Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping met Friday in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in a closed-door meeting that took place on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, Turkey’s state Anadolu news agency reported.
In the half an hour meeting, Xi urged “political mutual trust” between China and Turkey.
“The two sides should consolidate political mutual trust, respect each other’s core interests and consolidate the political foundation of China-Turkey strategic cooperative relations,” Xi said, according to a readout from Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
President Xi pointed out that in recent years, China-Turkey relations have maintained a momentum of growth, with steady progress in practical cooperation and effective collaboration against the pandemic.
President Erdogan also praised the important progress in Turkey-China relations in various areas and expressed the readiness to work with China to leverage bilateral mechanisms such as the inter-governmental cooperation committee to promote even more fruitful trade and investment cooperation between the two countries.
Erdogan also reiterated Turkey’s firm commitment to the one-China principle.
The main hurdle between Ankara and Beijing stems from the accusations of human rights violations against Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region.
China has been accused for years of detaining more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, and a recent UN report has stated torture allegations were credible.
“Allegations of patterns of torture or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence,” the report read.
Source:gerceknews
