How Moldova’s Secret Service Forced a Turkish Family to Flee

Soon the pressure became too much for her to bear, and she decided to pack her bags and get the children out of the country quickly. "After 18 days, we left Moldova and went to America - Dallas," she said.

Mujdat Celebi was one of seven Turkish professors who were kidnapped in a joint operation by the Moldovan and Turkish secret services and illegally deported to Turkey on the same day in September 2018.

All of them were accused of financing terrorism and having links to the movement led by the exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, which is considered by the Ankara authorities to be a terrorist organisation responsible for an attempted coup in Turkey in July 2016.

The Moldovan president Igor Dodon meets his Turkish counterpart Recep Erdogan. Photo: Igor Dodon`s Facebook Page

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has exerted diplomatic pressure on countries around the world to extradite alleged 'Gulenists' so they can be put on trial for subversion.

After being deported from Moldova, Mujdat Celebi was sentenced to nine years behind bars by a Turkish court in March 2019.

Moldovan security service chief put on trial

Celebi had lived in Moldova for more than five years before he was deported. He taught at the Durlesti branch of the private high-school chain Orizont, where he also worked as the financial director.

The family had hoped to "live in Moldova forever; it didn't matter if it was a poor and small country", his wife Sevgi told BIRN by email. "All of us, we learned Romanian or were trying to learn… We wanted to continue living there."

They didn't live in the US for long, and have now resettled in Canada.

"It's so hard to move with three children to a new place without my husband...

Continue reading on: