Istanbul

We are on holiday and passing through Istanbul; a city which I love for its time worn buildings and its focus on the waterways where handsome old ferries knit together its constituent parts. But most of all I love it for the feeling of being at the crossroads of the world with the vastness of Russia to the north, the mystery of Africa to the south and Europe and Asia wedded together by the suspension bridge over the Bosphorus.

There is no traffic on the road past the Grand Bazaar and even the trams have stopped. The reason for it is coming towards us; a large and aggressive looking group of men carrying bright blue flags bearing a white crescent and making gestures with their index and little fingers. 



The demonstration goes on and on, there are hundreds, maybe more than a thousand marchers, predominantly but not entirely male and generally well ordered but nonetheless threatening in their demeanour. We are told that it is about East Turkistan. Where on earth is that? Do they mean Turkmenistan? No, it is what they call China’s Xinjiang Province, an area of land the size of Western Europe which I’ve travelled through more than once, and which has a predominantly Turkic population, the same as its neighbouring Central Asian countries.
Xinjiang is China’s most troubled province with a separatist movement that uses terrorist tactics and probably represents only a fraction of the population, particularly as Beijing has been pouring vast sums of money into developing the infrastructure. The region is ethnically, culturally and religiously Central Asian but has been part of China on and off for the last couple of thousand years.

The issue apparently is Ramadan and that the Chinese authorities are trying to prevent the Muslim people from fasting. How and why they’re doing this is unclear but further research suggests that China is indeed being deliberately awkward in ways such as ensuring that food is available in public offices during the day and preventing restaurants from opening in the evenings when people want to break their fast. These actions seem mean and petty but the flag waving suggests a further agenda. 

It seems to me that trying to align national borders with areas of cultural identity is a dangerous game and that the world is a far better place if we accept diversity and enjoy the richness of living in multi-cultural societies. Malaysia, with only about half the population being ethnic Malays, is a good example of this working pretty well. Recent issues of debate in the press have been about balancing the rights of non-Muslims to eat when they like against showing sensitivity to those fasting and having a dress code in public places which shows respect while not restricting personal choice. When official announcements in China are translated into English the words ‘harmony’ and ‘harmonious’ are used a lot, even the bullet trains out of Shanghai are called Harmony. But China needs to practice what it preaches and can learn from countries like Malaysia.