“I AM not Chinese, I am Korean,” cried a frightened young woman as she was led away from demonstrators chanting anti-Chinese slogans near Istanbul’s Blue Mosque. Ultra-nationalists and Islamists were marching in solidarity with China’s Uighurs, who are Muslims and ethnic Turks, following reports of deadly clashes between students and police in Xinjiang province.
The incident is the latest in a spate of anti-Chinese protests egged on by media coverage of the plight of the Uighurs. Across Turkey, protesters have burned China’s flag and effigies of Mao Zedong. (Mao died nearly 40 years ago, but is better known than China’s current president.) Last week a Chinese restaurant in Istanbul was vandalised to cries of Allahu Akhbar. It later emerged that the “Happy China” was run by Turkish Muslims and that its chef was Uighur. “We don’t even serve booze,” griped the owner.
Turkey’s government echoes the protesters’ complaints, albeit more diplomatically. The foreign ministry said that news of Uighurs being “banned from fasting and fulfilling other acts of worship had been received with sadness by the Turkish public.” Devlet Bahceli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Action Party, asked crudely: “How does one distinguish between Chinese and Koreans? Both have slanted eyes.”
China denies that it has banned the fast, but it...
from The Economist: Europe http://ift.tt/1eJgub6
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