Nury Turkel had a renewed sense of urgency as he walked into the Senate offices on a cloudy October day. With his thick, combed back hair, he looked every bit the corporate lawyer he had been for more than a dozen years in Washington, D.C. But recently, he had turned his attention back to a deeply personal cause: advocating for the 11 million Uyghurs living in Xinjiang without basic rights, including his own mother. It was 2019, and Turkel sensed a unique political window opening in Washington.