Limits of Turkey’s soft power

China, on the other hand, presents itself as an alternative model of “peaceful growth.” It has been trying to appeal to Central Asian and African countries as a source of inspiration and a partner in transnational affairs, claiming that its model for growth is ethically responsible and is also respectful of the rights and ambitions of other nations. For an African nation, China means not only a powerful and stable foreign investor, but also a non-imperial, non-colonizing, non-exploiting superpower willing to share its advancements in technology and trade. This was the source of China's soft power.

Both soft powers have their limits.

The limits of Turkey's soft power stand right at the limits of China's soft power. There, Turkey is left powerless and China's hard power comes to the fore.

The recent unfortunate events in Turkistan are just a new ring in a chain of human rights violations that have been taking place in China. The shame is shared by both the Chinese and the Western powers that have been keeping silent on the face of the brutalities of the Chinese Communist Party. Of course the Chinese have their explanation of what took place there. And of course that explanation deserves to be heard. In the end of the day, we may find ourselves acknowledging China to be right in using an iron fist in the region. But the very fact that the Western world has kept silent will never find itself an excuse.

Events in Turkistan were an open challenge to the Obama Vision that took office only recently in Washington, D.C., and that challenge went without being responded to. The silence of the US has damaged the trustworthiness of Obama's promises to be a just and fair listener of grievances of other nations. But China damaged its own image as an alternative to the Western self-centric capitalist development model. From now on, no African nation will ever believe that China will not pursue its interests by violent means one day. From now on, China's neighbors that have been threatened by the giant's rapid growth, will never believe that Chine is there not to swallow their economies but to share the bounties of mutually beneficial cooperation.

A China that tries to assimilate its own citizens, that categorizes a particular ethnicity as backward, separatist and terrorist without any pretext, that exploits the natural wealth of an autonomous region under its occupation will never be able to convince relatively underdeveloped nations that it is any different than the European colonizers.

That is the extent of China's soft power.

Turkey has one of the largest Uighur diasporas in the world. Many Turks believe that Uighurs are in fact the authentic Turks of the world and that the Turks of Anatolia originally migrated from somewhere around the Uighur region of Turkistan. Turkistan is populated not only by Uighurs but also by the Kazakh, the Turkmen, the Kyrgyz, the Tajik and the Chinese Muslim ethnic minorities. Turkey is linked to these minorities both through religious, historical and linguistic reasons and because the role of mediation Turkey assumes necessitates that care and interest.

The Turkish prime minister was the first to realize the necessity to respond to the events -- almost genocide, in his words -- and he did so by promising that Turkey would carry the allegations to the UN Security Council and by giving a green light to the “mother of the Uighur nation,” Ms. Rabiye Kadeer, to come and settle down in Turkey. The prime minister also realized the limits of Turkey's soft power.

China is not Syria. Ankara was able to convince Syria single-handedly. Its leverage over Damascus was powerful enough so as to mobilize the Syrian leadership to re-evaluate its positions on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), its relations with the West and with Iran. China, on the other hand, is virtually inconvincible.