In a house in southern Kosovo, beneath a portrait of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a two-year-old boy plays with balloons.

The boy cannot be named. He was born on July 15, 2016, the day Turkey was convulsed by a failed coup against the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The boy has been refused Turkish papers ever since, and so has never crossed the borders of Kosovo, where his parents work as teachers for a network of schools affiliated with the US-based cleric whom Erdogan accuses of masterminding the attempted putsch.

Two months ago, the boy’s father, who spoke to BIRN on condition of anonymity, applied for asylum in Kosovo, spooked by the arrest and sudden deportation of six of his countrymen in March in an operation orchestrated by Turkish intelligence officers.