Anti-Chinese Protests in Turkey: Relations with China Under Test
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No. 153/2015 dated
15 July 2015
Anti-Chinese Protests
in Turkey:
Relations with China
Under Test
By James M. Dorsey
Synopsis
Protests in Turkey against alleged repression of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang have put China’s sensitive relationships with the Muslim world to the test. The protests raise the spectre of China’s restrictive policy towards the Uighurs muddying relations with other Muslim nations as well.
Commentary
CHINA AND TURKEY had high hopes when Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on a 2010 visit to Ankara negotiated a strategic partnership, that envisioned Turkey helping China quell a simmering insurgency in its north-western autonomous region of Xinjiang.
The deal, a year after then Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused China of genocide in Xinjiang, involved a
halt to Turkish support for Uighur secessionist groups. It promised mutual
economic benefit and Turkish leverage at both ends of the Silk Road Economic
Belt that Beijing hopes to revive across the Eurasian land mass. Together with
the Maritime Silk Road in what Beijing calls the “One Belt One Road” project,
this comprises a network of roads, railways, ports and pipeline that China
expects will link it to the Middle East and Europe via Central, Southeast and
South Asia.
High hopes
In recognition of the fact that Uighurs
historically have always looked West towards their Turkic cousins rather than
East at the Han Chinese, China encouraged Turkey to invest in Xinjiang on
preferential terms in the hope that greater Turkish influence would dampen
nationalist sentiment in the region that has been on the rise since the 1989
Tiananmen Square protests. Chinese expectations of Turkey’s potentially
moderating influence were also reflected in China’s decision to send religious
students to Turkey rather than to Islamic centres of learning in the Arab
world.
Close relations were further highlighted by
Ankara considering the acquisition of a Chinese surface-to-air missile system
and Turkey becoming the first country in which a Chinese bank would operate an
overseas business with the acquisition of Tekstilbank by Industrial and
Commercial Bank of China, the world’s largest bank.
China had hoped that by enlisting Turkey it
would be able to counter US support for Uighur activists that it viewed as an
effort to create problems for Beijing in its own backyard. Chinese concerns
have since been heightened by the fact that an estimated 300 Chinese Muslims
have joined the Islamic State (IS) in Syria whose leader, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi,
described China as one of the worst violators of Muslim rights.
War of words
Those hopes now threaten to be mired in a war
of words between Beijing and Ankara sparked by Uighur nationalist protests
against Chinese discrimination, including a ban on fasting during Ramadan and
the forced opening of restaurants during daytime fasting hours.
The ban was introduced at the tail end of a
failed year-long government campaign against what it termed “terrorism” and
“illegal religious activity” that involved strict controls of sermons in
mosques, closure of a number of Islamic schools and restrictions on traditional
dress.
Nationalist Turks see the ban that applies to
government employees, students and teachers – a significant segment of the
Uighur population -- as the latest of a series of restrictive measures aimed at
weakening Uighur identity and religiosity. Chinese authorities have defined
illegal religious activity among others as refusing to shake a woman’s hand;
rejection of inter-ethnic marriage; boycotting government social programmes,
and closing restaurants during Ramadan. Women’s headscarves and beards are
viewed with suspicion.
The measures have also sparked protests in
Malaysia and Cairo. The 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)
expressed concern and called on Beijing to respect Uighurs’ religious rights.
The Qatar-backed International Union of Muslim Scholars headed by prominent
Islamic scholar Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi put out a similar, more strongly
worded statement.
Turkish passions were fuelled by sensationalist
reports in pro-government media of a massacre of Uighurs while fasting and
others being forced to consume alcohol. These came amid domestic Turkish
politicking as Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu sought to forge a coalition
government in the wake of last month’s parliamentary election that failed to produce
an absolute majority for the ruling Justice and Democracy Party (AKP).
A pro-government newspaper, catering to
nationalist sentiment, published a bloodied map of Xinjiang as part of its
coverage of a visit to Beijing by a delegation from the left-wing Peoples’
Democratic Party (HDP), the first pro-Kurdish party to be represented in the
Turkish parliament. The newspaper said the HDP had gone ahead with the visit
“despite the East Turkestan torture,” a reference to Xinjiang by its Uighur and
Turkic name.
Chinese policy as core driver of unrest
In response, Chinese officials have revived
accusations that Turkey is encouraging Uighur radicalism. Tong Bishan of the
Chinese public security ministry's Criminal Investigation Department recently
told foreign correspondents that Turkish diplomats in South-east Asia had
facilitated passage of hundreds of Uighurs to Turkey from where they were being
sold to IS as "cannon fodder".
Tong was referring to the issuing of Turkish
passports to 173 Uighur refugees in Thailand to prevent their return to China.
The issue of Turkish passports has however become sensitive after the
perpetrators of an attack last year at a train station in Kunming in Yunnan
province in which 33 people were killed, were found to have been travelling on
Turkish documents.
China’s focus on external forces fuelling
unrest in Xinjiang was however called into a question by a clash with police
last month in the ancient city of Kashgar in which 28 people died. The clash’s
background suggested that Chinese policy rather than Islamist ideology may be a
core driver fuelling nationalist violence.
The attackers were reportedly members of one
family whose land had been confiscated and given to a Han Chinese.
Impoverished, the family turned to religion, only to be tackled by authorities
who forced female members to bare their hair and males to shave their beards.
The government, rather than heed warnings of
the impact of Chinese policies, has sought to silence its critics. Uighur
scholar Ilham Tohti warned in a lengthy article published after he was arrested
last year that because Chinese policies “do not address deep-seated problems,
we cannot afford to be sanguine about Xinjiang’s future, nor can we be certain
that violence will not erupt again”.
Tohti’s warning appears to be something that
China accepts as a principle to counter jihadism anywhere but in Xinjiang. In a
recent debate on US-Chinese cooperation in the Middle East, Yang Jiemian, a
senior fellow at Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, argued that
“tackling root causes” was the key to combatting extremism but that “China has
other ways” that include a “strong medicine with side effects”.
It is the strong medicine that threatens to
complicate China’s relations with key players in the Muslim world, as seen in
the protests by the OIC and global Islamic leaders as well as in countries such
as Malaysia and Egypt.
James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore and co-director of the Institute of Fan Culture of the
University of Wurzburg, Germany.
Block S4, Level B4, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798
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