A protester from the Uyghur community living in Türkiye stands with East Turkestan flags in the Beyazit mosque in Istanbul on March 25, 2021, during a protest against the visit of China's foreign minister to Türkiye. © 2021 BULENT KILIC/AFP via Getty Images
Summary
- I’m even afraid to go outside, for simple things such as groceries, because I don’t want to end up in deportation center again.
- ― A Uyghur whose residency was cancelled arbitrarily by Turkish authorities, July 2025
HRW, November 12, 2025
The Uyghurs are a group of 11.6 million Turkic people who live in northwestern China. Since 2017, the Chinese government has subjected them to severe human rights abuses which Human Rights Watch and independent legal experts have concluded amount to crimes against humanity. Hundreds of thousands of them live abroad, and an estimated 50,000 call Türkiye home. Due to their ethnic and cultural ties, Türkiye has long been a safe haven for Uyghurs, including via preferential immigration policy that allows Uyghurs to become long-term residents and citizens.
But since 2022, as Türkiye-China ties warm, and as Türkiye adopts increasingly anti-immigration policies, Türkiye has become less safe for Uyghurs without Turkish citizenship. Turkish authorities have arbitrarily assigned “restriction codes” to Uyghurs, among other migrants, denoting them as “public security threats,” often without reasonable justification and without evidence they pose any threat. The assignment of such codes (typically code “G87”) can lead to a cascade of negative and often devastating consequences: denial of citizenship, international protection, or other status that entitles one to residency, effectively making them “irregular migrants” and some eventually receive deportation decisions. When such individuals get picked up by or for any reason interact with police or immigration officers, they can be sent to a deportation center.
If returned to China, especially from a country such as Türkiye that the Chinese government deems “sensitive,” Uyghurs may face detention, interrogation, torture, and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
The Turkish government claims it has never directly deported Uyghurs to China. But there is at least one reported incident in May 2018, when Turkish authorities reportedly deported at least three Uyghurs directly to China. Indirect refoulement to China has also been reported: in June 2019, Turkish authorities deported a Uyghur women and her two toddler daughters to Tajikistan, after which Tajik authorities reportedly returned them to China.
Additionally, Human Rights Watch has found press reports of 33 Uyghurs who were detained at deportation centers in Türkiye between December 2018 and October 2025. The actual number is likely higher: A Türkiye-based non-governmental organization, which wishes to remain anonymous, says it documented over 100 Uyghurs held by Turkish authorities in deportation centers in 2024 alone.
In the deportation centers, Turkish immigration authorities have pressured, sometimes forced, Uyghur detainees to sign “voluntary return” forms. This has become a general practice in Türkiye affecting other migrant communities as well, including Syrians and Afghans. At least three of the Uyghurs interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they had signed such a form. One of them was deported in 2019 to the United Arab Emirates which has had an extradition treaty with China since 2008. This person later traveled to several other countries before making his way to safety. During this period, he was harassed by Chinese government agents and detained twice by local immigration authorities, and host governments were pressured by the Chinese government to repatriate him. Another Uyghur told Human Rights Watch that Turkish police brought him to Istanbul Atatürk Airport in 2019 to be deported, but he was able to thwart the attempt by making a scene at the airport.
The crackdown on immigration in Türkiye in recent years has been accompanied by significant erosion of the de jure and de facto preferential treatment of Uyghurs there. Those preferential treatments include eligibility of Uyghurs to apply for long term residence permits without fulfilling all requirements and subsequently for Turkish citizenship with a route designated for communities from Turkic origin.
As noted, Uyghurs increasingly are being subjected to “restriction codes,” an assignation attached to someone’s residency or passport in policing and immigration databases that effectively nullifies the previously granted privileges. The assignment of restriction codes is linked to the implementation of Türkiye’s Law No. 6458 on Foreigners and International Protection, but how and why codes are currently assigned is unclear and in practice their use seems to reach far beyond what was intended by the law. In specific cases, it is often done without reasonable justification, concrete evidence, or a clear causal link to wrongdoing, according to Uyghurs and lawyers interviewed and court documents reviewed by Human Rights Watch. Similarly, authorities have summarily cancelled the residency permits or rejected Uyghurs’ residency or citizenship applications on the basis that they pose a “public security threat” without providing supporting evidence.
