The disappearance of a former Belarusian diplomat in Turkey last week has sparked fears that Minsk may have organized his abduction.
Anatol Kotau went missing on August 21, shortly after landing in Istanbul from Warsaw, where he lives in exile.
According to Turkish news agency IHA, he arrived at 1:49 p.m. and boarded a domestic flight to Trabzon. From there, he left Turkish waters on a vessel at 6:35 p.m., it reported, adding that all contact with him ceased hours later.
The 44-year-old had been due to return to Warsaw on August 24. His family has filed a missing person's report with Turkish police.
An exiled group of former Belarusian security officers, BELPOL, has warned that Turkey is a dangerous place for opponents of the authorities in Minsk. Last year, Kotau was tried in absentia and sentenced to 12 years in prison on charges of "extremism" and "conspiracy."
BELPOL representative Uladzimer Zhihar told Current Time that Belarusian security services "maintain close ties with Turkish counterparts."
"If a politically active Belarusian with a conviction, even in absentia, enters Turkey, local services may not arrest him immediately. But information about his arrival will be relayed to Minsk," he said.
Kotau works for the Belarusian Sport Solidarity Foundation (BSSF), a group supporting Belarusian activists and dissidents abroad.
BSSF Executive Director Alyaksandr Apeykin told RFE/RL's Belarus Service that it is unlikely that Turkish authorities officially deported Kotau.
"Such a process requires lawyers, paperwork, and public oversight, which could have stopped it. What seems more plausible is informal extradition; he may have been detained and forcibly removed," Apeykin said.
"If this were voluntary, there would be no reason to go via Trabzon and leave by sea. There are direct flights to Minsk and Moscow. Nothing in his behavior suggested instability or a plan to vanish," Apeykin added.
When contacted by Current Time, the Belarusian Embassy in Istanbul declined to comment on Kotau's whereabouts.
The Polish Consulate in Turkey, responsible for citizens under Warsaw's protection, redirected questions to Poland's Foreign Ministry. There was no immediate response from the ministry.
From Insider To Dissident
Born in Minsk in 1980, Kotau was trained as a diplomat and worked in Belarus's embassy in Poland for nearly a decade. He later rose through the ranks of the National Olympic Committee, eventually becoming its secretary-general, and in 2019 headed the organizing committee of the European Games in Minsk.
By 2020, he held a senior post in the presidential administration of Aleksandr Lukashenko. But he resigned from this position in August of that year amid an unprecedented wave of protests after it was announced Lukashenko had been re-elected president.
It was widely believed by Belarusians, Western governments, and international human rights organizations that the results were falsified.
Kotau signed a public letter by Belarusian athletes condemning police violence against protesters and fled to Poland.
At the time of his disappearance, Kotau was working in Warsaw at a private events agency and contributing commentary to independent Belarusian media.
Kotau's disappearance is not the only case of a Belarusian opposition figure vanishing abroad recently. On March 25, Anzhalika Melnikava, spokeswoman of the opposition Coordination Council, also disappeared after leaving Poland.
She traveled outside the EU with her daughters and never returned. According to a leading opposition figure, Paval Latushka, her phone has been active on Belarusian territory since March 19.
Opposition figures went missing during the early years of Lukashenko's rule in the 1990s, although these disappearances took place within Belarus.
These include Yury Zakharanka, a former interior minister, who was last seen being forced into a dark car near his home in Minsk in May 1999, and Viktar Hanchar, who disappeared after leaving a bathhouse in the Belarusian capital in September 1999.
Neither has been seen since.
Human rights groups and Western governments accused senior Belarusian officials of organizing these abductions.
The European Union and the United States have imposed sanctions on former Prosecutor-General Viktar Sheyman, ex-Interior Minister Yury Sivakou, and the commander of the Interior Ministry's Special Rapid Reaction Force, Dzmitry Paulichenka.
