Tag: Uighurs

China, Turkey: Ankara Takes an Economic Risk by Standing Up for Chinese Uighurs

The Big Picture
Turkey considers itself a leader in the broader Muslim world, a part of its identity that has compelled it to speak out against China’s ongoing detention of Turkic Chinese Muslims. The current AKP-led government in Ankara is defending its cultural and religious credentials in upcoming local elections, and defending the Uighurs helps in that regard. But this is also a position that could threaten Turkey’s economic ties to China, which is intent on defending its security crackdowns against Uighurs in the name of national security.

See Turkey’s Resurgence
What Happened
The Turkish Foreign Ministry released a statement Feb. 9, calling on Beijing to respect fundamental human rights and close its internment camps for China’s Uighurs, calling them a “great shame for humanity.” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy added that “it is no longer a secret that more than 1 million Uighur Turks incurring arbitrary arrests are subjected to torture and political brainwashing in internment camps and prisons.” The Chinese Embassy in Ankara responded Feb. 10, calling the Turkish allegations inaccurate and demanding that Turkey retract them.

Why It Matters
Turkey is the first major Muslim country to speak out against the ongoing internment of Chinese Uighurs, who share Turkic roots with most of Turkey’s population. The statement’s timing makes domestic political sense in light of the upcoming March 31 municipal elections in Turkey, in which the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is defending its turf in the Anatolian heartland against other nationalist and Islamist parties. The AKP has come under increasing criticism from other parties, including the nationalist Good Party, over the Turkish government’s silence in the face of fellow Muslims’ suffering.

Even though the statement appears measured, it could damage Turkey’s economic ties with China just as the Turkish government has said it wants to increase them. Turkey has explored purchasing Chinese missile systems in the past, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invited his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, for a state visit to Turkey in 2019, and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China recently extended Turkey a multimillion-dollar loan.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has come under increasing criticism from other parties over the Turkish government’s silence in the face of fellow Muslims’ suffering.

The Uighur issue is particularly sensitive to China given that the Uighur homeland, China’s westernmost region of Xinjiang, is a vital part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. It affords the Chinese initiative with direct links to Central Asia and Pakistan that continue onward as far as Europe. Chinese fears of separatism, supply chain disruptions and the risk that Western countries could exploit the issue to China’s disadvantage will, in fact, compel Beijing to consolidate its security hold over Xinjiang. In pursuit of this objective, which has accelerated over the past three years, the Chinese government has engaged in a broad security crackdown in Xinjiang, detaining as many as 1 million ethnic Uighurs, Hui and Kazakhs and subjecting them to re-education.

Background
As part of its political identity under the AKP, Turkey has championed popular Islamism and political Islam. And, even if it were to face Chinese economic retaliation for its outspokenness on the Uighurs, Turkey isn’t as vulnerable as other leading Muslim states. The Arab Gulf states have deeper economic ties with China, while Iran needs its relationship with China — especially as Western sanctions pressure builds up on it. Each has received some heat regarding its relative silence on the issue, increasing the significance of the Turkish statement.

In the broader Muslim world, Indonesia is another country to watch. With national elections approaching April 17, the campaign of candidate Prabowo Subianto has criticized incumbent President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo for neglecting the Uighur issue, alleging that he is beholden to China. But while Jokowi’s foreign minister has reportedly expressed concerns to China in private about the Uighur crackdown, the president is focused on pursuing billions of dollars in Chinese support to remedy Indonesia’s deep infrastructure deficits. At the same time, he is likely trying to avoid inflaming sentiment against his country’s ethnic Chinese minority.

February 13, 2019
Former Guantanamo Bay Detainee Resettled to Turkey

By JONATHAN KAMINSKY Associated Press

February 27, 2013 (AP)

One of six Chinese nationals held by the U.S. at its Guantanamo Bay prison and released to Palau in 2009 has resettled in Turkey, the tiny island republic’s former president confirmed Wednesday.

Johnson Toribiong, reached by phone from the U.S., said Adel Noori left Palau shortly before Toribiong’s term ended late last year.

A U.S. official familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified said Toribiong’s administration informed the U.S. that Noori, 43, had made arrangements on his own to leave the country.

Noori and the five other men — all of them Uighurs, an ethnic minority that has clashed with China’s central government — were released to Palau after spending nearly eight years at Guantanamo Bay. They were captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001.

