Interviewed in the fringes of the G8 meeting last Friday in Italy, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared the deaths during the suppression of the rioting in Urumqi to be a crime against humanity. For Mr. Erdoğan to accuse a major trading partner the size of China of premeditated violence against its own citizens took guts, but it took a certain style of bravura to accuse the Chinese authorities of committing, in the prime minister's words, something “tantamount to genocide.” It is not so difficult to understand why Mr. Erdoğan decided to opt for the moral high ground. Recent experience, therefore, has taught Mr. Erdoğan that there is not much to be lost and much kudos to be won by championing foreign causes which have the sympathies of his supporters. Last January, he won notoriety abroad and approval-rating points at home for dressing down Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. “One minute,” Turkey's premier told the hapless moderator who tried to shut the session down. He then went for the Israeli president's jugular by accusing him of “knowing how to kill.” It was a performance which left Talleyrand squirming in his grave but the Turkish public cheering. It was left to the Foreign Ministry, like Mr. Wolf the “clean-up” man in Pulp Fiction, to mop up the mess.
Turkey's policy makers will try to tidy up once again. Already Trade and Industry Minister Nihat Ergün has explained that his words were taken out of context and that he was only kidding when he called last week for a Turkish consumer boycott of Chinese goods. The Chinese themselves will understand only too well the way Mr. Erdoğan confuses foreign policy objectives with the need to throw bones to a domestic audience and may even be pleased that they can now blame a Muslim-majority country like Turkey for meddling in its affairs. However, it is Mr. Erdoğan's use of the word “genocide” which may come back to haunt him.
It doesn't require much explanation why that particular charge has such resonance in Turkish politics. Every year, Ankara musters its lobbyists and PR firms in Washington to prevent the US House of Representatives from recognizing the deaths of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 as “genocide.” Yet what happened in Urumqi on July 5, 2009 was not on an illusive scale of human suffering and evil as intense as what happened in Adana in April 1909. Then thousands of Armenians were butchered in the wake of the conservative counter-coup against the Young Turks. Pro-Hamidian mobs blamed the Armenians who had rejoiced at the constitutional shackling of the sultan the year before. These terrible events are referred to as “massacres” even by those historians who have no doubt that 1915 was “genocide.” Mr. Erdoğan's shooting from the hip could well persuade them to change their mind.
There is no doubt that the Chinese authorities have sown the seeds of the current discontent in Urumqi. They have pursued a policy of assimilation, and encouraged the colonization of Xinjiang by Han Chinese. China possesses an authoritarian system of government and there are those who react by pressing for greater autonomy and those who want to see the People's Republic of China go the way of the ex-Soviet Union. It is against a background of grievance that news of two Uighurs dying in a factory dispute in Guangdong sparked communal rioting in Urumqi. According to the BBC and other news agencies the majority of the 184 people known to have died were Han Chinese; hence, the stick-wielding Chinese mobs trying to extract revenge. The authorities interceded to keep the two communities from further tearing each other apart.
None of this is good news. It is right for other nations to express concern. And to understand is not to condone. Yet to react out of ethnic solidarity and not a universal concern for human rights is to risk appearing opportunistic with one's tears.
