Turkey PM meets China’s Wen after Xinjiang trip

CHINA: Turkey’s Prime Minister discussed the Syrian crisis with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing Monday after an unprecedented stopover in the Asian nation’s ethnically-tense Xinjiang region. Ankara has in the past heavily criticised Beijing’s actions in Xinjiang -- home to mainly Muslim Uighurs who complain of repression under Chinese rule -- but the two nations have nevertheless forged closer ties in recent years.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on the first official trip to China by a Turkish premier in 27 years, held talks on Syria and Iran in Beijing with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Monday after a brief stopover in the northwestern region.

At the start of the meeting, Wen said Erdogan was the first Turkish Prime Minister to have visited Xinjiang -- whose roughly nine million Uighurs share linguistic and religious links with Turkey.

He said Erdogan had left a “good impression” there but gave no further details about the stopover in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, which analysts say is significant given Ankara’s past criticism.

Erdogan was the most vocal foreign leader to criticise China following deadly riots in July 2009 in Urumqi that saw at least 184 people killed. At the time, he urged China to stop the “assimilation” of the Uighur minority, and blamed Beijing for failing to stop the ethnic violence, which he compared to a “genocide.”

AFP