The Realpolitik of small states: explaining New Zealand’s silence on human rights violations in Turkey (Türkiye) and China

ABSTRACT

When and why do human rights-defending countries tolerate the actions of known rights violators? This paper examines that question using New Zealand’s bilateral relationships with the Republic of Turkey (also Türkiye) and the People’s Republic of China. The aim is to ascertain systematic regularities as to when and why New Zealand, a liberal democratic state with an expressed commitment to human rights, has been relatively mum on atrocities in China and Turkey. Drawing from archival and recent documentary evidence, the article finds that shifting commercial interests play a key role in New Zealand’s reticence, and that its relationships with China and Turkey have deepened over time, even amid increasing authoritarianism and human rights abuses in these countries.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• Turkey
• New Zealand
• human rights
• small states
• torture
• genocide
• trade

Introduction

Why are some atrocities condemned and others not? When and why does the denunciation of human rights abuses become a feature of small states’ foreign policies? Perhaps more importantly, under what conditions might these denouncements be withheld? This article examines the phenomenon of selective denunciation in the context of New Zealand, a state that has been among the loudest critics of human rights abuses in many instances yet is relatively quiet on others.

For example, in the 1980s, New Zealand opposed US air strikes on Libya, in defiance of the UK and Australia, and later spoke out against coups in Fiji. It enabled women to vote for the first time in 1893, something it can credibly claim as a world first. Historically, criticism has also been levelled at Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Nauru, and North Korea over human rights. However, it also chose to release those convicted in the Rainbow Warrior sinking – an act of terrorism – and when asked whether New Zealand wished to participate in international action against Iran for threats made against writer Salman Rushdie, then-Prime Minister David Lange replied, ‘not particularly’, arguing that it would be difficult to explain to his constituents any repercussions that came their way because of actions taken to defend a writer in London (N.Z. Herald 1989, 1).

The article probes why New Zealand might abstain from criticising the human rights records of states where abuses are well-documented, focusing on the cases of Turkey and China. Fundamentally, we argue that the pursuit of economic interests has led New Zealand leaders across multiple parties and generations to downplay human rights abuses by at least two of its trade partners, one of which is now its largest trading partner. While in theory New Zealand’s institutional, cultural, and security links to other liberal democracies could have promoted a greater defence of human rights, we demonstrate its willingness to remain silent in the face of atrocity for the sake of economic gain, amid pronounced authoritarian turns in China and Turkey over the last decade.

In the next section, we provide a framework outlining how small states such as New Zealand might be expected behave on human rights matters abroad to set up a theoretical puzzle posed by the empirics that follow. We then engage in discussion of our research design, which takes the form of a pair of ‘straw in the wind’ tests tracing the evolution of bilateral ties with Turkey and China. The main part of the article is then given over to the tests themselves before a conclusion outlines the implications for thinking about the relationship of liberal democracy to human rights and for further investigations.

Theorising New Zealand’s behaviour: dilemmas of a small state

As with previous studies, we view New Zealand’s behaviour on the international stage through the lens of small state theory (Gee and Patman 2021). One common understanding of small states is that they are defined by their relative power capabilities, rather than by their population size or geographic location (Maass 2009; Sutton 2011). Being less powerful, small states may seek to avoid engaging in behaviours that alienate those more powerful. However, this places small states like New Zealand, which have institutional, cultural, and security ties to one superpower (the US) but commercial ties to another (China), on the horns of a dilemma. How, if at all, can they appease both superpowers at once? Faced with these circumstances, small states like New Zealand often chart an independent or ‘non-aligned’ foreign policy that allows them to pursue the national interest relatively free from external influence while appeasing allies and friends. Such a ‘hedging’ strategy might be defined as ‘as insurance-seeking behaviour under situations of high uncertainty and high stakes, where a rational state avoids taking sides’ (Kuik 2021, 300). Hence the positionality of small states vis-à-vis more powerful ones might help to explain reticence on denouncing human rights abuses in some instances. It might also explain, for example, why New Zealand waits for determinations to be made by international courts before condemning human rights abuses or using the term ‘genocide’, thereby sidestepping potential political and diplomatic ramifications (New Zealand Parliament 2021a). The alternative strategy, bandwagoning – by, for example, joining one superpower in publicly denouncing human rights in another – could prove costly, especially for New Zealand, which is heavily reliant on trade with China for its economic prosperity.

Further, we situate our contribution here in the context of a broader, well-established debate among two competing explanations of state behaviour – liberalism, which rests on an assumption of regimes (i.e. institutional configurations) as a significant driver of behaviours, and realism, which gives primacy to the pursuit of national interests irrespective of institutional types (McCraw 1994). Following the liberal explanation, one might expect New Zealand to be more vocal in condemning human rights abuses abroad. Why? Much research supports the idea that democracy is important for the promotion and protection of human rights, but is more likely to be so where liberal democratic values are widely-subscribed and reflected in political institutions and practices (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005; Keith 2002).Internationally, democracies’ behaviours are thought to be shaped by the distribution of common values, which include, for example, ideas about the inalienable rights of the individual, concordant prohibitions against cruel, inhumane, and degrading punishment, and other such actions that might be labelled human rights abuses. If these values hold sway, then New Zealand ought to stand with other democracies with whom it shares extensive cultural, ideological, and political affinities (not to mention security alignments) in denouncing human rights violations, especially when these abuses occur in countries outside the liberal democratic club. In this light, abstention from more forceful denunciations of Turkey and China is puzzling given the US government’s recent condemnation of abuses in both. However, New Zealand has deepened bilateral ties with both Turkey and China, despite each of the latter becoming increasingly authoritarian in recent years, as we discuss below.

A key problem with the ‘shared institutions’ version of liberalism, however, lies in its apparent inconsistency. If democratic institutions and the values that support them truly matter, denunciations of human rights violations should happen more consistently across the board. What then accounts for the selective denunciation of violations in some foreign states but not others by democracies? Realist theory offers a possible explanation. For realists, the trumpeting of liberal virtues, such as international support for human rights, is merely a fig leaf for power considerations and national interests. The US, they might argue, have stepped up their criticisms of China’s human rights record because China is catching up to the US in the global balance of power (Khoo 2021). The State Council of the People’s Republic of China publishes its White Paper on human rights violations in the United States for very similar reasons – to diminish American claims to the moral high ground and thus level the geopolitical playing field. Small states, however, may take a more cautious and selective approach to human rights promotion, denouncing abuses in some cases and staying relatively quiet in others, as national interests dictate. As we show, economic interests have played a large role in New Zealand’s decision not to criticise abuses in Turkey or China in recent times. Human rights may still matter to New Zealand politicians and the public, of course, but trade mattered more. As a result, the country is apt to pull its punches on human rights violations by some of the world’s most notorious abusers.

Other variants of liberalism do not preclude the pursuit of national interest but place the source of these interests at the level of domestic politics rather than structural competition in the international system. In Moravcsik’s classic formulation (Moravcsik 1997), state foreign policies are ultimately grounded in the preferences of sub-state societal actors, cooperation and competition among them, and the effects they exert on the behaviour of vote-seeking politicians. In particular, he notes how ‘commercial liberalism stresses the impact on state behaviour of gains and losses to individuals and groups in society from transnational economic interchange’ (p. 515). Preference-sensitive politicians, fearing the potential economic consequences for voters and ultimately their own political careers, may judge it most prudent not to publicly criticise their trading partners’ human rights records. Thus, as we suggest below, New Zealand’s silence on human rights abuses may be part of a hedging strategy, one typical of small states (Kuik 2021), and driven by gain maximisation, but configured by sensitivity to domestic economic concerns rather than ideological commitments.

