
Nury Turkel was born 1970 in a detention center in Kashgar during the Cultural Revolution. Turkel's grandfather had been associated with Uyghur nationalists and his mother was interned when she was six months pregnant. Turkel and his mother lived in the detention center for the first four months of his life. Turkel's father was a professor and his mother was a successful businesswoman. He completed his primary and middle school in his homeland. In 1991 he was admitted by Northwest A&F University in Shaanxi Province, China. In 1995, Turkel received his Bachelor’s degree and went to the United States for his higher education and never returned to live in China. Turkel was granted asylum in 1997/8. He has a Master of Arts in International Relations and a Juris Doctorate degree from American University.
Career
On March 10, 2003, Turkel made a statement to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China on the worsening human rights situation in East Turkestan in the wake of the September 11 attacks. In 2003, Turkel co-founded the Uyghur Human Rights Project and has served as Chairman of the Board for the organization. Between 2004 and 2006, Turkel served as President of the Uyghur American Association. He organised and lead the campaign to obtain the release of Rebiya Kadeer, in March 2005. In May 2009, he defended a group of seventeen Uyghurs who were held in Guantánamo Bay since 2002. He wrote that, "Uyghurs are the Tibetans you haven't heard about. Ethnic Turkic people from the Chinese Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Uyghurs have long faced discrimination and persecution as a minority -- a fact recognized repeatedly by the U.S. Congress and State Department, which has noted China's insidious strategy of using the U.S. war on terror as pretext to oppress independent religious leaders and peaceful political dissenters. Uyghurs' struggle for self-rule is one against dictatorship and communism, not one to establish a sharia state through violence.The Uyghurs are not a threat to U.S. communities. Just look at the five Uyghur companions who were released from Guantánamo in 2006 and have lived peaceably and productively in Europe for three years now." In July 2009, after July 2009 Ürümqi riots, he condemned the Chinese brutal oppression of Uyghurs in Urumqi, he said 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 early 2017, Turkel had considered visiting his hometown of Kashgar, but was advised by the US government not to travel. On August 10, 2018, United Nations said that it has credible reports that China holds 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 is true that one million or more Uighurs are being held in so called internment camps in his homeland, I am afraid of mass murder because we don't know, other than a few individuals have managed to leave the camps. People are not leaving. Where have those million people gone? What are they being charged of?" 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 May 2020, Nury Turkel was appointed a commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom by 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 President 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 Commerce Department 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."
Personal life
Nury Turkel is a Muslim, is married to a Turkish-American interior designer and has a son. Turkel is proficient in several languages, including Uyghur, English, Turkish and Mandarin Chinese.
