Turkish citizen Koray Vural was kidnapped in Dushanbe, Turkish media reported. The Tajik authorities have not yet confirmed or denied this information.
The Kronoso website wrote on September 17 in Turkish that Koray Vural was the director of one of the Tajik-Turkish lyceums in Dushanbe and, after the lyceum was closed, was engaged in business. The publication, according to Vural’s relatives, reported that the entrepreneur was detained on the morning of September 16 by a group of 8 people from Turkish restaurant “Özyurt” in Dushanbe.
Media close to Fatthullah Gülen, including Samanyolu TV, reported that Koray Vural was kidnapped by the security services. Vural asked UNHCR to help him find refuge in a safe country and was waiting for a response, the report said. Radio Ozodi does not yet have confirmation of this information.
Sumeira and Yasmin Noor, who introduced themselves on the social network X (Twitter) as the daughters of Koray Vural, asked for help in his release.
The Tajik authorities do not comment on reports of the abduction of Koray Vural. The Kronoso website wrote that 46-year-old Koray Vural was taken from Dushanbe to Istanbul on the morning of September 17 by a Turkish Airlines flight.
Koray Vural, according to relatives, has lived in Tajikistan for the last 28 years. For many years he was the director of one of the Tajik-Turkish lyceums in Dushanbe. After the lyceum closed in 2016, he was engaged in entrepreneurship. Tajik-Turkish lyceums were funded by supporters of Fathullah Gülen. All of them were converted into schools for gifted children, and the Turkish company Shalola that managed them was deprived of its founder status from the 2016-1017 school year.
Koray Vural has an academic degree of Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences. In 2012, in Dushanbe, he defended his candidate’s dissertation on the topic “Pedagogical conditions for the development of the intellectual component of students’ creative abilities in teaching English based on interdisciplinary connections.”
Koray Vural is not the first Turkish citizen to be kidnapped in Tajikistan and taken home. In July of this year, Emsal Koj , the former head of the scientific and cultural organization Dialogue in Dushanbe, was also kidnapped and forcibly taken to Turkey. The Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF), citing the Bold Medya information portal, then stated that Emsal Koca was detained by Turkish authorities for collaborating with the Fathullah Gülen movement, which Ankara accuses of attempting a coup. SCF reported that shortly after Emsal Koca’s disappearance, he was seen in a pre-trial detention center in Erzurum province in northeastern Turkey.
Turkish authorities have issued hundreds of arrest warrants for suspects with links to the movement of Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, whom Ankara accuses of organizing the coup attempt in the summer of 2016.
Turkey’s intelligence service recently reported that more than 100 Gülen supporters were detained and forcibly taken to Turkey by its officers.
Source : OZODI