Nazdar Ecevit came to Germany in 2016 and applied for asylum. Despite the clear political persecution by the Turkish state she was subject to, her asylum application was rejected. She is forced to live in a refugee camp near Kassel. Early on Wednesday morning, the police broke into her accommodation and took her to the deportation center at Frankfurt Airport. She should have been deported on Thursday. Thanks to public pressure, however, her resistance and the interventions of politicians, the imminent deportation was cancelled and Ecevit was brought back to the camp.

Ecevit's story is a story of persecution

Set against the background of Ecevit's story of persecution, the rejection of her request for asylum seems like a gift to the AKP / MHP regime. The young woman has already spent five years and four months in Turkish prisons and was injured while trying to rescue wounded people from the rubble of the city destroyed by the Turkish military during the massacres in Cizre in 2015 and 2016.

Ecevit wrote: “In 2016 I came to Germany illegally. I have been politically active since 2005. Because of my political work in the DTP, BDP and HDP, I was arrested many times. Eventually I was detained in the KCK operations at the beginning of the 'Peace Process' and was imprisoned for 5 years and 4 months. After a lengthy detention process, I was released for lack of evidence, but the court still sentenced me.

Erdoğan tried to intimidate us through the Turkish courts, we weren't criminals, we were just hostages. After I was released from prison, the repression and intimidation continued. I worked for the HDP. During this time the Cizre massacre took place. Young people, women and children were killed in the streets. The peace delegation, to which I also belong, was received by government troops with a hail of bullets. The pictures of it are available. I was injured and survived, but friends next to me died. Our aim was to save civilians, but the government didn't want a single person to survive. The homes of my family and hundreds of other families in Cizre were destroyed and burned. I survived this massacre that the Turkish state committed in front of the whole world. But there was no way I could go on living there. That's why hundreds of people, including myself, had to leave the country."

Naked search by German police

Regarding the asylum procedure in Germany, she said: “Germany ruled that what I experienced was not enough [to grant me asylum] and obviously thinks I should die or go to prison. They have denied me the right to asylum. It is also really worrying to see that Germany implements the practice of naked searches and other degrading practices from the Turkish prisons itself. I have subjected me to this practice here. Although Turkey's stance on human rights is more than clear, Germany wants to hand me over to this state despite this being against international conventions."