Several Uygur language centres have opened in Istanbul, home to a community of Muslim Uygurs who have fled ChinaParents say they want to preserve their children’s Uygur identity as they grow up in a foreign country
Hunched over the pages, his finger following the words one by one, Shkur Abliz deciphers the Koran. The teacher makes him chant a few verses in Arabic, then explains to the class of children the meaning in Uygur, along with any new words they might not understand.
Shkur, wearing a black baseball cap embroidered with traditional Uygur patterns, stumbles on the word bulak which means “fountain” in Uygur.
The eight-year-old, who fled Xinjiang when he was three with his parents and older brother, studies Uygur language and the Koran at Tangnuri language centre in Istanbul.
“We also learn Uygur customs and traditions: respecting the elders, the Islamic holidays and how to salute,” said Shkur, who goes to a Turkish school in the afternoon.
Shkur’s mother Asya Abliz is determined to preserve as much as she can of her son’s Uygur identity as he grows up in a foreign country after fleeing China.
“I want to raise my two sons as Uygurs,” Asya said.
“I want to teach my children Uygur because in East Turkestan (Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region), the language is forbidden. Our only hope is in the diaspora.”
The family comes from Karamay, an oil-rich city in Xinjiang, the heartland of China’s often restive Uygur Muslim minority.
They left five years ago after bribing local police to get passports and now lives in Zeytinburnu, a conservative working-class neighbourhood on the European side of Istanbul where many Uygurs have started new lives.
The emigration of Uygurs to Turkey goes back decades and distinct Uygur neighbourhoods can be found in Istanbul and the central city of Kaiseri. It has helped Uygur immigrants, who speak a Turkic language with an Arabic-derived writing system, integrate while preserving some of their traditions and language.
However, over the past few years, the prohibition of their language education, as well as intensified surveillance and mass detention by the Chinese government of Muslim Uygurs in Xinjiang, have seriously affected the Uygur language and culture in the province and abroad.
A UN human rights panel estimated in August that 1 million ethnic Uygurs and other Muslims in China were being held in what resembled a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy”, and subjected to enforced political indoctrination.
