China warns Turkey Uyghur criticisms could jeopardise trade

China warns Turkey Uyghur criticisms could jeopardise trade
A protest for Uyghur rights mounted in Washington, DC after China put down riots in Xingiang in 2009. / Malcolm Brown from Washington, DC.
By bne IntelliNews March 1, 2019

China’s ambassador to Ankara has warned Turkey that it risks jeopardising economic ties with Beijing if persists with its criticisms of Chinese treatment of Uyghur Muslims.

“There may be disagreements or misunderstandings between friends but we should solve them through dialogue. Criticising your friend publicly everywhere is not a constructive approach,” Deng Li, Beijing’s top diplomat in Ankara told Reuters in an interview.

He added: “If you choose a non-constructive path, it will negatively affect mutual trust and understanding and will be reflected in commercial and economic relations.”

As things stand, according to Deng many Chinese companies are looking for investment opportunities in Turkey including a third nuclear power plant project that Ankara wants to roll out.

Chinese companies including tech giant Alibaba are said to be actively looking at opportunities in Turkey. The lira’s sell-off in the currency crisis that struck the country last summer has made local assets cheaper.

Alibaba makes move, Chinese banks ‘interested
Alibaba last year acquired Turkish online retailer Trendyol. Other companies holding talks in Turkey include China Life Insurance and conglomerate China Merchants Group, Deng was cited as saying, while he added that Chinese banks wanted to invest in Turkey, following the lead of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) which bought Tekstilbank in 2015.

Chinese investment in Turkey would help address Ankara’s stark current account deficit. It was calculated at $27.6bn last year, with Turkey’s trade deficit with China standing at $17.8bn, Turkish Trade Ministry data shows.

In the interview, Deng also called on Turkey to adopt Chinese payment platforms such as WeChat and AliPay. “People don’t want to pay in cash and the population here is very young so they wouldn’t have trouble adapting to new technologies,” he said.

Long silence broken
Turkey had long remained silent over the fate of China’s Uyghurs, a Turkic people. However, in early February Turkey broke that silence, condemning China’s treatment of the Uyghurs as “a great embarrassment for humanity”.

“It is no longer a secret that more than one million Uyghur Turks—who are exposed to arbitrary arrests—are subjected to torture and political brainwashing in concentration centres and prisons,” the Turkish foreign ministry added in a statement.

Turkey watchers say it is possible that Ankara’s sudden decision to comment on the matter may be part of electioneering in advance of the March 31 local elections, and that Turkish officials will not keep up their criticisms once those are over.

One of the kinder descriptions of the facilities in which Uyghurs have been placed is “re-education camps” but Beijing calls them “vocational education centres” that help Uyghur citizens steer clear of terrorism and allow them to take paths leading to reintegration in society.

The northwestern Xinjiang region of China, where most of the Uyghurs live, has been under heavy police surveillance in recent years, after violent inter-ethnic tensions. Officials are even said to have attached QR codes to homes and to have devised a citizenship “scorecard” for Uyghurs which can be requested, for instance, during a job interview.

Seeking to assimilate
Critics say China is essentially seeking to assimilate Xinjiang’s minority population, systematically suppressing religious and cultural practices not in line with communist ideology and the objectives of the dominant Han culture.

Turkey has called on the international community and the UN “to take effective steps to end the human tragedy in Xinjiang region”.

More than one million people faced arbitrary arrest, torture and political brainwashing in Chinese internment camps in Xinjiang, it insists.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu repeated Ankara’s concerns at a United Nations meeting this week, calling on China to respect human rights and freedom of religion.

China has denied all the accusations of mistreatment and deems criticism at the UN to be interference in its sovereignty. Beijing says the camps are facilities that have stopped attacks of the type previously blamed on Islamist militants and separatists.

Two other countries that have hesitated to express any criticism of China’s use of the camps are Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. A substantial number of ethnic-Kazakhs and ethnic-Kyrgyz have also been sent to the camps but Kazakh and Kyrgyz officials, nervous that open criticism of Beijing over the matter could hinder trade and investment deals—including potential projects under the huge Belt and Road trade transport infrastructure initiative—are treading carefully, despite protest groups that have sprung up in their countries to demand action.

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