dogu-turkistan-sempozyumu

FREEEAST TURKISTAN SYMPOSIUMIt is for this reason that I claim that today East Turkistan is suffering from themost serious historical and geographical fraud ever. To claim that East Turkistanis a part of historical Chinese territory and that the Uyghur people are Chineseis an outright lie.The final annexation of East Turkistan to the People’s Republic of Chinatook place in 1949. However, this occurred only after East Turkistan had resistedChinese hegemony for over two hundred years, during the Manchu era. A fewtimes the people of East Turkistan managed to establish independent states andthese states were recognized by leading powers, including the Ottoman Empireand Great Britain. The Ottoman sultan, Abdul-Aziz, and the Egyptian khedive,Ismail, helped East Turkistan with military troops and provided them withsupport so they could protect their independence. Nevertheless, the hunger ofRussia and China for this land was always apparent. Finally, East Turkistan lostits independence and came under Chinese hegemony. China has made constantefforts to make the Chinese cultural identity and the ethnically-Chinese peopledominant in the East Turkistan territory.The hegemony of the Chinese Communist Party over East Turkistan isregarded as a historical turning point. The people of Turkistan were very awareof what Communism did to their brothers and sisters in West Turkistan. Theyunderstood how the Soviet Union perceived religion. If we take into account thatIslam means an identity, a culture and a social life for the people of East Turkistan,we can better understand that removing Islam from East Turkistan is nothing lessthan an annihilation of the Uyghur people.The Chinese regime has resorted to oppression and violence. It has tried itsbest to cut the people of Turkistan off from their roots. It has tried to enforcecompulsory Chinese education and the Chinese language to destroy religious andcultural identity in the region. Atheism is now included in the curricula, whereasmanuscripts and religious texts have been burned. Mosques have been demolishedand scholars have been executed. Furthermore, China has seized the wealth andthe fertile lands of East Turkistan. Due to never-ending forced immigrations,Chinese people are now settled in the Turkish lands of East Turkistan.Historically, the Uyghur people were the dominant population in EastTurkistan. They come from a Turkic ethnic origin, and their language is a dialect406