Turkey has been a high-profile advocate for the rights of China’s Uighur minority and has urged Beijing to end its harsh policies in Xinjiang. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2009 called China’s crackdown a genocide.
That position has shifted in recent years. Turkish officials have largely abandoned public criticism of China’s Uighur policies, and authorities have cracked down on Uighur activists at Home.
In January, after months of protests in front of the Chinese consulate in Istanbul by Uighurs living in Turkey who were trying to find information about missing Family members, police banned such rallies out of security and concerns about a new crown Epidemic.
Some activists then moved their protests to the Chinese Embassy in Ankara, where they held several days of demonstrations in early February.
Uyghur activist Jevlan Shirmemet, 30, was one of them. He has been living in Istanbul since 2011.
Shirmemet said his mother, Suriye Tursun, a 57-year-old Xinjiang government official, was sent to a “Chinese concentration camp” in 2018 and has since lost contact with her son. China calls these camps “vocational skills Education and training centers.
“After my mother disappeared, I contacted the Chinese embassy for help in 2019, but they kept ignoring my requests,” Sillbuyti said.
He told Voice of America that police recently detained him and three other activists for five hours and agreed to release them if they ended their protest outside the Chinese diplomatic facility.
“The police arrested four of us, including me, told us to stay in their boxcar, took us to a police station to sign papers and then sent us back to the hotel,” Silbayti said. He added that the arrest came after the Chinese embassy tweeted the night before that the protesters were spreading false information.
On Feb. 23, Sirbaiti and the other activists drove back to Istanbul, part of the trip under police supervision.
Genocide determination
On February 22, Canada became the second country after the United States to recognize that China’s actions against the Uighurs in Xinjiang constitute genocide. The Dutch parliament passed a similar motion on Feb. 25.
Although Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called China’s actions in Xinjiang genocide more than a decade ago, the Turkish government has never officially taken a position on the issue.
The World Uighur Congress, the largest Uighur rights organization in exile, estimates that there are 45,000 Uighur refugees in Turkey, making it one of the largest Uighur diaspora communities.
Uighurs in Turkey say the recent genocide determination made by the international community further encourages them to continue their advocacy actions, urging Ankara to act more quickly to address the human rights violations taking place in Xinjiang.
For Megpiret Ablimit, a 20-year-old Uighur university student in Istanbul, protesting means fighting to save the lives of those she loves most.
Ablimit said her brother and two uncles are being held in a detention camp in Xinjiang she calls a “concentration camp. She said her grandmother died in such a camp in 2019 at the age of 63, two years after Xinjiang authorities detained her for making a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.
Abulimiti told Voice of America:Â “The so-called crime of my relatives was either to go to Turkey to see us or to go on an Islamic pilgrimage.”
Turkish officials criticize protesters
Chinese officials insist that Uighurs have equal rights in China and that the measures they have taken in Xinjiang are aimed at combating “the three forces of terrorism, extremism and separatism.
A spokeswoman for the Chinese Embassy in Ankara told VOA that the Chinese government has been helping “Chinese compatriots from Xinjiang” to contact their relatives. The embassy said the protesters were demonstrating mainly in an “attempt to discredit” China.
In a statement to VOA, the spokesman said, “When protests or demonstrations take place near Chinese embassies or consulates, Turkish police are legally obliged to take appropriate protective measures and maintain order.”
Turkish officials have also publicly disputed some of the protesters’ claims.
After Turkish police stopped Uighur protesters in Ankara, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu issued a statement Feb. 15 warning protesters not to fall victim to “a planned international conflict from abroad.
In addition, Omer Celik, spokesman for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said on Feb. 24 that his government is “highly sensitive” to the living conditions of Uighurs in China.
Mustafa Akyol, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Cato Institute, said Soylu’s view that this is a “planned international conflict” underscores how officials are implicitly referring to U.S. involvement in the Uighur issue by linking it to Washington’s broader rivalry with China. Uighur issues.
“(Turkey’s) position is, ‘Yes, the Uighurs are facing some difficulties, but we will do what we can quietly, while not confronting China over an ongoing U.S. conspiracy,'” Akyol said.
Economic dependence
After years of economic decline in Turkey, some other analysts see an economic motive in the country’s shifting stance toward the Uighurs.
Kemal Kirisci, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the Turkish government hopes investment, trade and credit ties with China will help save its economy.
Kirisci told Voice of America:Â “Turkey has also chosen to get its new crown vaccine from China, which creates another dependency.”
To get a steady supply of New Crown vaccine at a price Turkey’s economy can afford, he said, Ankara, for its part, would have to remain largely silent on the Uighur issue.
Recent Comments