Ankara Municipality of Turkey on Wednesday, stopped the water supply to Chinese Embassy in the city after the embassy suggested on Twitter that it could take action against two Turkish politicians who criticised Beijing’s treatment of its Muslim Uyghur community.
The Chinese Embassy tagged Meral Aksener, the head of the opposition Good Party, and Ankara’s mayor, Mansur Yavas, in two Twitter posts in which it defended Beijing’s policies and said that the Chinese side reserves its right to a rightful response. The Chinese embassy made those comments after the two Turkish politicians marked the killing of Uyghurs by Chinese forces during an uprising in 1990 with Twitter posts. However, the comments by Chinese embassy were widely interpreted as a threat and caused social media outrage in Turkey. Many Uyghurs, a Turkic group native to China’s Xinjiang region, have already sought refuge in Turkey because of their shared cultural ties. The region of China inhabited by Uighurs is referred to by pan-Turkic nationalists as East Turkestan.
