Turkey may deport Iranian asylum seeker who is facing prison, son

Turkish authorities plan to deport hunger-striking Iranian national Maryam Ramezanpour who is seeking asylum in Kutahya, Turkey, to the Islamic Republic.

The Jerusalem Post has secured information from Uzay Bulut, a Turkish political analyst and research fellow for the Philos Project, who is in contact with a close friend of Ramezanpour, who began her hunger strike four days ago to demand her release.

Ramezanpour started her hunger strike four days ago to demand her release and that she not be deported.

Ramezanpour, who was born in 1987 in the city of Baft, the capital of Baft County in Kerman Province, fled Iran because her former husband, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), beat her.

Bulut told Ramezanpour, "if Turkey deports Maryam and her son to Iran, the Iranian regime will take her son and she’ll go to prison.”

Ramezanpour fled to Turkey in 2016 and re-married an Iranian named Poura Ebrahimi who is currently a refugee in Switzerland where he is trying to secure refuge for Maryam and her eight-year-old son, Sayed Arman Hashemi Sheikhshabani, from her first marriage.

According to Bulut, Turkish police detained Maryam five days ago and “put her in the deportation center of the immigration office in the city of Kutahya.” Maryam has not been told why authorities want to deport her. The Post sent numerous queries on Tuesday to Turkish authorities for comment and efforts to reach the Kutahya detention center were not successful.

Post sent numerous queries on Tuesday to Turkish authorities for comment and efforts to reach the Kutahya detention center were not successful.

The Post obtained a copy of Ramezanpour’s 2016 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees asylum application that is still pending.

How is Ramezanpour being treated in the deportation center?

According to Bulut, Ramezanpour told her husband that the “authorities in the deportation center are trying to force her to eat by applying ‘mental torture.’

“The authorities have told her that she needs to end the hunger strike or else she’ll face harsh consequences. Her friend and her husband have told me that her life is in danger. And her son is staying with a friend of hers right now,” Bulut said.

He added that “the immigration authorities tried to deport Maryam to Iran in 2019 as well. The way the authorities in Turkey treat Maryam is completely inhumane, arbitrary and unlawful. Maryam is an asylum seeker and has rights according to international conventions, to which Turkey is also a signatory, such as the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees.

In 2020, the European Union reportedly paid the final installment of a €6 billion fund to Turkey as part of a deal to host refugees. However, because of the close relationship between Ankara and Tehran, Turkey is still an extremely unsafe and unstable country for dissident Iranians in Turkey.”