Nury Turkel

Nury Turkel is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. He specializes in national security, foreign policy, digital authoritarianism, emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, and forced labor and supply chain risk. Mr. Turkel’s expertise also includes global justice enforcement, human rights and religious freedom in China, and the prevention of atrocities including genocide and crimes against humanity.

As an attorney, Mr. Turkel specializes in global corporate compliance, internal investigation, and United States government enforcement relating to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), and other anticorruption and human rights standards. He also focuses on customs and import trade, economic sanctions and export control, business and human rights, legislative advocacy, and humanitarian immigration.

Mr. Turkel is a Congressionally appointed commissioner and former chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). He has testified before Congress as a subject matter expert, most recently before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and the House Ways and Means Committee, advocating strong policy to protect American national and economic interests. His recommendations have been incorporated into laws relating to China, including the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 (Public Law 116-145) and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-78). In addition to his human rights–centric foreign policy advocacy in the United States, Mr. Turkel has traveled around the world for governmental and public engagements. He has advised like-minded governments in Europe and Asia. 

As a leading expert on US-China relations and long-time human rights advocate, Mr. Turkel is a senior advisor at the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy and a senior legal fellow at Notre Dame Law School. Mr. Turkel is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He serves as the board chairman for the Uyghur Human Rights Project, which he co-founded in 2003. He previously also served as a legal adviser to the World Uyghur Congress and the president of the Uyghur American Association.

His policy-oriented commentary has been published in outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, TIME, Newsweek, Foreign Policy, USA Today, The Independent, The Hill, and The Diplomat. Mr. Turkel has spoken at numerous policy forums, academic institutes, and human rights conferences on US-China relations, rise of digital authoritarianism, forced labor in global supply chains, and the ongoing Uyghur genocide. He has appeared on major media outlets, including CNN, BBC, Fox News, Al Jazeera, Australian ABC, Sky News, and France 24. 

Mr. Turkel was included in TIME’s “100 Most Influential People in the World of 2020.” In 2021, Fortune Magazine included him in the list of 50 Greatest Leaders. He received the inaugural Notre Dame Prize for Religious Liberty in June 2021. He was awarded the Global Soul Award by Jewish World Watch in September 2022. 

Mr. Turkel received an MA in international relations and a JD from American University. His memoir No Escape: The True Story of China’s Genocide of the Uyghurs won the 2023 Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing.