Vacationing Amid Oppression: Turkish Tourism in the Uyghur Region

September 16, 2024

A UHRP Insights column by Aykut Yunusoglu, Independent Researcher

The Uyghur Region remains a focus of international concern due to ongoing crimes against humanity against the Uyghur population, including mass detentions, forced labor, cultural erasure, and extensive surveillance. Human rights organizations, governments, and other international bodies have widely condemned the actions of the Chinese government.

Commercial relations between the Uyghur Region and the outside world have come under increasing scrutiny due to these abuses, with tourism being a key concern. This commercial activity raises particular ethical and moral concerns due to the facade it provides to the Chinese government’s narrative of a stable and prosperous Uyghur Region, obscuring the reality of conditions for Uyghurs. 

Further, tourism allows the Chinese authorities to impose a narrative that Uyghur culture is “pre-modern” or “backward” and that the Chinese government is bringing reform and modernity to Uyghur society. By turning mosques into hotels or restaurants, and with the museumification of mazars (cemeteries where large gatherings would take place), an illusion is created centered around a false image of how Uyghur people used to live, reinforcing for tourists the idea that Uyghur culture lacks modernity. The whole experience is oriented toward evidencing and reinforcing official government positions, demonstrating that the Chinese government has good cause to reconstitute Uyghurs as a people modernized in their own image. 

Aside from selectively saving aspects of Uyghur culture that reinforce state narratives, “Uyghurness” that is deemed useful is open to be commercialized and exploited. Supporting tourism into the region risks legitimizing these practices. Despite this grave situation in the Uyghur homeland, Turkish travel companies are currently offering tours to the region. 

For instance:

• TatilSepeti, one of Turkey’s largest tourism companies, offers a tour* starting in Istanbul, with flights to Samarkand and Tashkent in Uzbekistan, and then to Ürümchi on local airlines. The tour takes in several cities in the Uyghur Region, including Kasghar, Ürümchi, Khotan and Qaghiliq, and is notably the most expensive tour to Central Asia offered by the company.
• Festtravel offers tours to the Uyghur Region, priced similarly to high-end tours to Japan or Europe. Their tours require a Chinese Group Visa invitation and include stops at multiple cities in the region, highlighting cultural sites like the Taklamakan Desert Pass and Kashgar Sunday Bazaar.
• Ejder Turizm offers a tour** covering Samarkand, Tashkent, Ürümchi, Turpan, Khotan, Qaghiliq, Kashgar, Osh in Kyrgyzstan, and Fergana in Uzbekistan. The tour flies to Uzbekistan on Turkish Airlines and enters the Uyghur Region on local airlines. 
• Dünyanın Renklerine Yolculuk Turizm offers a tour to Turpan and Ürümchi, extending into Tibet. Flights into Chengdu and from Chengdu back to Turkey are with Qatar Airways. Other forms of travel are arranged through unspecified “local airlines.”

In East Turkistan—as many Uyghurs prefer to call their homeland—the Chinese authorities use tourism as a political instrument to impose a state designed perception on visitors. Chinese state propaganda paints the region as prosperous, stable, and safe. Tours to the region tacitly endorse this propaganda by promising “authentic” cultural and historical experiences, while the Uyghur identity on display is merely a commodified version being sold by the Chinese state. The experience is akin to a play or a performance, written and directed by the Chinese government. Tourists become the unwitting amplifiers of this new normal, while the very culture and history they have ostensibly paid to see has been destroyed.

Besides leveraging tourists as amplifiers, the Chinese state media publishes articles and vlogs by journalists visiting the region from select countries such as Turkey and the Arab states. An article featuring a group led by Zeynesh, a Kazakh and Turkish citizen, portrays the Uyghur Region as thriving and harmonious, using phrases like “our glorious country” to describe China. 

By such use of the media and by focusing on visitors to the region, China is attempting to legitimize its political agendas in East Turkestan. The carefully curated narrative is designed and fully intended to mislead the international community and potential tourists about the true situation on the ground.

Turkey’s Role and Responsibilities

Turkey, with its significant geopolitical influence and cultural ties to the Uyghur population, is in a unique position to lead the international community in responding to the ongoing crisis in East Turkistan. Turkey hosts one of the largest populations of Uyghur people in the diaspora, estimated at 50,000, and has extensive cultural and historical links to the region. On June 10, 2024, Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, visited the region and spoke to locals in front of the cameras. In his statements he referred to cities in the Uyghur homeland as “bridges between China, the Turkic world, and the Islamic world,” highlighting historical connections and emphasizing trade relations. 

Turkey is a crucial country in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and could potentially leverage its diplomatic, cultural and geopolitical position to rally international condemnation of China’s actions, such as by imposing targeted sanctions on Chinese officials and entities involved in the abuses. However, private sector actors in the tourism industry must also take responsibility and reconsider taking tours to a region experiencing an ongoing genocide. 

The situation in East Turkistan is a stark reminder of the importance of international vigilance and action in the face of human rights abuses. Whether it is in state, civil, or private sectors, Turkey, as a majority Muslim and Turkic state, is in a unique position to rally international condemnation of China, and can lead the rest of the Turkic and the Muslim world in doing so. 

A crime of the magnitude of genocide is one that affects all of humanity, and the global community, including Turkey, must respond with urgency and determination. Turkey must reassess its commercial activities and take decisive steps to align its actions with its commitments to human rights and international law.

*This original page for the tour was removed from the company’s website at some point after June 11, 2024. The current link directs to an archived page.

**This original page for the tour was removed from the company’s website at some point after January 7, 2024. The current link directs to an archived page.