Turkey’s Overseas Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu stated his nation is not going to give in to strain from China to extradite Uyghurs who’ve Turkish citizenship, even when it has strained their relationship.
“Turkish-Chinese language ties have suffered over Beijing being disturbed by our perspective on the Turkic Uyghurs problem,” Cavusoglu informed reporters at a year-end press briefing in Ankara on Dec. 29, based on Turkish media studies.
“They’ve extradition requests for people who find themselves our residents, who dwell in Turkey on a regular basis. Due to this fact, we don’t grant any such requests,” he stated.
Turkey has been some of the hospitable nations to Uyghurs, with whom Turks share ethnic, spiritual and linguistic connections. Roughly 50,000 Uyghurs dwell in Turkey, forming the most important Uyghur diaspora outdoors Central Asia.
The Turkish authorities has supplied Uyghurs a protected place to dwell outdoors northwestern China’s Xinjiang area, the place they face persecution and are topic to human rights violations.
Lately, the Turkish authorities has been accused of deporting Uyghur dissidents to China through third nations adjoining to Xinjiang, making it simpler for Beijing to safe their extradition and presumably put them in “re-education” camps or prisons.
Cavusoglu stated studies in previous years that Turkey has been sending Uyghurs again to China have been “complete lies.”
“We defend Turkic Uyghurs’ rights within the worldwide area, and this disturbs China,” he stated. “However this can be a humanitarian problem.”
Nonetheless ready
Cavusoglu cited a report on Uyghurs in Xinjiang issued in late August 2022 by former U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet that stated severe human rights violations had been dedicated within the context of counter-extremism methods that “might represent worldwide crimes, specifically crimes towards humanity.”
“We have now to react to it,” he stated in regards to the rights violations detailed within the report.
When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Chinese language President Xi Jinping throughout a 2019 go to, he raised the therapy of Uyghurs in personal talks and accepted an invite to ship a humanitarian delegation to the Xinjiang area to look at how the minority was being handled.
However the problem induced friction between the 2 nations after the Turkish authorities submitted a request to China outlining the place the delegation needed to go to and whom it needed to talk with, and Beijing didn’t reply.
“It’s been 5 years since Xi proposed this. Why have you ever been stopping this delegation from visiting for 5 years, why do not you cooperate?” Cavusoglu stated, including that even the Turkish ambassador in Beijing can not go to Xinjiang.
Ulterior motives?
Turkish opposition events say that the overseas minister’s phrases have been motivated extra by the need of the ruling AK Get together, or Justice and Improvement Get together, to acquire votes than true concern for the Uyghurs.
“Mevlut Cavusoglu’s phrases don’t match with actuality,” stated Fahrettin Yokus, deputy of the nationalist Good Get together. “He’s elevating the Uyghur problem as a result of their social gathering needed to get votes within the upcoming election in 2023.”
“Turkish individuals care in regards to the East Turkistan problem,” Yokus stated, utilizing Uyghurs’ most popular identify for Xinjiang. “Sadly, the Turkish authorities didn’t take the Uyghur problem critically. Making this assertion now, this honorable overseas minister is trying to cover their shortcomings.”
Among the many shortcomings are declaring that the federal government would respect China’s territorial integrity regarding Xinjiang and shutting its eyes to the extreme rights violations, together with the huge community of internment camps wherein an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and different Turkic Muslims have been detained, Yokus stated.
Selcuk Ozdag, deputy chief of Turkey’s opposition Future Get together, stated the federal government had not expressed its agency stance on the Uyghur problem till now as a result of it had hoped to get a low-interest mortgage from China and produce extra Chinese language funding to Turkey.
“The Turkish overseas minister made this assertion as a result of their expectation from China didn’t materialize, and the election season is approaching very quickly,” he stated.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
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