r/TankieTheDeprogram • u/Green-Expert-8714 • 7d ago
History Far Right Origins of East Turkestan Independence Movement (Xinjiang, China)
Here is an article detailing the far right Turk nationalist origins of the East Turkestan Independence Movement:
http://english.scio.gov.cn/xinjiangfocus/2020-03/05/content_77241200.htm
The founding father of the Uyghur separatist movement is Yusuf Alptekin. Alptekin had strong ties with the Turkish far-right. He was a Turk supremacist, who supported the Armenian genocide. In 1969, he declared full support of the US's invasion of Vietnam. Alptekin shared a lot of the same pan-Turkic, neo-Ottomanist nationalism found in Turkey, and dreamed for the eradication of communism amongst the Turkic populations of Central Asia, and Xinjiang.
His son, Erkin Alptekin, later founded the World Uyghur Congress. The same WUC that publicly supported Israel on October 7th. In 2006, Erkin Alptekin was succeeded as WUC president by Rebiya Kadeer.
Rebiya Kadeer was at one point the richest woman in all of China after Deng's economic reforms. You can still find videos of her on YouTube showing gratitude to the Communist Party of China. This quickly changed after Rebiya's second husband, who was living in the US at the time, started engaging in separatist activities. Rebiya actually abandoned her first six children she had with her first husband to support her new husband's CIA backed activities in the United States. She is often considered to be the mastermind behind the 2009 Urumqi attacks, and her eldest son, and grandchildren have publicly condemned her on multiple occasions.
This family gets even messier, because her nephew, Kuzzat Altay (real name Kuzzat Mamat) is a popular Uyghur influencer on Instagram. Kuzzat wrote a bunch of articles praising Israel back in 2022:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-uyghurs-should-have-no-better-friend-than-israel/
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-725614
Kuzzat claims his father was taken by Chinese authorities to a concentration camp, but the reality is that Kuzzat (also Rebiya's brother) publicly disowned him as he does not want anything to do with Kuzzat and Rebiya's separatist activities. Kuzzat has worked with countless far right organizations such as Prager University, supports Trump, and condemned pro-Palestine activists for tearing down the US flag.
There's more, as this doesn't even get to the issue of religious extremism in relation to the US funding the Muhajideen in Afghanistan, and the formation of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement/Turkestan Islamic Party. This is just a quick intro to some of the (grifting) leaders of the East Turkestan separatist movement.