dogu-turkistan-sempozyumu

FREEEAST TURKISTAN SYMPOSIUMan attempt to deceive the Uyghur people. However, the Chinese administrationcannot be immune from the responsibility of crimes such as ethnic discriminationand genocide in face of this sound evidence. 4The approach of the international communitytowards the incidents of July 5The incidents that took place in Urumchi on July 5, 2009 was one of themost important events on the international agenda. It is worth noting that therewere differences between the approaches of the two Muslim countries, that is,Iran and Turkey, concerning these incidents which raised such serious reactionsthroughout the Muslim world. The difference between the official positions ofIran, which is governed as an Islamic Republic and often claims to be the leaderof the Muslim world, and Turkey, which is governed by a secular regime, requiresa comparative evaluation and analysis.The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan described the incidentsas “plain genocide”, whereas the Iranian administration ignored the incidentsperfunctorily and was therefore criticized by Iranian religious scholars and experts.It was surprising that the Iranian Government, which was very “sensitive”to the killing of an Egyptian Muslim young woman, Marwath al-Sherbini, bya racist German and even organized a funeral in her absence, remained almostindifferent to the massacre of more than a hundred Muslim people in Urumchi.Iran’s approach remained limited to the Iranian foreign minister ManucehrMuttaki calling and receiving information from his counterpart via the telephoneand conveying to him the concern of Muslim countries; naturally this wascriticized domestically by some columnists as well as religious scholars in Iran.Some figures among the religious scholars even harshly criticized the attitude ofthe government and called for an immediate denouncement of the oppressionthat had been inflicted upon the Muslim Uyghur people.In the Tabnak news portal, known for its ties with the conservative candidateMuhsin Rezai, a rival of President Ahmedinejad in the last presidential elections,the position of the government was heavily criticized and questioned: “Todaypeople are questioning what difference there is between the Muslim people inPalestine and those in China.” 5352