Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan began a trip to China on Monday and is expected to travel to occupied East Turkistan on Tuesday, where the Communist Party has been engaging in a genocide of Uyghur and other indigenous Muslim communities since at least 2017.
Fidan is not expected to condemn the genocide – although it targets Turkic peoples – and his visit has prompted alarm among Uyghur civil society groups. Fidan made clear in remarks alongside Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday that his priorities upon visiting Beijing were galvanizing support for Hamas against Israel and increasing trade volume between China and Turkey.
The Islamist regime of strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan was once one of the most vocal governments opposed to the abuse of Uyghurs by the Chinese government, which escalated into ethnic cleansing and, ultimately, genocide under ethnic Han dictator Xi Jinping. Erdogan significantly muted his criticisms after Turkey joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a predatory infrastructure scheme, in 2015. His foreign policy following the Hamas atrocities against Israel on October 7 has been almost singularly focused on supporting Hamas, which Erdogan himself has insisted is not a terrorist organization.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gestures as he delivers a speech following a cabinet meeting, in Ankara (ADEM ALTAN/AFP via Getty Images).
In his remarks alongside Wang Yi, Foreign Minister Fidan called China’s support for Hamas “extremely important” and emphasized the growth in trade between the two countries.
“The great vision put forward by the two political leaders constitutes an important basis for the institutionalization and deepening of the relationship between China and Türkiye in modern times,” the Turkish state-run Anadolu news agency quoted Fidan as saying in a report on Tuesday.
“Fidan also said the economy constitutes an important pillar of the relations between the two countries, that the bilateral trade volume reached $48 billion in 2023,” Anadolu Agency continued, “and that China is Türkiye’s first largest trade partner in Asia and the third-largest trade partner globally.”
Anadolu did not offer any indication that Fidan addressed the ongoing Uyghur genocide or advocated for the rights of Turkic people under Chinese communist rule. Instead, Fidan celebrated the two East Turkistani cities that he is reportedly planning on visiting this week, Kashgar and the regional capital Urumqi, as critical to linking China and Turkey.
“These cities also play a bridge role between China and the Turkish world as well as between China and the Islamic world. They are symbols of our historical friendship and neighborhood,” Fidan added.
The Chinese Communist Party first occupied the East Turkistan Republic, then a sovereign state, in 1949. It has for decades acted to repress local cultures and impose totalitarian communism. Under Xi Jinping, however, the Communist Party began a campaign that extensive evidence suggests is a genocide. Communist officials began imprisoning Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in concentration camps since at least 2017, where they are subject to extreme abuse, torture, forced sterilization, slavery, and other horrors. As many as three million people were shepherded into concentration camps in East Turkistan at their peak.
Chinese President Xi Jinping gives a joint press conference with France’s President Emmanuel Macron at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, Thursday, April 6, 2023 (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File).
As a result of widespread international outrage, China claimed to shut down its “Vocational and Educational Training Centers,” the Party’s term for the concentration camps. A widely condemned 2022 United Nations report took China’s claims that the camps stopped existing in 2019 at face value.
In reality, not only has the genocide continued, but evidence suggests that China has funneled many of its victims into slavery, openly selling slaves to suppliers for international corporations online.
Erdogan was once a vocal supporter of the Uyghur cause, accusing China of “genocide” as early as 2009. Erdogan’s stance after joining the BRI changed dramatically. In 2020, Turkey signed an extradition treaty with China, endangering the estimated 50,000 Uyghurs living in Turkey, and has muted criticism of the genocide. When Erdogan last mentioned Uyghur issues on the international stage – at the United Nations General Assembly in September – he said only that Turkey has “sensitivity” regarding the Uyghur community.
A demonstrator wearing a mask painted with the colors of the flag of East Turkestan and a hand bearing the colors of the Chinese flag attends a protest of supporters of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority and Turkish nationalists to denounce China’s treatment of ethnic Uighur Muslims during a deadly riot in July 2009 in Urumqi, in front of the Chinese consulate in Istanbul, on July 5, 2018 (OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Images).
“We emphasize at every opportunity that we respect China’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” Erdogan asserted. “However, we will continue to express our sensitivity regarding the protection of the fundamental rights and freedoms of Uyghur Turks, with whom we have strong historical and humanitarian ties.”
Fidan expressed hope on Monday that Turkey would expand its trade relations with China despite the human rights implications of doing so.
“We brought up the issue of how we can make trade figures more balanced in all our meetings. I made practical suggestions such as removing restrictions on the import of Turkish agricultural products,” Fidan told reporters. “Tourism is another area in which we want to further develop our cooperation.”
Chinese officials welcomed Fidan’s positive disposition and expressed hope to cooperate with Turkey on “security,” potentially resulting in Turkish law enforcement cooperating with the repressors of East Turkistan. Politburo member Chen Wenqing, who also met with Fidan, told him Beijing “is willing to work with Turkey to bring cooperation in the field of security to new heights continuously,” according to Chinese state propaganda outlet the Global Times.
The Global Times also suggested “the visit will boost the China-Turkey cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative,” in which China offers predatory loans to poor countries to commit them to pricey infrastructure projects they cannot afford.
Members of the international Uyghur community expressed concern and dismay with Turkey’s stance on the genocide.
Salih Hudayar, the foreign minister of the East Turkistan Government in Exile, said in a statement on Monday that Fidan’s visit “poses a grave threat to East Turkistan and the Uyghurs.”
“Fidan has committed to deepening security cooperation with Chen, who last week visited East Turkistan and called for the continuation of the Uyghur Genocide under the guise of ‘counter-terrorism,'” he observed. “The international community must remain vigilant and hold both nations accountable for their actions.”
“Türkiye hosts one of the largest Uyghur diaspora communities globally, with approximately 50,000 individuals who fled the oppressive regime in China. However, this community faces growing harassment and intimidation by CCP-established transnational networks,” the World Uyghur Congress, an international Uyghur association, said in a press statement on Fidan’s visit. “These networks spy on Uyghurs, exploiting factors such as passport applications, financial struggles, and concerns for family in East Turkistan to coerce Uyghur individuals into serving as informants, remaining silent on the Uyghur genocide, or participating in pro-China propaganda efforts.”
