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US: Kurdish immigrant Ibrahim Parlak's
brother deported to Turkey
15.5.2007 |
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May
15, 2007
DETROIT, -- A brother of a Kurdish immigrant
whom U.S. authorities are trying to deport on
terrorism charges was placed aboard a plane by
federal agents Monday for deportation to Turkey, a
family spokesman says.
Huseyin Parlak, a brother of Ibrahim Parlak, called
relatives from his cell phone while sitting with two
U.S. Customs agents on the plane at Detroit
Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, Martin Dzuris said.
Huseyin Parlak came to the U.S. in 1998 on a student
visa, which expired. In 2005, a U.S. Immigration
Court denied his request for political asylum and
ordered him deported. Customs officials said he lost
his last appeal Friday.
Huseyin Parlak, who lived with his brother Ibrahim
Parlak in Harbert, Michigan, near the Indiana
border, reported Monday for a prearranged meeting
with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials
in Detroit, Dzuris said.
"They arrested him and put him on a plane," Dzuris
said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Greg
Palmore said Monday he could not confirm that
Huseyin Parlak was deported.
Federal officials have said their effort to deport
Huseyin Parlak was not linked to his brother's case.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is trying
to deport Ibrahim Parlak, who was granted asylum in
1992, on terrorism charges because of previous ties
to the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey.
The U.S. Department of State classified the party,
known as the PKK, as a terrorist group in 1997.
Homeland Security officials say Ibrahim Parlak never
disclosed critical details about his separatist
activities in his original asylum application and
omitted his conviction in Turkey from subsequent
immigration forms.
He has denied any involvement in violent activities.
In November 2005, he lost an appeal of his
deportation order. In August 2006, his lawyers filed
a petition with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals, which is expected to take up the matter
later this year.
The brothers lived in Harbert, near the Indiana
line.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, more
than 30,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish PKK
guerrillas have been killed since 1984 when the PKK
took up arms for self-rule in the country's mainly
Kurdish southeast of Turkey.
AP
** The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan ( Kurdistan-Turkey)
wikipedia
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