Research design

This article is based on an assessment of two purposively-chosen cases. The study resembles a ‘most similar’ cases set-up, insofar as the cases score similarly on the dependent variable, being examples of countries with whom New Zealand has thriving bilateral relations but that receive minimal official condemnation. Both are also non-democracies with long histories of human rights abuses, highly visible and known to the international public. We selected Turkey and China deliberately to see whether New Zealand’s behaviours in these cases eventuated as a result of common factors or via similar pathways.

Instead of engaging in hypothesis testing, as is common and prudent at more advanced stages of theory development, the rationale here is to engage in historical analysis to identify critical junctures and causally important events, and any regularities in their occurrence. We make no claims about external validity, reserving this question for future investigations, but see both China and Turkey as large and salient data points in a universe of possible cases ripe for investigation. We do not compare these relationships to New Zealand’s other bilateral engagements, nor do we compare New Zealand to other small states. Our analysis is not a ‘mirrored’ comparison anchored in internally valid measures. To put it simply, we do not know what we do not yet know. Our historical analysis is designed to unearth which measures, if any, may be consistently important shapers of New Zealand’s stance on violations in two rights abusing states, and when they became important.

In crafting our case histories, we draw from extant academic literature, New Zealand’s National Archives, government records, including the Hansard Parliamentary debates and Papers Past, and the online New Zealand newspaper database, all of which are publicly available. We then ran a search on keywords (for example, ‘China’, ‘Turkey’, ‘Xinjiang’, and ‘Armenia’) and homed in on the specific material analysed from the debates, remarks, actions, and media material in order to get a sense of how New Zealand’s relationships with Turkey and China were discussed. While the general abundance of data comprising the evidence for our claims is itself an important predictor of New Zealand’s behaviour, coverage naturally varied across the two cases and over time. This means that the two case histories do not ‘sync up’, but are structured to reflect simply what the available data tells us. For example, the China case history by necessity gives greater weight to developments from the post-2008 free trade era up to the present, while the Turkish case emphasises evidence from the early and later twentieth century with less in between.

The remainder of this article is split in half, with one part each devoted to the New Zealand-Turkey and New Zealand-China relationships. The case histories indicate that shifting economic conditions have increased pressure on New Zealand policymakers to pursue alternative trade relationships that include rights-violating states, resulting in tight-lipped approaches to events in both cases, despite each having become more authoritarian over the past decade.

Turkey and New Zealand

New Zealand’s current relationship to Turkey is a reversal from its earlier position when it spoke out against both Ottoman Turkey and the Republic of Turkey for its genocides and egregious human rights violations. It did so in its media, government and civil society, as these atrocities were occurring, and also attempted to aid Turkey’s victims. Decades later, criticism is absent about the past genocides and rare about Turkey’s more contemporary violations. Simultaneously, New Zealand reversed allegiances, instead currying favour with the violator and ignoring Turkey’s victims and survivors’ pleas.

To illustrate this, this section documents New Zealand’s responses to Turkey’s genocides and human rights violations in three periods of time: 1) before and just after WWI (1880s until 1919) when Turkey’s atrocities were regularly condemned in New Zealand’s newspapers, Parliament, and citizen actions, which sought to aid the victims of genocide, 2) the late 1980s and 1990s, when human rights organisations campaigned to alert the world to Turkish violations of human rights, including torture and extrajudicial killing, but rather than condemning these acts as it had done in the past, New Zealand embraced Turkey, ignored its victims, reconfigured Turkey’s history without acknowledging earlier atrocities, and erected a monument in its capital city of Wellington to honour Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, which its newspapers had recognised earlier as a brutal dictator, ethnic cleanser, and who as commander of the Turkish soldiers, conquered the Anzac soldiers in Gallipoli, and 3) the early twenty-first century, in which New Zealand has continued its silence about the atrocities, genocides, and more contemporary gross human rights violations as detailed below.

