Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has exerted diplomatic pressure on countries around the world to extradite alleged ‘Gulenists’ so they can be put on trial for subversion.

After being deported from Moldova, Mujdat Celebi was sentenced to nine years behind bars by a Turkish court in March 2019.

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Celebi had lived in Moldova for more than five years before he was deported. He taught at the Durlesti branch of the private high-school chain Orizont, where he also worked as the financial director.

The family had hoped to “live in Moldova forever; it didn’t matter if it was a poor and small country”, his wife Sevgi told BIRN by email. “All of us, we learned Romanian or were trying to learn… We wanted to continue living there.”

They didn’t live in the US for long, and have now resettled in Canada.

“It’s so hard to move with three children to a new place without my husband, trying to learn English more, move to a new house, a new life, a new place. It was very hard and I feel very sad about it,” she explained.

She said that after the deportation, her daughter couldn’t sleep alone and had to take sedatives.

“She is 13 years old but has a lot of white hair because of the stress she endured,” she said.

Talking about the nine-year sentence that her husband was given in Turkey, she said that the family hopes that his appeal to a Turkish court will be successful, or that he will be released after serving five or six years.