Gülizar Taşdemir (42), rumored by the pro-government media to have been a former “aide” in the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), was taken into police custody at İstanbul Atatürk Airport on Thursday after Norway twice rejected her application for asylum and extradited her to Turkey, the Artı Gerçek news website reported.
Taşdemir applied for asylum in Norway on June 7, 2015, but the country rejected the application. Then Taşdemir went to Germany to make another application, but Germany sent her back to Norway in line with the Dublin Regulation between European countries for determining which country is responsible for asylum seekers.
However, Norway again rejected her application.
According to the Hürriyet daily, a detention warrant was issued by the Doğubeyazıt Public Prosecutor’s Office in 2013 on accusations of “membership in a terrorist organization.”
Police sources told Hürriyet she was carrying photos taken with outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan.
The pro-government media also depicted her as a “close aide” of PKK executive Duran Kalkan.
She had been staying in the Makhmur camp in northern Iraq, a refugee settlement monitored by the United Nations, and decided to move to Norway after increasing Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) activity near the camp.
Her extradition was protested in Oslo on Thursday by a group of Kurds who said Taşdemir has cancer and needs urgent treatment, the Evrensel daily reported.
A letter was also sent to the Norwegian Foreign Ministry on behalf of Kurdish organizations in the country urging a follow-up to Taşdemir’s case in Turkey.
According to Norwegian news agency NTB, 245 Turkish citizens have applied for asylum so far this year, adding that most of them were followers of the Gülen movement.