Nury Turkel is an American attorney, author, public official, and foreign policy expert based in Washington, D.C..

He is a former chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, and former president of the Uyghur American Association.

"[20] On March 10, 2003, Turkel made a statement to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China on the worsening human rights situation in East Turkestan (Xinjiang) in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

[25][26][27] In April 2012, Turkel praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for showing support and sympathy for the Uyghur people surrounding his trip to China in a way that was seen as rare among foreign leaders.

[34][35][36] In an August 2020 interview, Turkel described the camps as one of the worst global humanitarian crises and the largest incarceration of an ethnic minority since the Holocaust.

[38] Turkel's 2022 book No Escape: The True Story of China's Genocide of the Uyghurs won the 2022 Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing.

[44] Turkel is proficient in several languages, including Uyghur (his mother tongue), English, Turkish, and Mandarin Chinese.