China has ordered the closure of its consulate in the Turkish city of Izmir, which Beijing’s Ambassador in Ankara, Deng Li, linked to Turkey's criticism of the ongoing suppression of the Uighurs - a Turkic-speaking, Sunni Muslim minority group that numbers 15 million people who live mainly in China's western Xinjiang Autonomous Region - by the Chinese Communist Party.

Izmir is Turkey's third-largest city and bastion of the country's republican secularism. The Aegean coastal city, previously k...