Türkiye urges China to protect Uyghur cultural rights during high-level visit

This appeal came during Fidan’s three-day visit to China, where he held meetings with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Vice President Han Zheng, and other officials. Fidan also visited Urumqi and Kashgar in Xinjiang, marking the first visit by a Turkish official to the region since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit in 2012.

Türkiye has deep cultural and ethnic ties with the Uyghurs and hosts the largest Uyghur community outside China, providing refuge for those fleeing persecution.

The Chinese government has been accused of committing extensive human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang, actions that are often described as persecution or genocide.

Since 2014, the Chinese government, under CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, has reportedly incarcerated over a million Turkic Muslims in internment camps without legal process. From 2016 to 2021, these operations were led by Xinjiang CCP Secretary Chen Quanguo, representing the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II. Despite winding down the camps in 2019, reports indicate that many detainees were transferred to the formal penal system.

In addition to arbitrary detention, Chinese policies have included forced labor, suppression of Uyghur religious practices, political indoctrination, and forced sterilization and contraception. Reports estimate that since 2017, around 16,000 mosques have been destroyed or damaged, and hundreds of thousands of children have been separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools. Between 2015 and 2018, birth rates in predominantly Uyghur regions fell by over 60%, compared to a national decrease of 9.69%. Chinese authorities acknowledged a significant drop in birth rates in 2018 but denied claims of forced sterilization and genocide.

These actions have been characterized by various observers as forced assimilation, ethnocide, cultural genocide, or genocide. Accusations of genocide point to actions by the Chinese government that violate Article II of the Genocide Convention, which includes acts intended to destroy a racial or religious group.

China denies these allegations of human rights abuses. International reactions have varied, with the United Nations suggesting that China's policies in Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity, though it stopped short of labeling them genocide. The United States declared these abuses as genocide on January 19, 2021, though later findings indicated insufficient evidence for this characterization. Several countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Lithuania, and France, have passed non-binding motions describing China’s actions as genocide, while others like New Zealand, Belgium, and the Czech Republic have condemned the actions as severe human rights abuses.

In December 2020, the International Criminal Court dismissed a case against China due to jurisdictional limitations, as China is not a party to the ICC statute. This has not stopped global legislative bodies from continuing to voice their condemnation of China's treatment of Uyghurs. (ILKHA)