The Party “Action and Solidarity” (PAS) will make approaches and will demand that those who carried out the order to deport seven Turkish citizens from Moldova last week should be punished internationally. The party’s leader Maia Sandu told a news conference that the decision is illegal and was taken at the request of the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, IPN reports.

According to Maia Sandu, the teachers were expelled at the request of the Turkish President as this considers that education is the most serious danger to the authoritarian regime that he established in Turkey, while the regime in Chișinău satisfied his request. When she was minster of education, a number of requests to close the lyceums “Orizont” came from Ankara through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Moldova.

“I said then firmly that the lyceums “Orizont” will not be closed because their activity is regulated by the national legislation and, as long as this is not broken, the lyceums will not be closed,” stated the politician.

Sergiu Litvinenco, a member of the PAS National Standing Bureau, said the teachers were expelled with violations of the national and international legislation. The law on the legal regime of foreigners stipulates that the decision to declare a person undesirable is taken by the Bureau for Migration and Asylum, while the Security and Intelligence Service confirmed that this didn’t take part in the expulsion operation.

Sergiu Litvinenco also said that the Turkish intelligence services shouldn’t have been involved as the invoked reasons refer to Moldova’s security. The persons should be able to choose the country where to go and the decision is not taken by the authorities of the country of residence.

“Five of the seven persons are asylum seekers. If such a situation existed, these couldn’t have beem deported to their country of residence. The regime argued that the applications for asylum were rejected,” stated Sergiu Litvinenco, noting the taking of persons out of the country without papers reveals the criminal complicity of a number of state institutions in the process of crossing Moldova’s border.

Seven Turkish citizens, six of whom principals and teachers of the Moldovan-Turkish lyceum “Orizont”, last week were declared undesirable and expelled from Moldova. According to the SIS, the seven foreigners are suspected of links with an Islamic group that reportedly performs illegal activities in a number of states.