17 July 2026
Press Release – For Immediate Release
East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE)
East-Turkistan.Net
contact@East-Turkistan.Net
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) strongly condemns the July 16, 2026, political consultations between Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Miao Deyu and Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Berris Ekinci. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s readout, Beijing called for deeper “law enforcement and security” cooperation, while Ankara reaffirmed the “one-China principle” and vowed not to allow Turkish territory to be used against China’s claimed “sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.”
This is the latest chapter in a decades-long betrayal of the Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples suffering under China’s genocide and colonial occupation of East Turkistan. Following an Atlantic Council event, ETGE Minister for Foreign Affairs and Security Salih Hudayar met Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Levent Gümrükçü, urging Ankara to become a voice for East Turkistan and end its “security” and intelligence cooperation with China dating to 1996.
Ankara’s framing is a grotesque inversion of the truth. East Turkistan is an occupied country, the ancestral homeland of the Turkic peoples, and the cradle of Turkic civilization. China has illegally occupied and colonized it since the PRC invaded in late 1949, overthrowing the independent East Turkistan Republic. This is not Chinese “territorial integrity.” China is destroying Turkic sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity.
This is not diplomacy. It is complicity. For nearly three decades, Türkiye has helped Beijing monitor, infiltrate, co-opt, criminalize, and suppress East Turkistan’s national independence movement. This collaboration has enabled Beijing to intensify its colonial occupation and genocide with impunity.
As Türkiye and People’s Republic of China mark 55 years of relations, millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples remain imprisoned, enslaved, subjected to forced sterilization, and separated from their children in occupied East Turkistan. China’s March 2026 “Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress” codifies China’s genocidal policies.
“I told Deputy Foreign Minister Gümrükçü directly that Türkiye must be a voice for East Turkistan and act against China’s colonial occupation and genocide,” said Foreign Minister Hudayar. “Instead, Ankara continues deepening cooperation with a genocidal empire bent on eradicating Turkic culture, identity, and existence in East Turkistan.”
Such cooperation makes Türkiye a proxy for Beijing’s transnational repression and complicit in China’s ongoing genocide against the Turkic peoples of East Turkistan. It allows China to co-opt diaspora organizations, coerce East Turkistani refugees, and suppress East Turkistan’s national independence movement globally. By helping Beijing silence resistance abroad, Ankara pushes East Turkistan toward irreversible demographic, cultural, and national destruction.
The ETGE demands that Türkiye immediately terminate all security, intelligence, and law-enforcement cooperation with China. It calls upon the international community to condemn Ankara’s complicity in Beijing’s global repression, counter China’s transnational repression, take concrete action to end the ongoing genocide, and support East Turkistan’s decolonization and restoration of national independence in accordance with its people’s inalienable right to national self-determination.