China is angry with Turkey because Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan used the word ‘genocide’ to describe the ethnic clashes involving the Chinese Uighurs. However, is Mr Erdogan in a position to apologise?
 
By correspondent Bernard Bouwman

Few Turks who witnessed the television footage will forget it. Rebiya Kadeer, the leader of the Uighurs in exile, was on the NTV news station describing the suffering being inflicted on her community by the Chinese authorities. Her complaints were lengthy and disturbing.

The fact that all the good jobs in the Uighurs’ Xinjiang region go to Han Chinese was the least of it. Far more distressing was that the Chinese police fired indiscriminately on Uighurs, young and old, men and women. She said the Chinese couldn’t care less. “Have you ever visited Turkey to publicise this anti- Uighur oppression?” asked the presenter. Ms Kadeer replied: “I can’t get a visa anymore. I’ve tried a couple of times, but it’s impossible.”

Extended family
The comment hit the spot, because many Turks see the Uighurs as members of their extended family. As everyone in Turkey knows, the Turks originally came from Asia. Turkish grammar is akin to Japanese. The oldest examples of written Turkish are inscriptions found in Mongolia. This means Turks do not consider Asia a long way off – it is their land of origin.

Add to the equation the fact that Turks feel the world hates them, and it figures that they feel they should support Turkic peoples in other parts of the world. Public opinion was shocked that Ms Kadeer was not allowed to enter Turkey and the Uighur issue was taken up with a vengeance. This goes some way to explaining why the government felt it had to do something.

Rather not fight
Initially, the government was certainly not all that enthusiastic - China is a huge and powerful country, which may well eventually become the motor of the global economy. Turkey, with its enormous unemployment rate, would rather trade than fight with China.

However, public opinion left Mr Erdogan and his colleagues little choice. For days, the papers’ front pages were full of pictures of Uighur victims of the violence in China. There were also increasing numbers of protests in Turkey. Demonstrators laid black wreaths outside the Chinese embassy and held rallies outside mosques.

Deeply concerned
Mr Erdogan simply had no choice. His AK party relies on votes from religious and nationalist voters and both groups were deeply concerned about what was going on in China. That is why Mr Erdogan lashed out.

The mood in Turkey was, however, quick to change. After the industry minister called on Thursday for a boycott of Chinese goods, more or less every ministry announced he had been stating his personal views and that his comments did not represent the government’s position.

However, television programmes showed that public opinion backed his idea. A day later, when the Chinese authorities closed the mosques, telling people to hold Friday prayers at home, religious Turks became furious. That was when Mr Erdogan, always a good judge of the mood in the country, compared what was going on in China to genocide. His choice of word was loaded, seeing that the Turks are often accused of genocide in connection with the fate of the Armenians under the Ottoman Empire. He chose the ‘g’ word.

Excuses
It does not seem likely he will apologise. The issue is just too sensitive in Turkey. Just how sensitive can be seen from the large numbers of MPs who resigned from parliament’s Turkey-China friendship group in Ankara. Many Turkish MPs decided they could no longer be part of the group when ‘Turks’ in China were being treated so badly.

The fact that Turkey has a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council is also cranking up the tension, with many Turks feeling that their country has something to say about world events. They want Turkey’s voice to be heard. This all adds up to relations between Ankara and Beijing remaining troubled for some time to come. The fact that Rabiya Kadeer has now managed to get a visa for Turkey is something which will add to that trouble. She will do doubt use any visit to publicise still further the suffering being inflicted on the ‘Turks’ in China.

Photo: Wikipedia Commons