Before and after World War I

Before World War I, New Zealand expressed outrage at Turkey’s human rights abuses and sympathy for Turkey’s victims in four domains – its press, parliament, educational/civil service material, and through civil society activities. During the 1890s its newspapers covered at length what scholars consider either the first wave of the Armenian Genocide (Morris and Ze’evi 2019). From 1885–1915, search terms ‘Armenia’ or ‘Armenian’ garnered 24,696 hits in New Zealand’s historic newspapers, most of which chronicled pogroms, mass killing and other atrocities (Some of this number arose from the same articles appearing in multiple newspapers). ‘Atrocities’ and ‘extermination’ were common in headlines, and reports noted, for example, that Turks lured Armenians into camps then slaughtered them (Poverty Bay Herald 1895, 2). Within ten days the victims were ‘wiped out’ and buried in pre-dug graves. Other articles reported ‘butchery’, ‘torture’, boiling and burning alive, drowning, rape and starvation as part of either a ‘policy of extermination’ or a ‘system of extermination’ (Poverty Bay Herald 1891, 2). Because of these violations, newspapers used phrases such as ‘unspeakable Turk’ or ‘terrible Turk’.

During this period, New Zealanders citizens donated money, penned articles, and petitioned their government about the ‘treatment of Armenians by the Turks’, while members of parliament spoke against the atrocities. Research located at least four petitions asking the government to act on behalf of the Armenians and other Christians who suffered under Turkish rule (e.g. House of Representatives 1896). Parliamentarians expressed outrage at the Turks, and education and civil service exams reflect similar views. One exam question asked test-takers about Armenia’s rivers, and towns, while another expressed disdain about Turkey by asking exam-takers to correct grammar in a statement: ‘Few who cherish the illusion that Turkey will reform herself’ (House of Representatives 1894).

News coverage of the genocide and citizen and government’s expressions of concern continued during the War, including through eye-witness accounts. A search of the newspapers from 28 July 1914 until 11 November 2018, the official dates of the War, on words ‘Armenia’ or ‘Armenian’ revealed 13,509 hits, (with repetition of some articles in multiple newspapers). Mostly, these articles described the atrocities and acknowledged the war as a ‘war of extermination against comparatively defenceless people … it appears that large numbers of Armenian Christians have been murdered’ (Dominion 1915, 4).

The news continued covering ‘Turkish Atrocities in Armenia: Too Awful to Describe’, detailed that ‘a million Armenians have perished … . literally driven under the lash, … pillage, murder, outrage, starvation, … girl stealing … taken in trucks to the river bank and … shot into the water. All Armenian men were half stripped, tied together and taken away. The women and girls were distributed in Turkish villages, the Turks scrutinising and choosing whom they wanted … The suffering … is too horrible and awful to describe’. Others described ‘every sort of brutality’, including torture, rape, ‘torn little children limb from limb … roasted these unfortunate Armenians by hundreds and thousands in burning homes … cutting out their tongues … noses … eyes … finger-nails and … toe-nails … butchered with inconceivable and unparalleled cruelties. . The Turks are quite determined to make a complete end of the whole Armenian race (Evening Star 1915, 2)’.

A local MP framed the war at least partly through the lens of genocide, and as ‘defence not merely of the Empire but of civilisation’. Germany had ‘allowed the Turks to murder practically the whole Armenian Nation’, said Reform MP Robert Alexander Wright, who later referred to the ‘torture and murder of the 800,000 Armenians … at the hands of the Turks’ (Robins 2020). Other MPs witnessed thousands of Armenian refugees and requested the acting Prime Minister assist the “unfortunate Armenians and Jews … as the ‘graceful and proper thing’. The acting Prime Minister responded, saying it was ‘our duty and privilege to assist’ and referenced ‘the wholesale slaughter of Armenians’ (Robins 2020).

