UK Parliament Report: Transnational Repression

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Executive Summary – UK Parliament Exposes Turkey’s Transnational Repression

The UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights has delivered a damning verdict on Turkey’s systematic abuse of international policing and legal mechanisms to hunt down critics and dissidents abroad. The report places Turkey among the worst offenders—alongside China and Russia—in exploiting INTERPOL’s Red Notice system and other tools to pursue political opponents under the guise of law enforcement.

Since the failed coup attempt of 2016, President Erdoğan’s government has escalated a relentless global campaign of intimidation, abduction, and forced returns, targeting members of the Hizmet Movement and other dissenting voices. Testimony presented to the Committee details Turkey’s misuse of INTERPOL’s Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database to strand or entrap opponents, coordinated illegal renditions with complicit regimes, and espionage operations against diaspora communities in the UK.

This campaign has seen over 118 documented abductions since 2016, many involving flagrant violations of international law and human rights norms. Victims face harassment, surveillance, threats to family members, and destruction of livelihoods—all designed to instill fear and silence opposition. Such tactics are not only an attack on individuals but an assault on democratic values and the rule of law.

The Committee calls for urgent international action, pressing the UK Government to confront INTERPOL’s failures, call out repeat abusers like Turkey, and establish mechanisms to protect those targeted by politically motivated notices. Without such measures, authoritarian regimes will continue to weaponize global policing to extend their repression far beyond their borders.