Protests As Wang Yi Visits Turkey For Talks

Nearly 1,000 Uighurs rallied in Istanbul on Thursday as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met his Turkish counterpart for talks expected to focus on coronavirus vaccines and the countries' extradition treaty.

Wang also met privately with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a visit coinciding with a spike in new virus infections that follows an easing of restrictions at the start of the month.

Turkey is using the Chinese firm Sinovac's CoronaVac jab in its inoculation effort and is currently negotiating new deliveries.

But the country's 50,000-strong Uighur community fears that China is making new shipments dependent on Turkey's ratification of an extradition treaty that the parliament in Beijing approved late last year.

Both countries officially deny any such link and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted that he had "conveyed our sensitivity and thoughts on Uighur Turks" to Wang.

Turkey and China "will enhance our cooperation on (the) fight against (the) pandemic", as well as on vaccines, Cavusoglu's tweet added.

The protesters waved sky blue flags of Uighur separatists' self-proclaimed state of East Turkestan as they gathered in Istanbul's historic old town chanting "China, stop the genocide!"

Turkish police forced a smaller group of protesters to move away from China's embassy in Ankara.

Rights groups believe at least one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities have been incarcerated in camps spread out across the vast northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang.

Beijing strongly denies the allegations and says it is organising training programmes and work schemes to help stamp out extremism in the region. (AFP)