Uyghurs

Chinese Embassy to Turkey has announced that the country's general-consulate in Izmir was closed as of Feb. 28 due to general arrangements with regard to consular activities. The move comes amid an ongoing row between Ankara and Beijing over the Uighur problem in which the former has harshly criticized Chinese government of assimilating the Muslim Turkic minority.

This picture taken on June 25, 2017 shows police patrolling in a night food market near the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar in China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, a day before the Eid al-Fitr holiday. The prefecture in the region's south has seen an explosion in the construction of “vocational training" centres for the region's Muslim minorities.

The future of economic development in China's far western Xinjiang region lies behind the shattered glass door of a welcome center on the outskirts of the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar.

If the 20th century was about the integration of China into the global economy; the integration of Asia and Central Asia particularly, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, into the global economy is the major project for the 21st century, according to Güven Sak, the head of the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV).

Chinese President Xi Jinping has told his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that the two countries should deepen counter-terrorism cooperation, amid Chinese concern about ethnic Uighurs from its Xinjiang region fighting with militants in the Middle East.

At least 180 buildings in Beijing, China are ruined after the 5.5 earthquake, which struck the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China (XUAR) on Thursday, according to the seismology centre of the region on social media, quoted by RNA Novosti, reported Focus News Agency.

Earlier was announced that 8 people died after the earthquake.

Turkish authorities have arrested two Chinese citizens in relation to the mass shooting at a night club in Istanbul on New Year's Eve, reported BGNES.

The detainees are Uyghurs - a Turkic ethnic group in northwest China.

Two Chinese nationals of Uighur origin were arrested on Friday for suspected links to the mass shooting in an Istanbul night club on New Year’s Eve, state-run Anadolu agency said.

Two suspects, Omar Asim and Abuliezi Abuduhamiti, who are Chinese citizens, were remanded in custody on charges of being members of an armed terrorist organization, and aiding in 39 counts of murder.

It is possible to travel from China's Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region in the east all the way to the Adriatic shores in the west speaking nothing but Turkish. Most people living in this vast geography belong to the Ural-Altaic language family, sharing common historical, religious, cultural and ethnic ties.
 

China has appointed its first counter-terrorism chief, state media said on Dec. 21, as it wages a controversial campaign to stamp out ethnic violence linked to the western Xinjiang region.