MESOPOTAMIA NEWS : AFTER IRAN ERDOGAN MAKING LOVE WITH RED CHINA
As Turkish President High-Fives Chinese Foreign Minister, Uyghur Leader Criticizes Turkish Policy: ‘This Is Dipping Your Bread In Your Brothers’ Blood’ – MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 9286
On March 24, 2021, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wangi Yi in Ankara. During the meeting, Çavuşoğlu reportedly said he would like to see Chinese President Xi Jinping visit Turkey to further develop the relationship. Later in the day, Yi met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who gave Yi a high five.
Some Turkish opposition media outlets reacted to the high five as a symbol of how Erdoğan, by strengthening relations with China, is betraying the Uyghurs, a Turkic minority in China with whom many Turks feel an ethnic connection and against whom the Chinese government, according to then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, is committing “genocide.”
President Erdoğan high-fiving Foreign Minister Yi.
Recent Turkey-China cooperation includes increasing trade, the Belt and Road initiative, and the Middle Corridor Project, a railway-ferryboat route that starts in Turkey and goes through Georgia, Azerbaijan, across the Caspian Sea by ferryboat into Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, and ends in China. Shipping from Turkey to China using the route appears to have begun in December 2020, while shipping from China to Turkey and on into Europe appears to have begun in November 2019.
Turkish state-run media promotes the Belt and Road Initiative and the Middle Corridor Project (source: trthaber.com).
In May 2017, Turkey and China signed an extradition agreement. The Chinese government has since approved the agreement, but it has been held up since 2019 by Turkish parliament’s Justice Commission and awaits ratification in Turkey. Former prime minister and current leader of the Gelecek Parti (“Future Party”) Ahmet Davutoğlu said in July 2020 that this will happen.
Seyit Tümtürk, a Turkish-born Uyghur political leader living in Kayseri, Turkey, has been among the most outspoken critics of Turkey’s developing relations with China. This report will review some of his recent criticism of the deepening relationship between China and Turkey, as well as a recent diplomatic row over the Uyghur issue between the Chinese Embassy in Ankara and members of the Turkish opposition leadership.
Turkish-Born Uyghur Leader Seyit Tümtürk On Turkish-Chinese Relations: “This Is Dipping Your Bread In Your Brothers’ Blood”
Seyit Tümtürk has been organizing events to discuss the Chinese genocide of the Uyghurs and posting online in opposition to it and to Turkey’s developing relations with China. The Turkish government reportedly put Tümtürk under house arrest so that he would not be able to protest the recent visit of the Chinese foreign minister. Tümtürk said of the house arrest: “There are both plainclothes police and regular police at my door.”
Uyghur leader Seyit Tümtürk opposes Turkey’s China policy.
Tümtürk tweeted several times about the visit of the Chinese foreign minister and the high five that Erdoğan gave him. On March 25, Tümtürk wrote: “Were you able to ask about the Chinese genocide of 35 million people in East Turkestan, and the systematic mass rape in the camps and prisons, my honorable president?” On March 26, he wrote that the message sent by the high five “crushed” 35 million people in East Turkestan, and wrote: “At least we should not have rewarded China, which we [apparently] cannot condemn.” On March 27, he tweeted a photo of Erdoğan high-fiving the Chinese foreign minister beside a photo of Tümtürk with former Japanese President Shinzo Abe and wrote: “My honorable president, while we are talking about high-fiving a genocidal bloody hand, Japan is saying that the human rights violations in East Turkestan can never be accepted as a Chinese internal matter.”