“There is a warrant out for my arrest,” Turkish Muslim student Turku Avci told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
Aspiring journalist Avci moved to Israel from Turkey five years ago to study at the Hebrew University. Last week, Instagram influencer Tal Oran, who goes by the username Tal the Traveler, uploaded a video in which he asked Avci if she, a Turkish Muslim woman, was a Zionist.
Her response was: “Yes, of course.”
That night, the video went viral on Turkish media and social media. Thousands of comments from Turks called for her arrest and assassination. Others recommended that Turkey’s National Security Service investigate Avci.
“I knew there would be some comments about [the video], but for 48 hours the only thing they were talking about was me,” she told the Post.
At first, Avci was not too worried, believing this would all die down, but then people on social media and even journalists, such as one from the news outlet TRT, started sharing pictures of her parents, their ID numbers, and other personal information they had somehow found.
“Then I started worrying a lot,” Avci said.
The TRT journalist wrote conspiracy theories about Avci, proposing, for instance, that she was an Israeli agent, and a journalist at a daily Turkish newspaper, Yeni Safak, claimed her brother had threatened him.
“He tried to dehumanize me, and, like, provoke people,” Avci said of that reporter. “And then the other random social media people found out my ID, everything, and my Turkish number, and it’s all over social media. And I was getting thousands of messages on my social media account.”
After a while, the number of messages became overwhelming. People were threatening her with rape and death. “They launched what could only be described as a coordinated jihadist-style lynch campaign,” she said.
The Post found 122,000 results for her name on Google in the past week alone.
She is unsure how safe she is in Israel, given that people in Turkey said they contacted their Palestinian friends to hunt her down and harm her.
Then, on Thursday last week, Avci learned that there is an arrest warrant in Turkey in her name. She is now unable to go back to Turkey, or even go to its embassy in Israel, and believes that if she sets foot in Turkey, she would be killed.
Interestingly, however, her lawyer in Turkey was unable to review the file for the arrest warrant and therefore cannot see its details or the reason for the warrant. Avci had, following a much less intense and much briefer incident with the media last year, sought a lawyer and passed him her power of attorney.
To Avci and her lawyer, the inability to access the information suggests that state security is in charge of the matter, as a police warrant would have been sent to her lawyer first rather than kept secret.
“Only the prosecutor knows,” she said.
Avci's family receiving threats
Avci’s parents had to change their location for a week and have been receiving threats. “It’s really difficult for them because they have nothing to do with this. I’m really upset that I involved my family in this, and if something happens, it’s not something I can ever forgive myself for, and it’s just for nothing, you know, we didn’t do anything wrong as a family, nothing,” she said.
“On the other hand, I don’t have to be afraid anymore about saying what I want,” Avci noted.
Although she cannot return to Turkey, her options in Israel are also limited. She came to study at the Hebrew University on a privately funded scholarship she found for herself. However, the donors no longer wanted to support her after October 7, and she also cannot work in Israel under her student visa. Avci therefore had to move out of her dorms and has since been couch-surfing, with no money to rent her own place.
Her visa will end in March, at which point Avci is considering seeking political asylum in Israel. However, it is a difficult and long process.
Avci's thoughts on Turkey following her persecution
What are her views towards Turkey now, given that the country has seemingly turned against her?
“I love Turkey, but like, how it turned out now is unbelievable. It’s like we are going to be Iran and Iran is going to be Turkey, like it was 20 years ago,” she answered.
“Everything I’ve been through, and how they attack a girl who doesn’t think like them, the same attacks happen to people who support the LGBTQ community,” Avci said. “There is no freedom of speech. Even when someone talks about Kurds in Syria, they get called a traitor.”
Avci said that a lot changed after October 7. Prior to this, relations with Israel seemed better, and there were many Israeli tourists. Now, she says antisemitism has become “legal.”
Of course, this whole ordeal was sparked by Avci saying she was a Zionist, but she said she did not really start using the word to define herself until after October 7.
In her first year at Hebrew University, she took courses about Zionism and met people with diverse views, but it was after October 7 that she said it became “a strong statement” for her.
Avci has never felt unwelcome in Israel. She has lived with religious and secular Jewish families, and she has friends from different walks of life. “I didn’t see any kind of discrimination at all,” she said. “But in my country, just because I said I’m a Zionist, I’m an outsider.”
“Right now, it’s the trolls of [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan who decide who is going to get arrested. There is no law, there’s no protection for my family, as there needs to be a physical attack before you can seek protection.”
Despite everything that has happened, Avci does not regret coming to Israel. “I love Israel,” she said. “I can see myself living here and doing journalism.”