The “Chinese Embassy” became one of the most popular hashtags on Twitter in Turkey on the evening of June 6. The embassy’s two tweets in the style of war-wolf diplomacy angered Turkish users and were scrubbed. The Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned the Chinese ambassador to Turkey, Liu Shaobin, to express his displeasure.
“Are you going to take Turkish political party leaders and mayors from their homes?”, “Are you going to put them in concentration camps?”, “Like an embassy, not like the mafia”, and “This is the Republic of Turkey, not Hong Kong.” As of this writing, eight hours after the two tweets from the Chinese embassy in Turkey were sent, one of them has been scrubbed with more than 8,000 messages, mostly criticizing the embassy for violating diplomatic protocol and crossing red lines.
The Anadolu Agency reports that the Chinese embassy’s social media posts have sparked discontent, and the Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned Liu Shaobin today to address the issue.
“It is an internationally accepted and indisputable fact that the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is an inseparable part of China’s territory,” the Chinese embassy in Turkey tweeted in the afternoon.
Another tweet said, “China firmly opposes and strongly condemns any person or force challenging China’s sovereignty and right to territorial integrity. China reserves the right to make legitimate responses.”
The two tweets also flagged key political figures from Turkey’s two main opposition parties, Meral Aksener, the leader of the nationalist Iyi Party, and Mansur Yavas, the Ankara mayor of the left-wing Republican People’s Party (CHP).
Aksener and Yavas tweeted separately on the 31st anniversary of the Uyghur “Barren uprising” on May 5, and the Chinese embassy responded with a tweet today.
The embassy’s tweets sparked a backlash from Turkish Twitter users, who flooded the embassy’s Twitter feed with comments below the tweets.
The message from @gokhanozbek said, “Know your limits, this country is not a colony and you are not the colonial governor who declared the hadith. You can’t covertly threaten the citizens of this country. Follow the rules of diplomacy!”
@sermolibertas wrote: “What are you going to do? Take Turkish political party leaders and mayors from their homes? … You are doing to Uyghur Turks what the Jews have experienced… You can’t threaten Turkish citizens just because the government is silent.”
@jxlhs says: “How will you respond? Going to put Yavash and Aksenar in concentration camps?… We’re curious. The embassy should know its limits, and if you don’t, get out!”
@eyyubigil1187 wrote: “Know who you are and act like a seat embassy, not like the mafia. You can’t threaten the people of this country in this land… One day you will be held accountable for persecution, just like everyone else in the world who commits genocide.”
@MerveYklkan1 says: “You have destroyed the world and caused death with a virus. Get out and apologize for it first.”
The two tweets stirred Turkish sensibilities. The Uighurs, who are also a Turkic people with close ethnic, linguistic and religious ties to Turkey, are persecuted in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a sensitive issue in Turkish society. Turkey is also seen as a haven for Uyghurs fleeing persecution by the Chinese Communist Party, and it is estimated that at least 50,000 Uyghurs live in Turkey.
In a statement in February 2019, the Turkish Foreign Ministry lambasted the CCP’s atrocities against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, stressing that “the systematic assimilation policy of the CCP authorities against Uyghur Turkic people is a grave disgrace to humanity” and that “more than one million Uyghur Turkic people have been arbitrarily arrested and subjected to torture and political brainwashing in concentration camps and prisons. It is no longer a secret that more than one million Uighur Turks have been arbitrarily arrested and tortured and politically brainwashed in concentration camps and prisons.”
But the analysis noted that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan adopted a cautious approach after his visit to Beijing in July of the same year, treating the Uighur issue as a disruptive factor in bilateral relations. Despite his reputation as a champion of the oppressed around the world, Erdogan has been accused of “selling out” to Uighurs. At the same time, he has faced reverse pressure from Islamist and nationalist camps at home.
After the Chinese Communist Party ratified the Turkish-Chinese extradition treaty in late December last year, pressure mounted for Turkey to do the same. It is believed that Turkey’s purchase of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine, commonly known as Wuhan pneumonia, from China opened the door for Beijing to pressure Ankara to ratify the extradition treaty.
Uyghur communities in Turkey are concerned that the treaty could be used by the Chinese Communist Party to fabricate charges and extradite dissident Uyghurs seeking freedom. Whether or not the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM) ratifies the treaty during the current session has been one of the recent focuses of attention on local Uighur issues.
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