ANKARA, July 11th, 2009: Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said ethnic violence in China's Xinjiang province "like a genocide.
"We ask the Chinese government not to remain a spectator to these incidents. There is clearly a savagery here", Erdogan said. "We ask the government of China to abandon assimilation, because such assimilation can do you no good,"Erdogan added in a speech to his Justice and Development Party broadcast on television. Erdogan strongly criticized Beijing for the recent killing of at least 156 people including Turkic-speaking, Muslim Uighurs. In Ankara and Istanbul, thousands of angry Turkish demonstrators protested the clashes in Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi between Han Chinese and minority Uighurs and set Chinese flags on fire. The Han China's ethnic majority have lately been flooding into Xinjiang as the region becomes more developed. Uighurs share ethnic and cultural bonds to Turks. 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 weekErdogan is the leader of the Islamic-rooted government and he has spoken up for Uighurs as he did for Palestinians during Israel's offensive on Gaza earlier this year. In late January this year, Erdogan poured his anger on the stage he shared with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He told Peres: "You kill people."Copyright Emirates News Agency (WAM) 2009.
