Dr. Zan Tao is an Associate Professor of Turkish Studies, History Department, and Deputy Director of the Center for Global Modernization Studies at Peking University. He completed his PhD in History at Peking University in 2007. He has been a visiting scholar at Middle East Technical University (2005-2006), Center of Afro-Oriental Studies in Brazil (2008), Bogazici Univeristy (2008), and Indiana University-Bloomington (2012-2013). He had also worked for one year at Tibetan University (2010-2011). He is the author of Modern State and Nation Building: A Study on Turkish Nationalism in the Early 20th Century [Xian Dai Guo Jia Yu Min Zu Jian Gou: 20 Shi Ji Qian Qi Tu’erqi Min Zu Zhu Yi Yan Jiu] (Beijing: Sanlian Publisher, August, 2011), “Turkish Model: history and present” [tu’er qi mo shi: li shi yu xian shi] Journal of Xinjiang, Normal University (March, 2012), “A analysis on contemporary foreign strategy of Turkey” [shi xi dang dai tu’er qi de dui wai zhan lve] Peking University Center for Study of International Strategy: Chinese International Strategy Review (Beijing: World Affairs Publishers, 2011), “An Overview of Turkish Studies in China,” Turkish Studies Review, Issue 15 (Spring 2010), “Meeting Kurds in Turkey,” SEPHIS: Global South (April 2009), “Sino-Turkish Relationship and Turkey’s Perceptions on the Rise of China,” Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies in Asia, Vol. 3, No. 1 (March 2009).
An Alternative Partner to the West? Turkey’s Growing Relations with China
The relationship between Turkey and China has rarely been a point of focus for international observers in the early twenty-first century. However, the landscape has recently undergone a dramatic change, with increasing numbers of symposiums, forums, panels, articles, columns, think tanks, and researchers focusing on Sino-Turkish relations in China or in Turkey. The change is mostly due to the impressive rise of both Turkey and China as powers on the regional and global level, respectively. Today, Turkey is the sixteenth largest economy and China the second largest. At the same time, they are more ardently looking at and listening to each other.
