The Turks seems determined to win stupid prizes as they cannot stop but play stupid games. Do they have any idea how easily and royally China can fuck with them by playing the Kurdish card for lolz?
If there is one fault with modern Chinese diplomacy, it’s they are always too nice. Always above board and magnanimous to those who previously wronged them. While one cannot and should not be Israeli or America level petty when it comes to diplomacy, I think sometimes you need to go out of your way to fuck someone over where they wronged you, both to send a warning message to others who might be tempted, and also because sometimes that’s what some peoples and cultures respond to. You treat them well and they think you owe them more, but savagely beat them and they become your most loyal dog.
Well no.
Kurdish card doesn't exist for China. Modern China doesn't have a history of successfully formenting useful groups in other countries and using them to achieve to achieve political gains. It has been totally absent from that kind of affairs for 45+ years. The Kurdish insurgency has been foreign (read US) supported since the beginning. So Turkey has become quite good at dealing with anything a foreign power could do using Kurds. China wouldn't achieve much, believe me.
There are two things in play here:
1- Erdogan's government can't visit Xinjiang because of domestic politics. If they visit, they will have to make a statement. They can't make a positive statement because that would hurt their voter base. Most Turks believe there is a genocide in Xinjiang. If they make a negative statement then it would hurt the Turkish economy, which is bad for elections too. Turkey imports a lot of intermediate goods from China. So they will keep demanding requirements for the visit that they know China wouldn't grant. The objective here is not visiting.
2- China can't allow Turkey to have the visit in its way. Turkey has been expanding its influence in central asia using ethnic and religious ties. Also, Turkey's foreign policies have been unpredictable at best. There is always a chance a visit could be used for fabricating evidence for the genocide. China simply doesn't trust Turkey to not to do that. Considering that Turkey went as far as distributing pan-Turkist media content in Xinjiang in the early-2010s, China's position is 100% logical.
Your last point regarding non-interventionism of China, I agree. Non-interventionism might be a good idea for China in the 1980s. Economic growth at all costs was a good idea. But it should have died in 2000 or so. I don't know if you guys realize it but China of 2023 has less allies than China of 1970. Maoist China involved itself in a lot of revelutions and independence movements in the era of dissolution of European colonial empires. That's how it got almost all of the developing world vote in UN in favor of replacing ROC with PRC.