The Pentagon determined in 2008 that they were not “enemy combatants” and they were released to Palau on what was billed as a temporary basis the following year.

“I guess the term temporary is a term of ambiguity,” said Toribiong.

Uighurs are from Xinjiang, an isolated region of China that borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and six Central Asian nations. They are Turkic-speaking Muslims who say they have long been repressed by the Chinese government.

Noori and his compatriots have said they fear they would be arrested, tortured or executed if sent back to China.

China has said that insurgents are leading an Islamic separatist movement in Xinjiang and wants the men returned.

Ian Moss, a U.S. State Department spokesman, declined to confirm Noori’s location.

“We are aware of Mr. Noori’s departure from Palau,” Moss said. “We are not going to comment on diplomatic discussions with another government or the whereabouts of a private individual.”

A local newspaper, Tia Belau, reported earlier this month that Noori had made his way to Turkey to be with his wife and baby. The report also said Noori had transited through Japan, but Foreign Ministry officials in Tokyo said they had no information about that.

Toribiong, who was voted out of office in November, said he feels “a little anxious about the fact that the next president (of Palau) has had to be responsible” for the remaining five Uighurs and their families. There are 14 or 15 of them now living on the island.

“I assumed that I would be able to take care of them and by the end of my term find them a permanent place to go to,” he said.

via Former Guantanamo Bay Detainee Resettled to Turkey – ABC News.

February 28, 2013
A Short Uighur Story – Xatire خاتىرە – YouTube

Xatire خاتىرە – YouTube.

January 13, 2013
China holds exhibition to ease Turkish concerns over treatment of ethnic Uygurs

Chinese Muslims, all 23 million of them, say it can be hard practicing their faith in China. Particularly for ethnic Uyguys, there is long-running discrimination that many Uygurs say endangers their cultural existence.

China’s government is hoping to soothe Turks’ concerns about the ill treatment of that country’s 23 million Muslims — which include a fairly substantial population of Turkic Uygurs.

The Chinese have funded an exhibition in Istanbul that amplifies the positives with Chinese Muslims’ relationship with the central government. Muslims in China make up less than 2 percent of the population.

Zhang Jian from the Chinese state religious body, says the Istanbul exhibition is meant to inform international audiences about the richness of Islamic culture in China.

“To know more about how Chinese Muslims live their lives in China and how they live their religious life,” Jian said.

See more photos from the Chinese exhibit, visit TheWorld.org.

There’s a lot of rumors he says, that the Chinese government prevents Muslim men from wearing beards for example, or that it stops women from covering their heads.

It’s not true, he says. Muslims live freely in China and the exhibits are proof of this reality.

“The reasons we hold such kind of activities, is to know what really happens in China,” he said.

The exhibition features traditional songs and dances by two Muslim performing groups. The Uygur dancers are dressed in intensely colorful costumes as they perform tightly choreographed songs and dances. But unlike the music, and the rosy picture painted by the government official, life for Uygurs in China isn’t especially joyful.

“I don’t want to speak Chinese,” said a Uygur émigré at the performance. She didn’t want to reveal her name, fearing reprisals against her family in Xinjiang.

She says the Chinese government is trying to wipe out the Uygur language.

“I’m afraid for the future. I fear for the Uygur language that everyone will forget it. Everywhere it’s only Chinese,” she said.

The woman says the Chinese government is trying to assimilate Uygurs by force, eliminating Uygur-language education and giving economic opportunities only to the majority ethnic Han Chinese.

Human Rights Watch concurs. A recent report said, “under the guise of counterterrorism and anti-separatism efforts, the government maintains a pervasive system of ethnic discrimination against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities.”

Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, in Turkey, the people and government are sensitive to Uygur pleas. Hugh Pope, a Turkey analyst and author of “Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World,” said Turkish school children are taught that China’s Uyguys are their brothers.

“Eight million people who are under Chinese sovereignty in Xinjiang, or as it used to be known East Turkestan, because it’s the eastern bit of where Turks still live in Central Asia,” he said, “(are) still in the Turkish consciousness as being a Turkic people, blood brothers according to the state ideology of the Turkish Republic.”

China hopes that cultural exchanges like this one will help ease Turks’ reservations about Muslims in China. But Pope says public relations are probably not even needed. China’s economic power will always move Turkey more than the human rights of their Uygur brothers.

