“Stop the deportation of Mahmut to Turkey!”

Mahmut Tat from Turkey has been in Sweden for seven years. He left his wife and children and fled here in 2015, after he was sentenced to seven years in prison in Turkey for “collaboration with a terrorist organization”.

Now, when Sweden’s government is doing everything to be Erdogan in order to get Sweden to join NATO, he has been arrested and taken to the Migration Agency’s detention center in Mölndal outside Gothenburg and is to be deported back to Turkey.

– The sentence in Turkey is based entirely on testimony from a former PKK member who switched sides and became a police informant. But that is not true, Mahmut had nothing to do with the PKK, says Baris Onay, who also fled to Sweden after being sentenced to prison in Turkey.

It took more than five years before asylum seeker Mahmut Tat received a decision from the Swedish Migration Agency just over a year ago. It was a rejection of the application for a residence permit, based on the verdict in the trial in Turkey, says Baris Onay.

Mahmut Tat, who got cancer during his time in Sweden, appealed to the Swedish Migration Agency to reconsider the decision and made it clear that he did not intend to go back.

He says he doesn’t would face prison in Turkey, to which he, like Baris Onay, certifies that he is innocently sentenced to – beyond the fact that Turkey’s definition of and treatment of “terrorists” – i.e. political opponents – is anything but legal.

Without actively holding back since then, Mahmut Tat has continued to work at a pizzeria in Gothenburg. Until last Tuesday, when the police waited for him when he came from work and drove him first to the station in Hjällbo and then to the detention center in Mölndal.

Unlike Mahmut Tat Baris Onay has received a permanent residence permit since he came to Sweden, and dares to stand up publicly for his friend to be allowed to stay in Sweden.

– Although I don’t know if they will soon come after me too. Now you read about how the new government wants to remove permanent residence permits altogether, and is snarking for Erdogan to get into NATO – which is not at all good for Sweden. It is terrible how the Swedish government acts.

Previously, the Proletarian has told how left-wing activist Hamza Yalcin is one of those on Erdogan’s list of people to be extradited. But Hamza Yalcin, who is also involved in Mahmut Tat’s case, has Swedish citizenship and should not be able to be extradited from Sweden.

– Now Hamza is difficult for them to reach, but someone like Mahmut is easy for the Swedish government to sell out, says Baris Onay.

In Baris Onay’s case, it was open political activity in the editorial office of the left-wing newspaper Odak (Focusing), which made Erdogan’s security forces interested in him. Although the newspaper is legal in Turkey, both Baris Onay and his wife, who also worked at Odak, have twice been sentenced to several years in prison in Kafka-like trials.

After they were both released after spending six months in prison, they fled to Sweden in 2015.

When Baris Onay is on Proletarian editorial and tells about the tours, he calls up a stressed Mahmut Tat in the warehouse. There, they took away Mahmut Tat’s smartphone and gave him an old push-button phone without a camera. His Swedish lawyer has just told him that there is nothing to be done, that the decision has been made and that he will be sent to Turkey any day.

– But that is not true. It is exactly the same type of decision that was around Zinar Bozkurt, who was allowed to stay after the protests. It is clear that the decision can be changed if we push, says Baris Onay.

Zinar Bozkurt is a Kurd as in August – after the then social democratic government in connection with the NATO summit in Madrid signed an agreement with Erdogan to “fight terrorism” – just as Mahmut Tat was to be deported, due to alleged collusion with the PKK. But Zinar Bozkurt, active in the Kurdish leftist party HDP, was granted a temporary residence permit after the protests brought attention and results.

– The deportation of Mahmut must also be stopped. The Swedish government seems willing to be Erdogan’s accomplice. But we urge the Swedish people to refuse to be complicit in this crime.