Vildan Seçkiner was looking forward to seeing the sights of St Petersburg during her first trip to Russia. Instead, the 32-year-old was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for 16 hours, threatened, and deported. Her crime: holding Turkish citizenship.
Seçkiner, a post-doctoral researcher who lives in Romania, had also planned to give a lecture to a small group of students during her visit, but was stopped at passport control and taken to a holding room. Police told her she could not enter Russia as she did not have a hotel booked, but made it clear the real reason was her Turkish passport.
“When they took me to the transit area, there were many Turkish citizens there also being deported. Some had been waiting for 48 hours. Many of them were workers, who had personal belongings in Moscow and didn’t know how they were going to get them back. Others had Russian wives or girlfriends they were planning to visit,” Seçkiner told the Guardian from Bucharest. » | Shaun Walker in Moscow | Wednesday, December 2, 2015
