China's Xi begins Turkey talks amid Uyghur rally

Ahead of Xi's meeting with Turkish President Abdullah Gul, around 100 Uyghurs demonstrated near the hotel where the Chinese leader was staying in central Ankara.

The demonstrators burnt Chinese flags and chanted slogans against Beijing's treatment of the Muslim Turkic-speaking Uyghur people in its far-western Xinjiang region as the riot police kept them away from Xi's hotel.

A predominantly Muslim country, Turkey shares linguistic and religious links with the Uyghur community, which has several associations here.

Ankara accepts China's sovereignty over Xinjiang, but heavily criticized the 2009 violence in the region, denouncing what it described as “atrocities.”

Trade will be one of the major agenda items during the talks between Turkish officials and Xi, who is expected to be the next president of China.

Sources in the Turkish presidency said several cooperation deals in the areas of agriculture, finance and banking were signed on Tuesday to strengthen strategic partnership between Ankara and Beijing.

The two countries' central banks also signed a currency swap agreement worth 10 billion yuan (US$1.58 billion), Turkey's central bank announced, adding that the deal was effective for three years and would boost trade and investments.

The crisis in neighboring Syria and the dispute between Iran and world powers over Tehran's nuclear program are expected to figure high in Xi's talks with Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as both issues closely concern China, permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

Turkey has repeatedly called for a diplomatic solution to the nuclear row with Iran while spearheading regional condemnation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's deadly crackdown on opponents which has claimed more than 6,000 lives according to monitoring groups.

In the Turkish parliament, Xi praised Turkey's and China's endeavors with regard to problems worldwide.

“In recent years, Turkey and China have been playing an important role on international and regional matters,” he was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency during a meeting with parliament speaker Cemil Cicek.

On the last stop of his tour that has taken him to the United States and Ireland, Xi was due to fly to Istanbul later in the day to meet Erdogan, who is recovering from a second intestinal operation at his residence there.

Accompanied by a large number of businessmen, Xi will on Wednesday attend a business forum in Istanbul.

The trade volume between Turkey and China has soared from US$1 billion dollars in 2000 to US$19.5 billion in 2010, according to official figures. But the balance of trade is heavily in China's favor.

Turkey largely exports raw materials and chemicals the Chinese economy is in need of while intermediate goods constitute 76 percent of Turkish imports from this country, according to the foreign ministry.

Energy could be a key area in the two countries' future relations but analysts say cooperation is not easy to come by as both are dependent on oil and gas, and competing for Caspian-based energy resources.

China and Turkey have set a timetable to increase their trade volume to US$50 billion by 2015 and to US$100 billion by 2020, boldly vowing to trade in their national currencies.

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