ABSTRACT
Nury Turkel will present his views of China’s historical colonial relationship with Xinjiang; its claim of Uyghur terrorism that has justified China’s mass internment, surveillance, and forced labor; and how the West, and the U.S. in particular, must deal with the CCP’s cultural genocide and human rights violations.
BIOGRAPHY
Nury Turkel is the first U.S.-educated Uyghur-American lawyer and human rights advocate. He was born in a re-education camp at the height of China’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution and spent the first several months of his life in detention with his mother. He came to the United States in 1995 as a student and was granted asylum in 1998.
Turkel received an M.A. in International Relations and a J.D. from the American University in Washington, DC. As an attorney, he specializes in regulatory compliance, federal investigation and enforcement, anti-bribery, legislative advocacy, and immigration. In addition to his professional career, Turkel has devoted his time and energy to promoting Uyghur human rights and supporting American and universal democratic norms.
In May 2020, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appointed Turkel as a Commissioner to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). In September 2020, Turkel was named one of the TIME 100 Most Influential People in the World.
Turkel currently serves as the Chairman of the Board for the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), which he co-founded in 2003. He also served as the president of the Uyghur American Association, where he led efforts to raise the profile of the Uyghur people in the United States, including organizing and leading the campaign that achieved the March 2005 release of a renowned Uyghur prisoner of conscience, Ms. Rebiya Kadeer. Since 2011, he has successfully represented a substantial number of Uyghur political refugees with their asylum applications in the United States.
In addition to his advocacy work in the United States, Turkel has engaged in policy and legislative advocacy in the European Union and the Australian Parliament. He serves as a legal and policy adviser to the past and present presidents of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), an organization that serves as an umbrella organization for the Uyghur community and advocacy groups promoting universal human rights. Turkel successfully represented Dolkun Isa, WUC’s current president, to restore his travel privileges to the United States. He has also assisted Uyghur refugees in the United States, Europe, and Turkey.
Turkel has published policy-oriented commentaries and op-eds in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, Foreign Policy, The Independent, The Hill, and The Diplomat. Turkel has spoken at numerous policy forums, academic institutes, and human rights conferences, regarding the mass internment of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in China. He has appeared on major media outlets including CNN, BBC, Fox News, Al Jazeera, Australian ABC, Sky News, France 24, and TRT World.
He has testified before Congress, including most recently before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China in October 2019, speaking about Uyghur internment camps, and advocating a legislative response to China’s atrocities. Many of his recommendations have been incorporated into U.S. laws and pending bills relating to Uyghurs and China in Congress, including the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 (Public Law 116-145).
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