Are the Uyghurs Safe in Turkey?

Names in this story have been changed to protect people in this article from retribution.

At a popular Uyghur restaurant in Istanbul’s bustling Zeytinburnu district, Kerim, a young man from Urumqi, serves customers generous plates of shish kebabs, laghman noodles, and pilaf rice. He points to a sign in the window of the traditional noodle house which says in Chinese, English, and Turkish: “Chinese do not enter.” The shopkeepers put up the sign after numerous unknown people repeatedly came in to watch them, take photos of them, and intimidate them. 

“People keep disappearing here, so we can’t relax,” he says. 

Now thousands of miles away from stifling surveillance and hundreds of brutal internment camps in western China, the largest Uyghur diaspora community in the world tries to reimagine a small slice of home in Istanbul. Beijing’s relentless “Sinicization” push in Xinjiang province pushed many to seek refuge here after fleeing the region, but most still have family members and friends incarcerated back home. Kerim fled Xinjiang without his family four years ago via Egypt and has been unable to contact his relatives since, leaving him constantly worried about what has happened to them.