Turkey vows to root out militants plotting against China

Turkey’s top diplomat vowed on Thursday to root out militants plotting against China, signalling closer cooperation against suspected Uygur militants hailing from China’s far west who have long been a sore point in relations between the two nations.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters during a visit to Beijing that his government would treat threats to China’s security as threats to itself and would not allow any “anti-China activity inside Turkey or territory controlled by Turkey”.

Cavusoglu’s tough comments, which came after a meeting and warm handshakes with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, were seen as referring to China’s Uygur ethnic minority, a Turkic people who share cultural and linguistic ties with Anatolian Turks.

Turkey and China have in recent years pledged to cooperate on security and counter-terrorism efforts, although experts say such ties are also balanced by mutual suspicion. Relations between Ankara and Beijing have been strained by Turkey’s support for groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – a China ally – and its sheltering of Uygur refugees.

Human rights groups have long accused China of oppressing its roughly 10 million Uygurs with severe restrictions on language, culture and religion and inflaming a cycle of resentment and radicalisation. Hundreds have died in Xinjiang in violent clashes in recent years and China now keeps the region, with a land area comparable to Iran, under a constant lockdown with massive policing and surveillance efforts that activists say are rife with abuse.