{"id":189756,"date":"2021-02-26T19:32:07","date_gmt":"2021-02-26T16:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/just-like-erdogan-the-mistake-trudeau-is-making-with-china\/"},"modified":"2021-02-26T19:32:07","modified_gmt":"2021-02-26T16:32:07","slug":"just-like-erdogan-the-mistake-trudeau-is-making-with-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/just-like-erdogan-the-mistake-trudeau-is-making-with-china\/","title":{"rendered":"#’Just like Erdogan’: The mistake Trudeau is making with China"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#’Just like Erdogan’: The mistake Trudeau is making with China<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Adnan R. Khan: Turkey’s president was one of the first global leaders to call the treatment of China’s Uyghurs a genocide. Then came the pressure from China.\n <\/div>\n
\n Back in 2009, the treatment of China\u2019s Uyghurs was barely a blip on the political radars of western capitals. Understandably, of course: much of the world at that time was engulfed in a financial crisis the likes of which had never been seen before. Like the pandemic of today, the Great Recession provided cover for all sorts of atrocities and transgressions in authoritarian nations the world over. But there was one leader who was talking publicly about it\u2014Turkey\u2019s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.<\/p>\n

Erdogan\u2019s support for the Uyghurs was deeply personal. Many Turks, rightly or wrongly, consider their cousins in China to be direct descendants of the Oghuz Turks, the original Turkic clans that would band together in the 8th century and eventually create the Ottoman Empire. Their language is the closest you can find to the Turkish spoken in Turkey today, much closer than the Turkish in the more well-known Turkic nations of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.<\/p>\n

Erdogan had reason to be angered by the mistreatment of these autochthonous Turks. And it was a rare occasion in which the Turkish president\u2019s signature bluster proved to be more than mere diversion. Erdogan pointed a finger at a gathering atrocity in its early stages. At the time, China still had not built the internment camps where it now imprisons up to a reported two million Uyghurs; it had not\u2014yet\u2014turned Xinjiang province into a surveillance state.<\/p>\n

But it was killing and arresting Uyghurs on a mass scale nonetheless. Indeed, since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the Chinese Communist Party had followed the lead of Republicans under George W. Bush, viewing anyone who fit a certain profile\u2014in China\u2019s case, anyone of Turkic descent who showed outward signs of religious belief\u2014to be a terrorist. Uyghurs who had fought for years to protect their language and culture from Han Chinese colonization, were suddenly labeled, arrested, and in some cases, permanently disapp<\/a>eared.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe incidents in China are, simply put, a genocide,\u201d Erdogan, who was prime minister at the time, said. \u201cThere\u2019s no point in interpreting this otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem was that by 2009 Turkey had already taken the bait in China\u2019s now familiar geopolitical modus operandi: only a month earlier, its then-president, Abdullah Gul, had signed a $1.5 billion trade deal with China. Since 2001, Turkey\u2019s bilateral trade with China had ballooned from US$1 billion a year to over $10 billion. In the years to come, it would continue to grow, peaking at over $28 billion in 2013.<\/p>\n

As Turkey\u2019s economic reliance on China grew, Erdogan\u2019s latitude for tough talk shrank. It wasn\u2019t so much that China was pouring money into Turkey\u2014equity capital investments by Chinese investors totalled a mere US$1.9 billion in 2019, compared to over $100 billion from Europe\u2014but the promise of favoured nation status at a time when Turkey\u2019s relationships with its western allies were crumbling was too much to ignore.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, with its traditional alliances in jeopardy, the Erdogan government wants to use the China and Russia cards in its dealings with the western world,\u201d Ilhan Uzgel, the former head of the political science<\/a> department at Ankara University, who was fired for his criticisms of the AK Party, tells me. \u201cIt does not want to be on bad terms with China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s predicament is a cautionary tale of how not to deal with the Chinese Communist Party. In its fevered quest to be self-sufficient and independent, Turkey has found itself isolated and, in recent years, as the full scale of China\u2019s crackdown on its Uyghurs have come to light, Erdogan has, out of necessity, remained uncharacteristically quiet.<\/p>\n

Canada, Uzgel says, should be careful not to make the same mistake. \u201cIf you show weakness or division, the Chinese will try to exploit it,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you are isolated, the Chinese will try to take advantage of you. It\u2019s surprising that the Canadian Prime Minister would not join with the parliament to call what is happening to the Uyghurs a genocide. Canada is not Turkey; it is not isolated; it has a good relationship with the U.S. and with the Europeans. Confronting China is going to take this entire united front working in unison. That\u2019s the message Canada should be sending, that it is on board with a global effort to confront the Chinese.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike Canada, Turkey faces a much more fraught predicament. Most recently, rumours have spread that China is using vaccine diplomacy\u2014delaying delivery of the Sinovac vaccine\u2014to arm-twist Turkey into ratifying an extradition treaty the two countries signed in 2017. Turkey is home to the world\u2019s largest Uyhgur exile community, and much of the activism to bring attention to the plight of the Uyghurs, and preserve Uyghur culture, is centred in Istanbul. If that community is turned over to the Chinese, the last Uyghur-led resistance to China would potentially disappear.<\/p>\n

Both Chinese and Turkish officials deny that the delay in vaccine deliveries has anything to do with politics but Turkey\u2019s substantial Uyghur population is nonetheless terrified.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe appreciate that Turkey has resisted ratifying the treaty so far,\u201d one Uyghur activist in Istanbul told me recently, requesting anonymity. \u201cBut we also know how China operates and this pandemic has created opportunities for it. We\u2019re living day by day here with the fear that we could be deported back to China at any time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the fall of 2019, the same activist spoke to me openly, and on the record, about what Uyghurs faced in China (I never ended up using his interview for the story I was researching then, thankfully in retrospect). He described how Chinese authorities were \u201csystematically trying to erase our culture\u201d and how the world was doing nothing to stop them. It was heartbreaking to hear the stories of Uyghur\u2019s in exile in Istanbul, of families torn apart for the grave crime of faith, of a language and history deemed a threat and in need of erasure.<\/p>\n

During our recent telephone conversation, I told him about the decision in the Canadian parliament to call what was happening to the Uyghurs a genocide. His voice perked up. \u201cReally?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Then I told him about the Canadian Prime Minister and his cabinet refusing to join the declaration. He let out a cynical laugh. \u201cYeah, just like Erdogan.\u201d
\n<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

For forums sites go to Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

If you want to read more News<\/a> articles, you can visit our General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#’Just like Erdogan’: The mistake Trudeau is making with China” Adnan R. Khan: Turkey’s president was one of the first global leaders to call the treatment of China’s Uyghurs a genocide. Then came the pressure from China. Back in 2009, the treatment of China\u2019s Uyghurs was barely a blip on the political radars of western…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":189757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/GettyImages-88989551-766x431.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4973,67806,67816,75393,77526],"class_list":["post-189756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-editors-picks","tag-justin-trudeau","tag-turkey","tag-uyghurs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}