Uighurs pay price of Turkey’s deals with China
After fleeing oppression in their Chinese homeland, Muslim refugees now face being sent back by hosts keen to appease new friend
She was chatting to her son, when the phone call was suddenly interrupted. That was the last anyone heard from Aimuzi Kuwanhan, a 59-year-old Uighur Muslim mother of two, who had fled China to what she thought was a safe haven in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey.
Originally from Kashgar in Xinjiang, China – once a stop on the Silk Road – Kuwanhan found refuge in Turkey from a suffocating campaign of repression against China’s Uighurs. But China, it seems, came looking for her, and, one year on, no one can even say if she is alive. The widow’s family believes she has been extradited to an unknown fate in China, via Tajikistan. Like hundreds more, she is a victim, they believe, of big business colliding with human rights, another human sacrifice to keep Beijing’s investment rolling into Turkey. No wonder, then, that an increasing number of Uighurs in Turkey are fearful of China’s reach.
Ismael Cengiz, a prominent activist known as the Uighurs’ symbolic prime minister, says: “There are threats, and they are systematic. They want us to think they can get us anywhere.”
Turkey has, it has been proud to say, been good for the Uighurs. An estimated 50,000 of them are refugees here, and they have flourished under Erdoğan, who in recent years has cast himself as a protector of Muslims across the world.
In the Istanbul neighbourhood of Zeytinburnu, their culture has thrived. Uighur poetry is published; shops throughout sell elaborate Uighur garments; and restaurants serve the spicy noodle dishes that remind so many of home.
Turkey has also given them a platform to tell the world of what they say is the genocide being perpetrated against China’s Muslims, with 1.5million Uighurs held in concentration camps across the country. So far, so good.
But now lawyers say Beijing is manipulating extradition agreements to drag Uighurs back to the reeducation camps. And, activists argue, Ankara’s growing economic dependence on Beijing is compromising its ability to withstand Chinese pressure, and to protect Uighurs who have fled Xinjiang. While Turkey refuses to send Uighurs directly back to China, campaigners say there are those willing to send them to third countries, like Tajikistan. From there, it is easier for China to secure their extradition.
So why would Turks be complicit in this? Money, comes the answer, and ensuring Chinese investment in Turkey continues.
Kuwanhan, believed to be suffering from dementia, suddenly vanished from the state housing she lived in last summer. She surfaced two weeks later with a phone call from a detention centre in Izmir, a Turkish city on the Aegean coast. Turkish authorities deny she was detained in Izmir deportation centre, but phone records prove she made multiple calls to her family from a fixed-line within the centre.
After several weeks, Kuwanhan was told she had been cleared for release, the family says. But, in the middle of the call to her son, a guard yelled at her to hang up the phone. She has not been heard from since. A lawyer hired by her family subsequently discovered that she had been extradited to Tajikistan, despite having never lived there or having held Tajik citizenship. Sources who knew her say from there she was sent to China.
Those who knew her said that after arriving in Turkey, she tried to live a quiet life. In 2012, though, one of her sons was sentenced to 14 years in prison in China for learning the Koran.
A convulsing economy and friction with Europe have forced Turkey to seek other friends, in particular China. As a key part of Beijing’s Belt & Road investment strategy, Chinese corporations have invested billions in developing Turkish infrastructure, and Beijing aims to double investments to more than $6billion (£5billion) by the end of 2021. Ankara’s increasing dependence on Beijing has come at a cost for Uighurs. As Cengiz says: “There is so much money at stake, our cause is only second to that.”
Though publicly supportive of the Uighur plight, Ankara is hamstrung by bilateral agreements with China’s justice ministry. They oblige Turkish authorities to investigate complaints raised by China against individuals.
Turkey is also keen to improve its international standing on how it deals with terrorists amid claims it was soft on foreign jihadists travelling to Syria during the Syrian civil war. Beijing stands accused of playing on that.
The Sunday Telegraph was shown documents submitted by China’s Public Security Ministry as part of extradition requests proclaiming the targets to be terrorist suspects. Although several hundred Uighurs did travel to Syria to join Uighur jihadist groups, the applications focus on Uighur identity. Scores of Uighurs have spent months in detention and deportation centres across Turkey without charge as the result of Chinese judicial demands.
Turkey has a policy of not deporting Uighurs to China, where they would likely face detention or death, but The Sunday Telegraph has evidence that China succeeded in getting Uighurs deported to third countries. They are then believed to be sent on to China.
Ibrahim Ergin, a lawyer who specialises in deportation cases, said: “No Uighurs will be extradited directly to China. I don’t think this will change any time soon. So they [China] try to make their lives as miserable as they can, and get them sent to other countries where possible. As China’s and Turkey’s relations have got better, it’s the Uighurs who have lost.” He said that intelligence briefings sent as part
‘There are threats, and they are systematic. They want us to think they can get us anywhere’
‘I have a list of 200 Uighur academics in Turkey. One way or another, China is making demands on them’
of extradition requests often feature fabricated testimonies. One was based on five testimonies, but three of the alleged witnesses had been executed in Chinese camps, Ergin added.
He described how the Turkish government is being swamped by extradition demands, arrest warrants, and judicial requests from China. Some come directly from Beijing, others through Interpol, and he suspects others are issued by third countries on behalf of China. Ergin said: “I have a list of 200 Uighur academics in Turkey. In one way or another, China is making demands on all of them.”
Ilsan Aniwar, wearing a blue medical face mask bearing the slogan “Free Uighurs”, is a key figure in the Uighur community, thanks to his online videos on Xinjiang. He claims Beijing is putting pressure on Turkish authorities to stifle activism on the concentration camps in China, and that there are spies within the camps.
Aniwar said: “There are people working for China inside our community. We used to campaign and raise awareness outside all the big mosques, and fly [Uighur] flags at public events. They don’t let us any more.” Aniwar’s activism has seen him arrested several times in the last year. He said that during his most recent detention, guards tried to trick him into signing a voluntary deportation request. All the activists The Sunday
Telegraph spoke to were guarded about Turkey. As Ismail Cengiz says, “It’s not in our interest to pick a fight with the Turkish state. They have been good to us. When nobody else was listening, they took us in.”
The Sunday Telegraph approached a Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson for comment, but received no reply. Turkey has previously vehemently denied deporting Uighurs to China.