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HARBERT -- Follow the
Red Arrow Highway up the lip of Lake Michigan, past
the diners and the u-pick-'em blueberry patches, and
you will find the place where for the last decade a
Turkish immigrant has run a cafe with exotic aromas
in the kitchen and grainy photos on the wall of a
faraway land he calls Kurdistan.
Or so it was for owner Ibrahim Parlak until July 29,
when a phone call from the FBI revived an old life
he thought he had left behind and unraveled the new
one he had built.
The tale of how this popular small-town restaurant
owner became ensnared in the global war on terror is
fueling debate beyond this corner of southwest
Michigan, a weekend home to many Chicagoans, and
crystallizing some of the post-Sept. 11 era's most
polarizing questions about the balance of individual
rights and security. His case illustrates how the
past three years have refocused American suspicions
and sympathies, shaping the way the United States
treats those who arrive seeking refuge.
"It never crossed my mind that after all those
years, this could happen," said Parlak, owner of
Cafe Gulistan and now inmate No. 194847 at the
Calhoun County Jail in Battle Creek, Mich., accused
of lying to the U.S. government about his criminal
history and engaging in terrorist activities 17
years ago in Turkey. "It doesn't make any sense to
me."
"(I)t shows the way our traditional American rights
and freedoms are being compromised," said film
critic Roger Ebert, a cafe regular who vacations in
the area. "This man was granted political asylum in
America for the same reasons he is now threatened
with deportation."
U.S. immigration officials contend that Parlak
should be denied citizenship and deported. They
accuse him of disguising his role in the killing of
two Turkish border guards in 1987 and call him a
terrorist for his links at that time with the PKK,
an armed Kurdish resistance group opposed to the
Turkish government's treatment of ethnic Kurds. They
were alerted to his case in March by a legal notice
from the Turkish government.
"I'm sure he's a great host and he makes a great
meal, very gracious in the community, but he is in
fact a murderer," said Robin Baker, Detroit field
office director for the Department of Homeland
Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Parlak and his supporters dispute that.
He maintains his innocence despite his conviction in
a Turkish court. He said he abandoned his ties to
the PKK a decade before the organization was added
to the U.S. list of terror groups and that he
truthfully disclosed his past to U.S. immigration
authorities who reviewed his claims of torture in
Turkish jails and granted him asylum in 1992.
His arrest has ignited an outcry from local
residents who call him a pillar of their tiny
community. More than 50 supporters rented a bus to
attend a court hearing in Detroit, and now "Free
Ibrahim" roadside signs beside farms and beach
cottages stand in testament to the clash of security
and civil liberties unfolding deep in the American
heartland.
Civil liberties advocates say the case is part of a
trend in which Muslim immigrants have been
increasingly subject to aggressive immigration
cases.
"In general what we're seeing is that immigrants who
are Islamic are under more scrutiny," said Judy
Rabinowitz, senior staff counsel of the ACLU
Immigrants' Rights Project in New York. "So if there
are technical immigration violations, (authorities)
are much more likely to be aggressive in pursuing
proceedings, not authorizing their releases, and in
some cases bringing criminal prosecutions."
Last month an immigration judge ordered Parlak held
without bail. Parlak now spends his days in an
orange prison uniform, while his supporters try to
dissuade him from selling the cafe to pay for legal
costs.
The path that led Parlak to rural Michigan began on
a family farm near the southern Turkish city of
Gazientep, where Turkish Kurds had long battled the
government in hopes of establishing an independent
state.
As a student leader at 16, Parlak was arrested by
Turkish police and, he later told U.S. immigration
officials, was tortured, beaten and shocked with
electric current for 35 days.
After his release, Parlak said, he was harassed by
police and in 1980 he left for Germany.
Traveling in Europe over the next seven years, he
grew more involved with the Kurdish nationalist
movement and visited Syria to meet with the Kurdish
Workers' Party, or PKK, now known as Kongra-gel.
"I knew some PKK people in Europe," Parlak said in
interviews conducted by phone and at the jail. "They
were leading pretty much everything. If you wanted
to do something for (the) Kurdish, somehow you are
going to end up getting involved with them."
Parlak said he next visited a PKK camp in Lebanon
and stayed five or six months, studying Kurdish
history and culture and doing military-type
training. "How to hide, how to camouflage, how to
carry a gun, how to self defend," he said.
Turkey declined to extend his passport. He returned
to Syria, and one night in May 1987 he set off with
a half-dozen other Kurds in an attempt to sneak
across the Syrian-Turkish border, he said.
"Although we had everything set, two (Turkish)
soldiers who were not supposed to be there just
happened to walk by," Parlak said. "They noticed and
started shooting. When the shooting started, a fight
broke out, (and) those two soldiers were killed."
U.S. officials say he later confessed to the
killing. Parlak denies that, saying he has
maintained throughout that he carried only an
unloaded gun and never fired a shot.
He successfully crossed the border weeks later but
was soon arrested and convicted for his role in the
border clash. He received a life sentence, later
reduced, and was released after a year and a half.
He sought refuge in the United States, settling in
Chicago in 1991. He was granted asylum in July 1992
after describing his past dealings with the PKK, his
conviction and the torture he says he suffered in
custody, according to a copy of his application.
That summer he also met Michele Gazzolo, who later
gave birth to their daughter, Livia, now 7. They
never married but remain close and share the raising
of their child. They spent weekends in Harbert; he
liked the area and settled, applying for a green
card and finding work as a truck-stop cook in nearby
New Buffalo.
In September 1994, he received his green card. The
same year, he paid $16,000 for a low-slung cafe and
tagged it with a Kurdish word that could capture the
homeland he loved and the simple new life he had
found in America: Gulistan. Paradise.
At the time, "I said OK, that part of the life is
behind me," he recalled. "I'm here for a new life."
But early this year, something changed. Without
explanation, the Turkish government informed Parlak
and the United States that it had resentenced him
for the 1987 shooting, though it did not seek his
extradition or ask him to serve more time.
Alerted by that notice, the U.S. government reopened
his case and concluded that Parlak "omitted material
facts" in his green card and citizenship
applications, said Robin Baker, Detroit field office
director for the Department of Homeland Security's
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Parlak was
arrested, charged with fraud and held as an
aggravated felon.
Parlak acknowledges that his green card and
citizenship applications were marked incorrectly to
say he had never been convicted of a crime but he
cites a written statement from his former lawyer
accepting responsibility for those errors.
Parlak said he ended his association with the PKK in
1987. Ten years later, the group was added to the
U.S. State Department list of designated foreign
terrorist organizations for the "urban terrorism" it
adopted "in the early 1990s."
Still, Baker said, Parlak's history with the PKK is
only part of the case against him.
"The fact that he is a member of a terrorist
organization is certainly relevant, but what is more
relevant is that he is in the country in violation
of immigration law," Baker said.
The United States has not contacted Turkish
authorities about the latest proceedings, but Baker
said he expects that, if ordered to be deported,
Parlak would probably be returned to Turkey.
Parlak's next scheduled hearing is Oct. 26. Until
then, his supporters will continue to publicize his
case and criticize an arrest they say they cannot
comprehend.
"This country is founded on refugees from all over
the world persecuted on religious and political
grounds," said Parlak's friend, Martin Dzuris, who
fled communist Czechoslovakia. "You come over here
looking for protection, and they are saying, 'OK,
we'll protect you,' and then suddenly they are going
to change their minds?"
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