Kurdish activist and politician Nasır Yağız was extradited from Russia to Turkey. The 32-year-old politician landed in Istanbul on Monday and was arrested upon arrival at the airport. He was then taken by police to the Courthouse in Gaziosmanpaşa. According to his lawyer, Yağız is to be brought before the court in the Kurdish city of Batman via a video conferencing system later today, and the court will then decide whether to issue an arrest warrant. “We expect Nasır to be taken to prison immediately,” said the lawyer Mehmet Resul Yağız.

Repeatedly arrested due to political activism

Nasır Yağız was born in Batman, where he was arrested in August 2016 at the age of 24 on alleged terrorism charges due to his political activism. After about six months in pre-trial detention, he was initially released, but the proceedings against him continued. He was temporarily detained five more times and subjected to ill-treatment and torture before finally leaving Turkey for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) in February 2018.

HDP Hewlêr representative

In the KRI, Yağız lived in the capital Hewlêr (Erbil), where he headed the representation of the DEM predecessor Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and was involved in the Association of Working People from Mesopotamia (KKM), which was founded by political refugees from Northern Kurdistan. In 2018, Yağız also became internationally known for taking part in a hunger strike of almost 170 days against the isolation of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan.

Recruitment attempt by the Turkish secret service

In September 2021, the Turkish intelligence service MIT tried to recruit the activist as an agent. In return, a sentence passed against him in Turkey was to be annulled. Yağız refused and made the recruitment attempts public. In the same month, a series of murders carried out by MIT assassins began in South Kurdistan, in which at least nine politicians and activists have fallen victim to date – most of them were refugees from North Kurdistan.

Deported BY KDP to Sulaymaniyah

At the end of 2024, Yağız and all the other HDP representatives at the time were deported from Hewlêr. Together with the exile politicians Hikmet Hatip, Aydın Yalvaç and Sıtkı Vakar, the activist was forcibly removed from the capital of the KRI by security forces of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and abandoned near Sulaymaniyah in the area of influence of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). After that, they were banned from re-entering Hewlêr. The KDP authorities did not give a reason for the expulsion.

Asylum application ignored by Russian authorities

Last week, Yağız traveled to Moscow and applied for political asylum. According to his defense lawyer, he was arrested immediately. “The asylum application has been ignored by Russian officials. They have denied my client his right to asylum,” said lawyer Mehmet Resul Yağız. The 32-year-old was in the custody of the Russian police for a total of four days before he was deported to Turkey. “Nasır Yağız described his detention in Russia as degrading and inhumane. He was mistreated and received neither water nor food. He was extradited to Ankara in violation of international refugee law.”