“Most people are interested in buying Chinese products, Turkish companies are building things in Chinese cities just like everyone else in the world,” Pope said. “We are seeing the beginning of a military relationship. Turkish leaders do go and visit Xinjian and wear Uygur dress. And China is happy with that because it shows that everything is all right.”

Turkey is a rising regional power but it’s still a medium-sized, developing country. Its not in Turkey’s interest to have trouble with China, Pope said.

What’s more, most of the Uygurs’ ancient cities have already been razed, to make way for new cities likely to be dominated by majority ethnic Han Chinese.

via China holds exhibition to ease Turkish concerns over treatment of ethnic Uygurs | PRI.ORG.

September 7, 2012
Uyghur Folk Song: Qara Qara Qaghlar

Uyghur folk song by Mihrigul Hesen.

March 11, 2012
Uighur protests as China’s Xi Jinping visits Turkey

Activists from China’s Muslim Uighur minority burnt Chinese flags in Ankara on Tuesday where China’s leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping was holding talks with Turkish officials on regional issues.

About 60 Turkic-speaking Uighurs from China’s northwestern Xinjiang province protested outside the hotel where Xi was staying in the Turkish capital on the last leg of a trip that also took him to the United States and Ireland.

Xi, almost sure to succeed Hu Jintao as president in just over a year, praised Turkey’s role in trying to resolve issues such as the Iranian nuclear dispute and Middle East conflicts.

Waving the flag of East Turkestan, pale blue with a white star and crescent, the protesters burnt a Chinese flag and a poster of Xi before police moved in to disperse them.

Rights groups accuse China of abuses during a crackdown after Uighur riots in 2009 and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan then described the events as a “genocide”.

Turkey is home to thousands of Uighurs who have fled Xinjiang since the Chinese Communists took over the region in 1949.

Xi said China had made great strides to raise the living standards of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

Turkey and China are at either end of a political and economic axis stretching along the old silk road though Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan. Both have strong, sometimes competing economic interests in the region.

Turkey, now the world’s 16th biggest economy and only second to China in growth last year, has projected itself as a stable Muslim democracy, making it a key player at a time of turmoil and unrest in the Middle East.

“A member of the G20 with a growing economy and an important country in the Middle East, Turkey has for a long time tried to bring stability and development to the region and played an active role in trying to solve ‘hot’ issues,” Xi told Turkey’s Sabah newspaper listing Afghanistan, the Iranian nuclear and Middle East peace efforts.

BILLION DOLLAR DEALS Turkey has sought to mediate between the West and Iran in a dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme and has broadly shared China’s opposition to stronger sanctions against Tehran.

But on Syria their positions have been sharply at odds. While Turkey has taken a leading role in pressuring Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to step down, China, along with Russia, this month blocked a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that backed an Arab plan urging him to quit.

China has also not decided whether to accept an invitation to discuss Syria with other world powers this week in Tunisia, a meeting Turkey’s foreign minister will attend and Ankara hopes will keep up pressure for Assad to step down. Xi met President Abdullah Gul on Tuesday and signed seven bilateral economic agreements.

The central banks of Turkey and China signed a three-year currency swap agreement worth $1.6 billion which will be effective for three years, both sides said. The two countries could discuss extending its maturity after that.

China has signed a series of bilateral currency agreements with foreign countries as part of efforts to promote the use of the yuan in cross-boarder trade and investment.

The Turkish energy ministry also said China’s Avic International and Turkey’s Hema Endustri, a Turkish engineering manufacturing company, will sign a $1 billion deal for power plant and coal production equipment.

Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said the agreement could lead to cooperation with China on building Turkey’s first nuclear power plant. Xi later travelled to Istanbul for talks with Erdogan, who is recovering from surgery at home there. Citing prime ministerial officials, Turkish state media said the two men met for one hour where they agreed to increase economic cooperation.

During the meeting, which was closed to the media, Erdogan accepted a formal invitation by Xi to visit China and said he would travel there in the coming months, state-run Anatolian news agency reported. On Wednesday, Xi attends a business forum in Istanbul, where he is likely to be assailed by exporters eager to try to bridge a gaping trade gap. China is Turkey’s 15th biggest export market with nearly $2.5 billion of Turkish goods sold there last year, a rise of 8.7 percent. But some $21.6 billion worth of Chinese goods were imported to Turkey in 2011, up 26 percent from 2010.

via Uighur protests as China’s Xi Jinping visits Turkey – World – DNA.

February 26, 2012