After the War’s end, newspapers continued reporting on Turkey’s elimination of the Christian populations, noting, for example, that 1.2 million out of 1.8 million Armenians were ‘murdered by the unspeakable Turk’ (Star 1918). Between 11 November 1918 until 1932, while fewer articles appeared than before in New Zealand newspaper (1,883), they continued reporting with headlines such as, ‘Armenian Massacres’, and ‘Tortured Armenia’.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister William Massey chaired the Sub-Commission on Criminal Acts for the Allied Forces Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and the Enforcement of Penalties, which blamed the war and its premeditation on the Central Powers, Turkey and Bulgaria (Adatci 1920). The body documented Turkey’s war crimes including torture, aerial bombardment, massacres, attacks on hospital ships, poisoning springs and wells, rape, deliberate starvation, and abduction and forced prostitution of girls (Adatci 1920). Reporting on the commission’s findings, New Zealand newspapers noted, ‘systematically organised … massacres of Armenians by the Turks … victims assassinated, burned alive, or drowned … women, girls and children locked up in harems, and converted by force to Mohammedanism’ (N.Z. Herald 1919, 5). Government and civilian charitable efforts and aid continued, including Massey’s proposal to ship aid to Turkey’s victims through the Near East Relief (N.Z. Herald 1922, 8).

Meanwhile, Kemal Pasha (later Ataturk) began a two-track offence: Rather than accept the boundaries agreed upon by treaty, he violently eliminated the remaining Christians coupled with a charm offensive, with a goal of ‘Ottoman supremacy’, said New Zealand’s newspapers (c.f., Dominion 1918): Kemal vowed to renew ‘the massacres of the Armenians’, with the ‘aim of the extermination of their race’ (Oamaru Mail 1919, 6), and to connect ‘Turk speaking peoples to the borders of China’ (Evening Post 1920, 6; Waikato Times 1922, 5). Other articles detailed ‘bandits’ joining ‘Mustafa Kemal, to slit the throat of any Armenian who may happen their way’ (Otago Witness 1920, 51), and Kemal’s using his win against the French to ‘massacre great numbers of Armenians’ (Nelson Evening Mail 1922). Throughout reportage, newspapers described Kemal as ‘sinister’, ‘menace’, and ‘dictator’, his plans as ‘startling’.

These articles in New Zealand’s newspapers comport with the scholarship about Kemal’s pan-Turanism plan, his annihilation of the remaining Christians, and the fledgling Republic of Armenia (Akçam 2006; Balakian 2003). Kemal’s genocidal campaign against the region’s indigenous Christians resulted in the deaths of around 704,000 people, after which he imposed a policy of genocide denial (Rummel and Horowitz 2018). New Zealand responded with an early offer to return to war to fight Turkey. In one fortnight, more than 13,000 New Zealanders, including 400 women, volunteered to battle Turkey (McGibbon 2018, 46). Yet Kemal’s charm offensive struck a chord. An Australian journalist publishing in New Zealand newspapers found the ‘extreme politeness … most curious’ (Otago Daily Times 1919).

Kemal’s modernisation project was seen as occurring within a dictatorship in New Zealand media, with headlines such as “Turkey for the Turks: Kemal Pasha Dictator. Imitator of Mussolini. A Beloved Tyrant: Kemal ‘defies conventions and personal virtues … ignores parliament. . is an egotist as great as Mussolini, whom he imitates … ’ (Auckland Star 1926, 7). Articles reported Turkey’s use of child labour, unlimited working hours, and Kemal’s ban of trade unions, meetings, and strikes against Turkish entities (Evening Star 1930, 19). Although media continued calling Kemal “ruthless (Evening Star 1935) and ‘dictator’ (Evening Star 1933), they shifted focus to Turkey’s ‘born again’ nation, thus obfuscating his and his predecessors’ atrocities, which continued with impunity, including in the modern era.

During this time, New Zealand’s communities and government began honouring their own soldiers in Anzac Day commemorations (Armoudian, Robins, and Woodman 2021). As part of his charm offensive, in the 1930s, Kemal sent commemorative messages to Australia, which were reported in New Zealand’s newspapers: the ‘former enemy’ had commended the ‘heroism’ of Anzac soldiers (Poverty Bay Herald 1934, 4). Two years later, one newspaper article praised Turkey for its ethnic cleansing, and referred to its indigenous people as foreigners (Ellesmere Guardian 1936, 6).

