Prospects for Sino-Turkish Relations

Abstract

This article addresses the major opportunities and challenges facing Sino-Turkish relations, an important relationship often neglected by scholars and practitioners of international relations. While identifying the two dominant challenges facing the two ancient civilizations, i.e. the Xinjiang Uighur issue and unbalanced trade favoring China, this article maintains that the two countries enjoy vast room for cooperation both economically and geopolitically. Their cooperation in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region can also result in a win-win situation, with Turkey making better use of its psychological linkage to the local Uighurs to increase its investment in infrastructure and China winning more Uighur identification with the central government by enhancing the local economy and living standards. In the international arena, though a comprehensive partnership of security cooperation has yet to develop, both countries have been engaged in ever closer cooperation as evidenced by Turkey’s intensifying efforts to join the Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Chinese companies’ active participation in Turkey’s many military projects. Nevertheless, given the relatively small size of the Turkish economy and its decades-long dependence on Western powers in security, economic, and cultural terms, the future Sino-Turkish relationship will remain largely a function of their respective relations with the West.