Uyghurs in Turkey protest Chinese FM's visit amid extradition treaty fears

On a March afternoon in Istanbul and Ankara, hundreds of Uyghurs took to the streets with a single urgent message: do not send us back. They gathered at Beyazit Square in Istanbul holding photographs of relatives they believed were trapped in detention camps across the border in China's Xinjiang region. Simultaneously, in the capital, more protesters assembled near the Chinese Embassy while inside, a high-stakes diplomatic meeting was underway.

The occasion was the visit of China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who had come to meet with Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. For the Uyghur community living in Turkey, the timing felt ominous. China had recently ratified an extradition treaty with Turkey that had been signed years earlier but never activated. Turkey had not yet ratified it on its end, but the fear was palpable: if the agreement moved forward, the people in those streets could be forcibly returned to the country they had fled.

Burhan Uluyol, standing among the protesters in Istanbul, articulated what many felt. He called on Turkey to stand with what Uyghurs call East Turkestan—their ancestral homeland in Xinjiang—and not to abandon them for economic gain. The plea reflected a deeper anxiety about Turkey's shifting priorities. For decades, Turkey had positioned itself as a defender of the Uyghur cause, drawing on shared cultural and religious ties. But in recent years, as economic partnerships with China deepened, that vocal support had quieted. The government's silence felt like a betrayal to those who had sought refuge there.

The camps themselves remained a point of contention. China initially denied their existence entirely, then shifted to describing them as vocational training centers designed to combat extremism. Officials in Beijing rejected all accusations of human rights abuses. International observers and human rights organizations, however, documented a different reality: mass detention, forced labor, cultural suppression, and systematic surveillance. The camps held hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities.

Fatma Hasan, a 21-year-old demonstrator, articulated the specific fear driving the protests. She believed Wang's visit was designed to pressure Turkey into ratifying the extradition agreement. If that happened, she said simply, "we will be returned." The prospect was not abstract. These were people who had left China precisely because of what they had experienced or witnessed there. To be sent back would mean facing the system they had escaped.

Both Turkish and Chinese officials moved quickly to deny that the extradition treaty targeted Uyghurs specifically. The agreement, they insisted, was a routine legal instrument between two nations. But for the protesters holding photographs of missing relatives, the distinction felt meaningless. They knew what ratification could mean in practice, regardless of what the treaty's language said on paper.

Wang's visit was part of a broader regional tour that would take him to Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Bahrain. For Turkey, the visit represented a moment of choice—one that would not be resolved that day, but one that would determine the safety and future of thousands of people who had made Turkey their home.