In a move that has reignited international debate over the treatment of Uyghur ethnic minorities and global asylum policy, Germany has expelled a 21-year-old dual Chinese-Turkish Uyghur asylum seeker to China, where widespread concerns persist that he will face arbitrary detention as part of Beijing’s long-running assimilation campaign in Xinjiang. The man’s mother, Guzelay Adil, who resides in Istanbul with the rest of the family, shared details of the deportation with The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday.
According to Guzelay Adil, her son Arafat Adil had lived with the family in Turkey after the group left China in 2017. He traveled to Germany to pursue international asylum protection, and was put on a deportation flight out of Frankfurt Airport on Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, he had landed in Beijing, where he was immediately taken into custody for interrogation. Guzelay Adil told reporters she has been told Arafat Adil is expected to board a connecting flight to Istanbul around midnight Thursday, but her fear over the outcome remains palpable. “I don’t know what would happen if my son doesn’t return to Turkey,” she said. “I hope to see my child again.”
As of Wednesday evening, neither German federal nor Chinese national authorities had issued an immediate confirmation of the deportation. The Interior Ministry of Hesse, the German state that hosts Frankfurt and oversaw the deportation process, did not respond to AP’s request for additional details. A spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry also declined to comment on the specific case.
The revelation of Arafat Adil’s deportation has drawn sharp criticism and concern from Uyghur rights activists worldwide, who point to Beijing’s eight-year campaign of mass detention, forced assimilation, and alleged forced labor targeting the 11 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minority groups native to Xinjiang. Sporadic unrest across the region over previous decades preceded the launch of the large-scale crackdown in 2017, which has been widely condemned by international governments and human rights organizations.
“It’s heartbreaking to learn of another Uyghur being deported to China,” said Abduweli Ayup, founder of Norway-based Uyghur rights nonprofit Uyghur Hjelp. Ayup emphasized that the decision sends a dangerous precedent from Germany, a leading power within the European Union, that is eroding hope for Uyghur communities both inside China and among the global diaspora.
In response to general questions about Uyghur deportation policy, the German Federal Interior Ministry noted that while there is no formal blanket ban on deporting Uyghurs to China, federal migration authorities operate under a guiding principle that Uyghurs originating from China should as a rule be granted international protection. The case has also raised questions over why German authorities deported Arafat Adil to China rather than Turkey, where he has resided since 2017 and obtained Turkish citizenship earlier this year, holding a valid Turkish passport at the time of his deportation.
German asylum rules classify Turkey as a safe third country of origin, so it remains unclear what grounds Arafat Adil used to file his asylum claim in Germany. This is not the first time Germany has faced backlash over a Uyghur deportation: Last November, a bureaucratic error, as confirmed by government sources to German outlet Der Spiegel, led to the deportation of another Uyghur woman, Reziwanguli Baikeli, to China instead of Turkey. Unlike Arafat Adil’s current situation, Baikeli only spent a short period in Beijing before continuing on to her intended destination of Turkey.
For years, Beijing has exerted diplomatic pressure on governments across the globe to forcibly deport Uyghurs who fled China to escape the mass detention campaign. One of the most high-profile mass deportations took place earlier this year, when Thailand expelled at least 40 Uyghur asylum seekers back to Chinese authorities in February 2025.