U.S. State Department Finds No Evidence for Turkish Student’s Visa Revocation
(MENAFN) The U.S. State Department has determined that there is no proof linking Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish postgraduate student at Tufts University in Massachusetts, to antisemitic behavior or support for any terrorist organization, according to a report released on Sunday.
According to a newspaper, an internal memo dated March from the State Department stated that there were no legitimate reasons to annul Ozturk’s visa.
This memo directly challenges the Trump administration’s allegations that she backed the Palestinian party Hamas or participated in antisemitic or violent acts, as claimed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
This internal document, which was described to the Post by confidential informants, asserted that Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not have adequate justification to cancel Ozturk’s visa using a legal clause that permits such action to protect U.S. foreign policy goals.
Ozturk, who is pursuing a PhD in child and human development at Tufts as a Fulbright scholar, was apprehended by ICE agents wearing masks near her home in Somerville.
Her arrest followed a campaign against her by the pro-Israel platform Canary Mission, which criticized her for co-writing an article in a newspaper in March 2024.
The opinion piece denounced the university’s reaction to what she called Israel's brutal assault on Gaza, an attack that has resulted in over 50,000 Palestinian deaths.
In a memo sent by DHS official Andre Watson to a counterpart in the State Department, the department claimed that “Ozturk engaged in anti-Israel activism in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israelis on October 7, 2023.”
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