Turkish Airlines says it will start scheduled flights to Ürümqi in China’s Xinjiang region, a move Uyghur rights advocates say risks helping Beijing promote a tourist-friendly image of normal life in a region where the UN and major human rights groups have documented serious rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.
Turkey’s flag carrier said in a notice on the Public Disclosure Platform that it will “start operating scheduled flights to Urumqi in the People’s Republic of China, subject to availability and market conditions.”
The announcement attracted attention because Ürümqi is the capital of Xinjiang, a far western region where China has faced years of international scrutiny over mass detentions, pervasive surveillance, allegations of forced labor and policies that restrict religious and cultural life.
Uyghur advocates and researchers have long argued that tourism and foreign commercial activity can help Beijing present Xinjiang as stable and prosperous while deflecting attention from claims of rights violations.
The Uyghur Human Rights Project, a Washington-based group, has urged companies to avoid helping “sanitize” abuses and has said international business expansion fits China’s strategy to normalize public perceptions of what is happening in the Uyghur region.
In an earlier example of that approach, rights groups criticized Chinese tourism promotion at a major travel trade show in London, warning that Beijing was using tourism marketing to push a carefully selected story about the region and to encourage visits despite continued repression. Radio Free Asia reported that rights groups described such trips as “genocide tourism” and accused China of masking its human rights violations with tourism.
Xinjiang is home to the Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group that is mostly Muslim and has linguistic and cultural ties to Turkey. Over the past decade, many Uyghurs have settled in Turkey, which has one of the world’s largest Uyghur diaspora communities.
At the same time, rights groups say Uyghurs in Turkey have faced increasing pressure as Ankara’s relationship with Beijing has expanded. In a report released in November, Human Rights Watch said Turkish authorities have increasingly restricted Uyghurs’ residence status using “restriction codes” and have detained a number of them in deportation centers, where some told HRW that they were pressured to sign “voluntary return” forms.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan visited Xinjiang during a June 2024 trip to China. Fidan toured the Yanghang Mosque and the International Grand Bazaar in Ürümqi and later traveled to Kashgar, another major city in the region.
Fidan described Ürümqi and Kashgar as “Turkic and Islamic cities,” while the World Uyghur Congress urged him to raise rights concerns and not become “a tool for China’s false propaganda.”
Human Rights Watch and the UN have said China’s policies in Xinjiang may amount to crimes against humanity. Some governments have said China’s actions constitute genocide.