Six Chinese citizens were among a total of 134 people arrested by Turkish security forces last Friday for illegally entering the country and neighboring Bulgaria, Greece and Syria.
Two of the Chinese nationals have since been confirmed to have been members of the Islamic State terrorist organization, apprehended on Turkey's border with Syria along with 86 Syrian nationals.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to the relations yesterday. MFA spokesperson Hong Lei said that China to cooperate more with Turkey and other countries to "strike at terrorism together" and promote safety and security in the region.
According to China's own reports, more and more of its citizens have leaving the country to join the ranks of the Islamic State, which claims religious authority over all Muslims regardless of nationality, and other militant groups.
After IS announced plans to take their holy war in China and occupy the region of Xinjiang in August last year, officials in Beijing have said that "hundreds" of PRC nationals have attempted to steal across the nation's borders to join "jihad training" camps abroad.
In September, four Chinese men with ties to the group were arrested in Indonesia, and in the same month an ethnically Chinese man was reportedly captured fighting with IS in Iraq. In December last year, Chinese state media claimed that there were "around 300 Chinese extremists" fighting for the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
Last May, a specialized unit called "4.29" was established to stop the smuggling of people out of China. The unit has since arrested 352 suspected smugglers and detained 852 people for illegal border crossing.
Authorities claim that most of the cases discovered by "4.29" are connected with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a militant separatist organization in Xinjiang that aims to establish an independent Islamic republic in the restive far-western region, where violence between Han Chinese and the mostly Muslim Uyghur ethnic group have been intensifying in recent years.
In February this year, three PRC nationals were revealed to be amongst 117 other IS militants killed for attempting to leave the group. All three men are believed to have been members of the East Turkestan Liberation Organization (ETLO), which is designated a terrorist organization by Shanghai Cooperation Organization members China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan but - unlike the more active East Turkestan Islamic Movement - is not considered a terrorist group by either the United Nations or United States.
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