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2.10 Turkey stays away from China’s Belt and Road summit citing debt-trap diplomacy and Uighur concerns
Claiming wariness of debt-trap diplomacy, Turkey has opted to not attend China’s three-day Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forum that started on April 25. Intended to promote Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s “project of the century” to deploy modern infrastructure to revive ancient ‘Silk Road’ trading routes between Asia and Europe—as well as build new links in the Middle East, Africa, and South America—the summit will draw ire from critics who see it as an attempt at cementing Chinese influence around the world by financially binding countries to Beijing.
Turkey is among the countries that are missing this second such BRI summit, having attended the first. Turkish officials have communicated that both their rejection of debt-trap diplomacy and the diplomatic row between Ankara and Beijing over China’s treatment of the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority in Xinjiang province, are two key reasons behind their non-attendance.
In late March, the arrest of four Turkish executives in China for tax evasion led to speculation that Beijing was firing a shot across Ankara’s bows to warn the Turks of the economic price they would pay if they kept up their stinging criticism of the Chinese crackdown on the Turkic peoples of Xinjiang. Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News reported widespread panic broke out among Turkish attendees at the Xiamen International Stone Fair after news of the arrests, with businesspeople grabbing any flight they could out of mainland China for fear that they might be detained next. One attendee reportedly vowed never to return to China, saying he was lucky to find a place on the first plane out.
2.11 Turkey says alleged UAE spy hung himself in cell. Fears for Emirates NBD’s deal for Sberbank’s Denizbank may follow
A man held by Turkey on suspicion of spying for the United Arab Emirates—in a case that Turkish investigators are probing for links to the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last October—committed suicide by hanging himself in prison, the Istanbul prosecutor's office said on April 29.
If the incident triggers a further deterioration of Turkish relations with close Saudi ally UAE, analysts will look for possible ramifications as regards the planned but still not completed sale of Russian Sberbank’s Turkey unit, Denizbank, to Dubai’s biggest bank Emirates NBD, agreed at a knockdown price in early April given the Turkish lira crisis.
Ankara still has severely strained relations with Riyadh over the killing of Khashoggi, murdered by an elite Saudi hit squad, and other issues such as Turkish support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar, and there have been reports that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has proved reluctant to give his assent to the sale of Denizbank to the lender from Dubai, the UAE’s most populated emirate. However, cancelling the deal would risk upsetting Erdogan’s ally Vladimir Putin.
Reportedly the sale progressed—but only with difficulty—after Denizbank CEO Hakan Ates last year organised meetings with Erdogan and then Turkish PM Binali Yildirim. Turkey’s top ally among the Arab Gulf states is Qatar, which the Saudis, UAE and other Arab nations have targeted with a trade boycott over various political disagreements.
33 TURKEY Country Report May 2019 www.intellinews.com