The Uighur diaspora

The ethnic minority of the Uighurs, originally from the Xinjiang region in northwest China, is the largest refugee community in the world. Victim of the Chinese government's desire to eliminate it, the community has found refuge in Turkey, where currently more than 60,000 Muslim Uighurs reside, many of whom fled from Beijing only in recent years. Turkish authorities recently announced that they have arrested six people and are searching for a seventh, accused of spying on the Uighurs on behalf of the Chinese intelligence agency. According to their report, these individuals would have collected information on prominent members of the community to then send it to China. According to a 2020 investigation by Coda Media, these spies are mostly Uighurs residing in Istanbul who are coerced by Chinese authorities to participate in community events, under the threat to the safety of their family members living in Xinjiang. All this risks increasing tensions between Beijing and Ankara.

The Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnicity. Approximately, with their 12 million individuals, they represent about 0.6% of the total Chinese population while they are characterized as the most substantial ethnic majority in the Xinjiang region, accounting for 46% of the regional population. The Uighurs are one of the 56 ethnic groups recognized by the Chinese Communist Party. Tensions with the Party began following the collapse of the Soviet Union when, in the wake of the formation of new independent states in the Caucasus area, the Uighur ethnicity begins to entertain secessionist ideas. Despite its importance to the Chinese state due to its strategic position opening onto the Middle East and Central Asia and the large quantity of energy resources in the area, secessionist ideas have led to escalating tensions with the central government. Additionally, following inter-ethnic clashes in the region that led to the formation of Uighur terrorist cells, China has implemented an anti-terrorism operation against jihadist groups since 2015, which has then transformed into a program of de-Islamization and erasure of the Uighur ethnicity.

Since 2017, there have been reports of detention camps, described by the government as "transformation through education camps", inside which it is estimated that more than a million people are present. Here, detainees are subjected to forced labor and indoctrinated into Chinese culture. However, outside the camps, the situation does not seem to be any better. The region is now one of the most surveilled in the world, thanks to cameras equipped with facial recognition and the installation of applications for monitoring browsing within personal electronic devices. Moreover, since 2017, with the aim of depriving the Uighur ethnicity of their places of worship, mosques in the region have been destroyed by the Chinese government, decreasing from 24,000 to 15,000 in just a few years. At the heart of all this, despite the proclaimed counter-terrorism efforts, lies the process of sinicization and elimination of the Uighur ethnicity orchestrated by the Chinese government, a process that is also pursued through the reduction of births via mass sterilization, imposition of contraceptive methods, and induced abortions.

Over the years, Turkish President Erdoğan has had an ambiguous behavior, initially defending the Turkic-speaking minority and more recently shifting his positions to support the Chinese project. Already in 2009, when he was still Prime Minister, Erdoğan accused China of committing "genocide" against the Uighur minority. However, the Turkish state has never joined the international condemnation of the detention camps in Xinjiang, despite allowing the local Uighur population to express political dissent on several occasions, an action not easily granted under Erdoğan's government. The change in direction occurred concurrently with a significant growth in the commercial partnership along the Silk Road. Over the past decade, the two countries have strengthened a relationship centered on economic exchanges, international collaborations, and substantial Chinese investments in Turkey, particularly in important sectors such as infrastructure, finance, and telecommunications. In a recent meeting between President Erdoğan and his Chinese counterpart, the Turkish president stated that "it is a fact that all peoples and ethnicities in Xinjiang live happily" and that "Turkey will not allow anyone to sow discord" in the commercial and diplomatic relations between the two countries. In fact, since 2017, through an extradition treaty with China regarding Uighurs, ratified only in December 2020, Turkey has embarked on a process of assisting in the arrest and interrogation of Uighurs, who were expelled to third countries such as Tajikistan and then sent back to China. Officially, the treaty aims to strengthen judicial cooperation to facilitate the fight against terrorism. However, this counter-terrorism effort conceals an attempt at demographic genocide, raising many questions about the future of stability and human rights in both Xinjiang and Turkey, where once again, the interests of a minority have been overshadowed by economic interests that risk leading to the extinction of an entire people.

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Translated by Stefania Errico