A simple complaint from a neighbor, being ensnared in a criminal case—even though later acquitted—can all result in decisions to apply the restriction codes. Turkish authorities also base these codes on intelligence provided by other governments. In some cases, the Chinese government submitted lists of individuals to the Turkish authorities whom Beijing brands as “terrorists,” a term it conflates with peaceful activism or expression of Uyghur identity in Xinjiang. People on these lists have ended up being tagged with restriction codes.
According to one Turkish official knowledgeable about the situation, the immigration system’s use of restriction codes creates debilitating uncertainty for Uyghurs and “pushes people’s lives toward a complete unknown.”
For this report, Human Rights Watch conducted a total of 20 interviews, 13 with Uyghurs, two of whom are representatives of Uyghur civil society groups in Türkiye, six with immigration lawyers in Türkiye who work on cases related to Uyghurs, and one Turkish government official knowledgeable about the situation.
Of the 13 Uyghurs interviewed by Human Rights Watch, nine have been in a deportation center at least once because of a restriction code. Five currently live in Türkiye without legal status and express fear of leaving their residences to go outside, as Turkish police or immigration officers are cracking down on irregular migrants. Two of the interviewees were recognized as “conditional refugees,” a quasi-refugee status in Türkiye which offers them international protection, yet authorities cancelled their status anyway without giving any explanation. Authorities have ruled that both are now subject to deportation.
Human Rights Watch reviewed 12 deportation decisions and four decisions to reject Uyghurs’ residence permit issued by the Presidency of Migration Management (PMM), the agency in Türkiye’s Ministry of Interior responsible for migration and international protection matters in the country, and three decisions to reject citizenship applications by the General Directorate of Population and Citizenship Affairs. All those documents, dated between 2018-2025, used broad language and did not provide any specific explanation, references, or assessment that would enable one to evaluate the merits of the decision.
Under Turkish law, individuals can appeal these deportation decisions, but according to a lawyer who has made such appeals many times, “judges can often make a negative decision when they see restriction codes, just to be safe.”
Human Rights Watch reviewed five court decisions issued in 2024 and 2025 concerning deportation orders against Uyghurs deemed a threat to public order and security. In each case, the court decisions upheld the deportation order without saying what the individuals had done that constituted the alleged threat to public security and order. Worryingly, the courts ruled that the prohibition of refoulement does not apply for the Uyghurs, saying they had not established that Uyghurs would be at risk of ill-treatment and torture if sent to China.
Interviewees also reported ill-treatment and poor conditions at the deportation centers. Four of them were strip-searched.
In 2017, the Turkish government signed an extradition agreement with China, but the Turkish Parliament has yet to ratify it. The extradition agreement, if enacted, will pose a significant and additional threat to Uyghurs in Türkiye.
The Turkish government is obligated to respect the international law principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits countries from returning anyone to a place where they would face a real risk of persecution, torture or other serious ill-treatment, a threat to life, or other comparable serious human rights violations. Refoulement is prohibited by three human rights treaties to which Türkiye is a party—the European Convention on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishmentthe 1951 Refugee Convention as well as by customary international law. The prohibition is incorporated into Türkiye’s Law No. 6458 on Foreigners and International Protection.
Because of the widespread and systematic persecution of the Uyghur people, Human Rights Watch regards Uyghurs from Xinjiang outside China as having a well-founded fear of being persecuted should they be forcibly returned.
Human Rights Watch urges Türkiye and all other governments to recognize them as refugees on a prima facie basis. The Turkish government, therefore, should immediately halt all deportations and suspend deportation determinations affecting Uyghurs, including deportations to third countries, where the risk of chain deportations resulting in refoulement is heightened.
The Chinese government should end its crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and halt all forms of transnational repression against Uyghurs abroad.
Other governments, when assessing cases of Uyghurs applying for resettlement from Türkiye or for asylum after having passed through Türkiye, should not consider Türkiye as a safe country. This is the case even if they may hold residence permits or international protection status in Türkiye, as those statuses are no longer secure.
