Mehmet Çakaş, a Kurdish activist convicted of spreading propaganda for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) between 2019 and 2021, faces possible deportation before the end of his sentence despite a 2023 German federal justice ministry ruling that returning him to Turkey would expose him to political persecution.
The justice ministry’s decision had followed Turkey’s issuance of an international arrest warrant, which Germany refused to enforce on the grounds that Çakaş was at threat for an aggravated life sentence.
The PKK, a militant and political organization founded in 1978, is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the European Union alike. According to the International Crisis Group, a ceasefire between Turkey and the PKK broke down in 2015, but the group declared its intention to disarm and disband as part of a new still-ongoing peace process in February 2025.
The insurgency has claimed thousands of lives since its founding, with the PKK attacking military and civilian targets, and the Turkish state widely accused of widespread human rights abuses in its counterinsurgency efforts.
In April 2024, Çakaş was sentenced to a 30-month prison sentence for supporting the PKK, a conviction which has now been suspended as the German government seeks to deport him. Later, his most recent asylum application- one of several he has filed- was rejected by authorities, citing issues relating to his right to reside in Germany- but making no mention of earlier rulings that blocked his deportation.
The German government also insists that there has been no significant change in Çakaş’s circumstances across his asylum applications that would warrant reconsidering its original decision. However, Lukas Bastisch, a lawyer representing Çakaş, disputed this in comments to German newspaper taz.
Bastisch argues that the Turkish government has likely been monitoring the case, and that the heightened attention further endangers his client. Meanwhile, the chief prosecutor in the Lower Saxony municipality of Celle has suspended Çakaş’s prison sentence to facilitate his deportation by the end of August, even as he appeals his removal in two separate courts.
The administrative court in Lüneberg is expected to rule on Çakaş’s case by September 8, while he also awaits a decision from the federal constitutional court, for which no date has been set. The activist was due to be deported on August 28, but the administrative court has issued an order to temporarily halt the deportation until a final ruling is issued.
As the courts deliberate, support for the activist has grown: a petition calling for his deportation to be halted has gathered 2,000 signatures, and an open letter– signed by several prominent Germans- has also been sent to Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, Foreign Minister Johann Wadepuhl, and Lower Saxony Premier Olaf Lies.
Its signatories warn that deporting Çakaş to Turkey would expose him to “persecution, an unfair judicial process, and even torture.”
Cansu Özdemir, foreign affairs spokesperson for the Left party and one of the letter’s endorsers, expressed concern while in conversation with taz that deporting Çakaş would establish a precedent for the extradition of Kurdish and other opposition activists to Turkey.
The federal and Lower Saxony interior ministries, along with the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, have repeatedly declined to comment, stating that they do not discuss individual cases.
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Source: Jiyan Elma via X.
