Numerous recent reports are urging President Trump to recognize Somaliland as an independent country.  During his press conference with the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, and his help in brokering their peace, a reporter asked him about Somaliland as well.  President Trump, positioning himself as a true dealmaker, producing peaceful agreements among long-time warring factions throughout the world, holds an enviable and estimable opportunity to help strengthen these fledgling nations.

East Turkistan is another country yearning for freedom, located east of Kazakhstan in Central Asia.  Currently occupied by the People’s Republic of China, and labeled the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, most of the world has never heard of this country because of the Chinese government’s ethnic cleansing and propaganda war of suppression and secrecy.

But you have heard of the Uyghurs, for sure.

Many Americans remember the activism of Enes Kanter Freedom, the Turkish-American NBA star who frequently decried the abuses of the Chinese government against the Uyghurs of Western China.  Their nation is East Turkistan, and they are still persecuted by Communist China while seeking self-determination once again.

On July 25, 2025, I interviewed Salih Hudayar, the foreign minister of the East Turkistan Government in Exile.  Besides going into great detail about his life, he discussed the culture and cause of his people to regain their sovereignty.

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Salih Hudayar.

Seated in his government’s Washington, D.C. office, with pictures of his country’s heroes in the background, Hudayar shared that he was born in Artush, East Turkistan.  His father fled to the United States in 1998 as a political refugee, and in June 2000, Hudayar and his family joined him with the help of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.  They settled in Oklahoma, where there was already a small community of Uyghurs from East Turkistan, including people his father knew.  When asked about his childhood in his native country, Salih recalled vivid childhood memories,........

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