From foe to friend amid past and present gross human rights violations

Between this time and the 1970s, New Zealand’s government mostly ignored Turkey-related matters, rarely mentioning the country. But in 1974, when Turkey invaded and occupied Northern Cyprus, caused a civil war and divided the island, New Zealand condemned the invasion alongside other Commonwealth countries. Diplomatic accreditation came in 1977 when the Turkish Ambassador to Australia was accredited to New Zealand. Three additional developments ostensibly led to New Zealand’s embracing Turkey and honouring Kemal Ataturk: First, the UK joined the EEC (1973), which meant New Zealand needed other trade partners. Second, Turkey’s ‘long-distance Kemalism’ began promoting Kemal abroad as a public diplomacy campaign (Şenay 2012, 1615). Third, Australia, New Zealand’s closest neighbour and ally, began talks with Turkey for reciprocal memorials for the battle in Gallipoli.

Turkey’s violations continued, including torture, disappearances, extra-judicial executions, and oppression of free expression, press and association. Rather than prosecuting violators of human rights, Turkey prosecuted those revealing the violations (Bozarslan 2001; Jongerden 2003). Scholars and NGOs (Amnesty International 1984) publicised these violations. But in contrast to the past, New Zealand refused to condemn Turkey’s historic or modern atrocities and instead pursued relations with Turkey, including its request to join Australia in erecting a monument to Kemal in exchange for Turkey’s renaming part of the Gallipoli peninsula Anzac Cove (Hickey 1988). New Zealand then promoted Kemal as only a moderniser and commander, while obfuscating his role as a dictator who violently eliminated the Christian population from their ancestral homelands.

New Zealand’s indigenous Māori and its Greek and Cypriot citizens opposed the monument, Māori because the chosen site was historically significant and sacred. Officials responded to Māori by naming the park Rangitatu Historic Reserve and Ataturk Memorial Park. But rather than addressing grievances of the Greek and Cypriot New Zealanders, the government proceeded in secrecy, according to memoranda (Weir 1988, 2). The monument was later graffitied and its plaque stolen (Stevens 1989, 3) and the park dedicated amid parallel trade talks towards securing Turkey as a market for animal products (Dedication of Ataturk Memorial 1986, 14).

Parliamentary discourse and memoranda focused on trade with Turkey. At least two New Zealand delegations travelled to Turkey in the late 1980s. In one, the Minister of Overseas Trade and Marketing, and 17 businessmen met with senior members of the Turkish Cabinet and several hundred business people: ‘New Zealand has to take an interest in that market’, the Minister argued (House of Representatives 1988, 3403). The agricultural emphasis of the trade courtship comports with Turkey sending its Minister of Agriculture to the unveiling. During this timeframe, no concerns were found about Turkey’s past or present human rights violations. In 1989, New Zealand’s Ambassador in Tehran was accredited to Turkey.

In the 1990s, NGOs continued reporting Turkey’s human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions, yet New Zealand grew closer to Turkey, again with no express condemnations for the violations. In a 1991 public ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the Gallipoli landings, the two countries unveiled the Ataturk monument with speeches about their ‘enduring friendship’. Attendees included Turkey’s president, Ministry of Agriculture, its State Milk Company, Meat and Fish Organization, the Turkish Association of Chambers of Commerce, forest planning, research and coordination, and Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry & Rural Affairs (N.Z Government 1991, 1). Similarly, New Zealand representation included the Ministry of External Relations and Trade, Agriculture and Fisheries, and the Trade Development Board. Coinciding with the unveiling was a Wellington Chamber of Commerce and Trade Development board meeting with 40 Turkish businesspeople pursuing intensive dairy production and a $25 billion related project (Foley 1991). One newspaper quoted a Turkish spokesperson, arguing for deeper economic ties: ