MEDIA COVERAGE

Ibrahim Parlak with daughter Livia, 2005.

MAJOR STORIES

 

"'...It’s not a permanent solution, but it is a solution that will give some stability to this situation, to be sure.'”

- ABC, Small victory for Berrien County cafe owner facing deportation | August 17, 2016

 

"At a packed gathering at Parlak's Cafe Gulistan, Republican Congressman Fred Upton outlined a new effort to request recognition that Parlak would face torture if he was returned to his native Turkey."

- NBC, 'His Life Would Be in Jeopardy': Supporters Rally to Stop Deportation of Kurdish Immigrant | January 21, 2016

 

"The Department of Homeland Security has once again threatened Ibrahim Parlak with deportation, and has ordered him to apply for residency to some other country. He fears he’ll be returned to Turkey, where the increasing crackdown on Kurdish communities has killed hundreds and displaced 200,000 people from their homes."

- Democracy Now!, Will U.S. Deport Kurdish Activist Ibrahim Parlak Back to Turkey Where He Was Jailed & Tortured? | January 6, 2016

 

"Turkey... has escalated its military assault on the Kurds, and has imposed harsh curfews and intense censorship of any dissent. Many are concerned of the grave danger that Parlak faces if he is deported to Turkey. His lawyer, Rob Carpenter, told us that Parlak has received 'private Facebook threats of modes of torture that were never made public before, indicating it must be one of several guards who tortured him during those seventeen months before he fled to the United States.'"

- Democracy Now!, An Act of Terror: Deporting a Kurdish Activist Back to Turkey | January 7, 2016

 

"In a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Parlak said that although he was very happy to hear that his case would be stayed for three months, he did not yet feel safe. 'This is still a long way from the end,' he said. 'It’s just a little more time to try to figure it out.'"

- The New York Times, Conflict Between Turkey and Kurds Clouds the Life of a Michigan Cafe Owner | December 23, 2015

 

"The rise of the Islamic State, and its recruitment of Americans, has renewed our perception of a threat that is real and mutating, and we tolerate the fact that, to prevent a guilty person from slipping through, some unnamed number of innocents will be accused unfairly. But, in order to sustain that consensus, we must acknowledge the costs of those mistakes, as measured in damage to some of our most essential beliefs: in the presumption of innocence, fair procedures, individual culpability, and the right to free speech. And, when we err, it is up to us to correct it."

- The New Yorker, The Wasteful Case Against Ibrahim Parlak | October 28, 2015

 

"Ibrahim has continued to fight against what another federal judge has described as 'a sad remnant of an era of paranoid, overzealous, error-riddled and misguided anti-terrorism and immigration enforcement that has now gone by the wayside.'"

- Huffington Post, In the Name of Decency... | October 21, 2015

 

"For now, Parlak can only keep trying to fight his deportation. 'We'll continue working even harder so we can stop this madness once and for all,' he said. 'This is my country, and I'm not gonna let anyone take that away from me.'"

- Chicago Tribune, Restaurant owner faces deportation to Turkey after 24 years: 'It's not going to be a welcoming party' | December 24, 2015

 

"David Duis, the local police officer who testified at an earlier hearing, told me that he plans to visit Parlak in jail. 'There's a big difference between law and justice,' he said. 'The law says some things can be done, and justice is what's the right thing to do. I think in this situation, the law may say we can deport him, but I don't think it's justice.'"

- The New York Times Magazine, The Politics of Ibrahim Parlak | March 20, 2005