Ankara, Turkey, July 11: Turkey’s Prime Minister has compared ethnic violence in China’s Xinjiang province to genocide, escalating criticism of Beijing following this week’s killing of at least 156 people including Turkic-speaking, Muslim Uighurs.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s strong words came on Friday amid daily demonstrations in Turkey protesting the clashes in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi between Han Chinese and minority Uighurs, who share ethnic and cultural bonds to Turks. Hundreds of Turks prayed for the victims and set Chinese flags on fire in protests in Ankara and Istanbul.
“These incidents in China are as if they are genocide,” said Erdogan. “We ask the Chinese government not to remain a spectator to these incidents. There is clearly a savagery here.”
The Chinese government has already imposed curfews and flooded the streets of Urumqi with security forces to avoid a repeat of the running street battles earlier in the week.
Turkey itself is extremely sensitive to the use of the term ‘genocide’. Armenia says 1.5 million Armenians were slain by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I in what Armenians and several other nations recognise as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey vehemently rejects the allegation, saying that the death toll was inflated and that Armenians died in civil unrest as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
-Agencies