Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan reiterated the call for Beijing to take steps on behalf of the Uighur minority during a three-day official visit to China, culminating on the third day with a trip yesterday to the Chinese autonomous province of Xinjiang (East Turkestan), inhabited by the Uighurs, whose culture, language and religion are closely related to the ancient Turkic peoples of Central Asia.
Fidan’s visit to Xinjiang was in fact the highest-level visit by a Turkish official to the region since 2012, amid the severe unrest that rocked the region and to which the Chinese government responded with an extremely harsh crackdown on the Uighurs, whose rights Ankara has always claimed to be their main defender. In this respect, Turkish diplomatic sources have underlined the importance of the meetings held between Fidan and various Chinese authorities during his three-day official visit to the country, which has been widely reported in the mainstream media in Turkey.
During these meetings, the Turkish foreign minister reportedly sent a clear message that, while Ankara respects China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, Beijing must do more to safeguard the rights of the Uyghur minority; in this sense, Fidan stressed during his visit that the Uyghurs constitute a bridge between China and the Turkic world – including Turkey – as well as between China and the Muslim world.
‘We would very much like to see Uighur Turks and all other peoples living in China enjoying peace and prosperity,’ Fidan told Chinese officials, as quoted by the media. ‘Changing the (outside perception of China’s repression of the Uighurs) can only be possible through China’s steps’ to respect their rights and cultural values, he insisted.
During his visit to the Xinjiang region – home to the Uighur minority – Fidan visited, among other places, the Yanghang Mosque and the Grand Bazaar in Urumqi, the capital of the region. A day earlier, during a joint press conference held on Tuesday in Beijing with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi (who officially invited Fidan to visit the country), the Turkish foreign minister spoke of Kashgar and Urumqi itself as two ancient Turkic-Islamic cities, underlining their value for Chinese cultural diversity and their importance in relations between China and the Turkic and Muslim world.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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