Nury Ablikim Turkel (Chinese: 努里·特克尔, pinyin: Nǔlǐ Tèkè'ěr; b. 1970) is an American attorney, public official and human rights advocate based in Washington, D.C. He is a former chair of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, former chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, and former president of the Uyghur American Association. Turkel is the first U.S.-educated Uyghur lawyer and the first Uyghur American to be appointed to a political position in the United States. In 2020, he was included on Time's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. He is the author of No Escape: The True Story of China's Genocide of the Uyghurs.

Early life

Turkel was born in a detention center in Kashgar (Kashi) during the Cultural Revolution. Turkel's grandfather had been associated with Uyghur nationalists and his mother was interned when she was six-month pregnant. Turkel lived in the detention center for the first four months of his life. Turkel's father was a professor and his mother was a businesswoman. He completed his primary and middle school in his homeland. In 1991, he was admitted by Northwest A&F University in Shaanxi Province, China. In 1995, Turkel received his BA and went to the United States for graduate education, never returning to China. He has a MA in International Relations and a JD from American University.

Career

In 2003, Turkel co-founded the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) and has served as its chairman of the board. Between 2004 and 2006, Turkel served as president of the Uyghur American Association. In May 2020, Nury Turkel was appointed a commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) by then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who said of Turkel, "I am confident that he will continue to be a powerful voice for the Uyghur people and for the cause of justice around the world." Turkel resigned from his position as chair of the Uyghur Human Rights Project in May 2024 after accusations of sexual harassment of female activists from 2019, 2021, and 2022. He also finished his term on the USCIRF in May 2024.

Activism

On March 10, 2003, Turkel made a statement to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China on the worsening human rights situation in East Turkestan (Xinjiang) in the wake of the September 11 attacks. In May 2009 he defended a group of 17 Uyghurs who had been held in Guantánamo Bay since 2002. He wrote that Uyghurs have faced discrimination and are not a threat to U.S. communities. After the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, he condemned alleged Chinese oppression of Uyghurs in Ürümqi, saying that "the Uyghurs literally lost anything that they had, even their native language and their own cultural heritage that they had been proudly adhering to. In April 2012, Turkel praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for showing support and sympathy for the Uyghur people surrounding his trip to China in a way that was seen as rare among foreign leaders. However, in July 2020, Turkel criticized Turkey for deporting Uyghur refugees to countries that then deported them to China. Turkey supported the June 2020 signing of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act and a July 2020 United States Department of Commerce announcement sanctioning eleven Chinese companies involved in alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. He called for sanctions on the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) in particular. In an August 2020 interview, Turkel described the camps as one of the worst global humanitarian crises and the largest incarceration of an ethnic minority since the Holocaust. He also urged the U.S. Congress to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which would direct the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to presume that any goods produced in the Uyghur region are the product of forced labor.

Books

Turkel's 2022 book No Escape: The True Story of China's Genocide of the Uyghurs won the 2022 Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing.

Recognition

In September 2020, Turkel was named one of the Time 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2021, Fortune Magazine included him in their "The World's 50 Greatest Leaders" lists. He received the inaugural Notre Dame Prize for Religious Liberty from the Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Initiative in June 2021. He was awarded the Global Soul Award by Jewish World Watch in September 2022.

Personal life

Nury Turkel is a Muslim. In 2007, he married Turkish American interior designer Nazli Bilkic. They have two children. Turkel is proficient in several languages, including Uyghur (his mother tongue), English, Turkish, and Mandarin Chinese.