Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Turkey last week underscored the desire of both sides to advance their rapprochement, especially in the economic field, despite widespread misgivings in Turkey and abroad over Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur minority.

Wang met with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on March 25, as part of a regional tour including Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman that highlights the Middle East’s growing importance for China amid a heating rivalry with the United States.

Though Chinese interest in the Middle East has traditionally been driven by oil, China in recent years has sought to expand its cooperation realms and influence in the region. All six countries on Wang’s tour have signed on to China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, along with several other countries in the Middle East. The tour followed the first high-level talks between Beijing and the Joe Biden administration, which got off to a tense start on March 19.

The importance Ankara placed on Wang’s visit was palpable from the efforts it made to contain protests by the Uyghur diaspora in Turkey. The police strictly controlled hundreds of protestors in Istanbul’s Bayezid Square, who chanted slogans accusing Beijing of “genocide” in Xinjiang — the home of the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority with ethnic bonds to Turkey — and waved blue-and-white flags of the independence movement of East Turkestan, the name by which the exiles and Turkish nationalists refer to Xinjiang.