5.  The applicants were born in 1976, 1972, 1976, 1970 and 1976 respectively. They are currently detained in Turkey.
6.  The applicants were secondary school teachers in a private chain of schools in Moldova called Orizont, which has been in operation since 1993.
7.  Mr Yasin Ozdil had lived in Moldova since 2015 with his wife and their two minor children. Mr Mujdat Celebi had lived in Moldova since 2014 with his wife and their three minor children. Mr Riza Dogan had lived in Moldova since 1993 with his wife and their two minor children, who are Moldovan citizens. Mr Sedat Hasan Karacaoglu had lived in Moldova since 1998 with his wife. Mr Mehmet Feridun Tufekci had lived in Moldova since 1993 together with his Moldovan wife and their two minor children, who are Moldovan citizens. All the applicants had valid residence permits for Moldova.
8.  During the night of 15 to 16 July 2016 a group of members of the Turkish armed forces calling themselves the “Peace at Home Council” attempted to carry out a military coup aimed at overthrowing the democratically elected parliament, government and President of Turkey. The day after the attempted military coup, the national authorities blamed the network linked to Fetullah Gülen, a Turkish citizen living in Pennsylvania (United States of America) and considered to be the leader of a terrorist organisation known as FETÖ/PDY (“Gülenist Terror Organisation/Parallel State Structure”). Several criminal investigations were subsequently initiated by the appropriate prosecuting authorities in relation to suspected members of that organisation. In connection with the above events, the Turkish ambassador to Moldova accused the Orizont schools of ties to that movement and accused the teachers in those schools of terrorism.
9.  In May 2017 the Turkish Prime Minister visited Moldova and requested from his Moldovan counterpart the shutdown of the Orizont schools.
10.  On 31 March 2018 the principal of the Chişinău-based Orizont secondary school was arrested at Chişinău Airport and questioned for seven hours by the Moldovan secret service concerning allegations of supporting terrorist organisations. A criminal investigation was initiated against him and the preventive measure of a bar on leaving the country for ten days was imposed.
11.  In connection with the above events, on 6 April 2018 all the applicants applied to the Moldovan Bureau for Migration and Asylum (“the BMA”) for asylum. They sought to obtain refugee status in Moldova because they feared reprisals in their country of origin, Turkey, on the grounds of their political views.
12.  On 10 April 2018 the charges against the principal of the Chişinău Orizont secondary school were dropped and the investigation was discontinued. On 5 May 2018 the applicants wrote to the competent authorities in Moldova and asked for information on whether there were any pending criminal investigations concerning them. In a letter dated 13 June 2018 the prosecutor’s office specialising in organised crime wrote to the applicants, stating that there were no pending criminal investigations involving them. A similar letter was received by the applicants on 31 July 2018 from the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office.
13.  On 6 September 2018 in the morning, seven teachers from the Orizont schools – among them the applicants – were arrested in their homes or on their way to work by individuals wearing plain clothes and taken to an unknown destination. Later in the day the Moldovan secret service issued several statements concerning a large anti-terrorist operation which had taken place that day, during which seven foreign nationals suspected of ties to an Islamist organisation had been arrested and removed from Moldova in cooperation with secret services from other countries.
14.  On the same day the Turkish media reported that the Turkish secret service had conducted a successful operation in Moldova, during which seven members of the Fethullah Gülen movement had been arrested.
15.  On 6 September 2018 some of the members of the applicants’ families, their colleagues from the schools and human rights defenders spent the day at the airport in the hope of stopping the applicants’ deportation to Turkey. They expected the applicants to be taken to Turkey by the scheduled flight leaving later in the day.
16.  The fate of the applicants, and even whether they were still in Moldova, remained unknown to their families for several weeks. The Moldovan authorities refrained from communicating any information about them either to their families or to the press.
17.  It appeared later that on the very morning of their arrest the applicants were taken directly to Chişinău Airport, where an aeroplane chartered for that purpose was waiting for them and took them immediately to Turkey.
18.  On 7 September 2018, the head of the BMA, O.P., stated in an interview that the authority had not been involved in the case of the seven Orizont teachers and that the procedure for declaring them undesirable and removing them from Moldova had not been carried out by the BMA.
19.  Several days after the applicants’ arrest, their families received letters from the BMA containing decisions dated 4 September 2018 in which the applicants’ applications for asylum were rejected. The decisions contained a thorough analysis of the manner in which the Gülen movement followers had been treated in Turkey and concluded that the applicants’ fear of reprisals at the hands of the Turkish authorities were justified. In particular, the BMA found that the Turkish authorities had committed acts of harassment, threatening, arbitrary detentions and other serious human rights violations in respect of opposition leaders and members of the Gülen movement. The BMA concluded that the applicants fulfilled the legal requirements to be granted asylum in Moldova. Nevertheless, their applications were rejected on the basis of a classified note received from the Moldovan secret service, according to which the applicants presented a threat to national security. The decisions did not give any details as to the content of the note, not even the date on which it had been issued. The applicants were given fifteen days to leave the country and they were entitled to challenge the decisions within thirty days. The letters accompanying the decisions were posted on 7 and 10 September 2018 and were signed by the head of the BMA, O.P.
20.  Several days after the applicants’ arrest and transfer to Turkey their families also received from the BMA decisions dated 5 September 2018, banning the applicants from entering Moldovan territory for a period of five years and ordering their expulsion under supervision from Moldova by the BMA in accordance with section 58 of the Status of Aliens Act (see paragraph 27 below). The letters accompanying the decisions were also signed by the head of the BMA, O.P.
21.  On different dates in September and October 2018 the applicants’ representative, who had received powers of attorney from their wives, contested the above decisions in court. However, their actions were dismissed on the grounds that the powers of attorney had not been signed by the applicants themselves. The court decisions were challenged before the hierarchically superior court but without any success.
22.  On 15 October 2018 the European Parliament made public a report on the implementation of the EU Association Agreement with Moldova (2017/2281(INI)). In its report, the European Parliament issued a statement in which it expressed itself in the following terms on the manner in which the applicants had been transferred from Turkey:
“29. Strongly condemns the recent extradition/abduction of Turkish citizens to Turkey due to their alleged links to the Gülen movement, in violation of the rule of law and basic human rights; urges the Moldovan authorities to ensure that any extradition requests coming from third countries are processed in a transparent manner while following judicial procedures fully in line with European principles and standards...”
23.  Amnesty International also made a statement in relation to the deportation of the seven Orizont teachers to Turkey. On 6 September 2018 the organisation’s director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia made the following statement in relation to the applicants’ transfer to Turkey:
“The Moldovan authorities didn’t just violate these individuals’ rights once by deporting them - they put them on a fast-track to further human rights violations such as an unfair trial. ... The latest arrests in Moldova follow the pattern of political reprisals against Turkish nationals living abroad by the increasingly repressive government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. ... Forcible return of those seeking protection in Moldova is a flagrant violation of Moldova’s international human rights obligations. The state authorities must immediately hold to account those responsible for the arbitrary detention and expulsion of the Turkish nationals.”