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Istanbul (AFP) Oct 9, 2010 Activists from China's Uighur minority demonstrated in Turkey for a second day Saturday against Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who was in Istanbul for talks with President Abdullah Gul and business leaders. Riot police kept around 40 demonstrators away from Wen's hotel and prevented smaller groups joining the protest against China's treatment of the Muslim Turkic-speaking Uighur people in its Xinjiang region. Protesters shouted "Wen assassin" and "Wen get out of Turkey", and held up a banner that said: "Turkey, do not believe China's lies". Wen was also confronted by about 100 Uighur demonstrators in Ankara on Friday, the first day of his visit to Turkey as part of a tour of Europe. Turkey accepts China's sovereignty over Xinjiang, but last year heavily criticised the deadly violence in the region, which it described as "atrocities". Before the meetings, Wen visited the sixth century former Hagia Sophia Church and nearby Blue Mosque, the Anatolia news agency reported. He walked through the huge church, listening to the history of the Byzantine basilica which was converted into a mosque in 1453 after the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, today's Istanbul. It became a museum in 1935. The Chinese leader moved on to the 17th century Blue Mosque under heavy police escort. Wen met Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Friday, when the two countries reached a raft of agreements and pledged to raise their trade to 50 billion dollars by 2015 from an expected 17 billion dollars this year. "We think that the objective of tripling trade between Turkey and China within five years is perfectly possible," the vice-president of the China-Turkey business council, Necati Abacioglu, told AFP after Saturday's talks. Journalists were barred from the meeting, and were kept at a distance thoughout Wen's visit Friday and Saturday, supposedly to stop them asking awkward questions about the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.
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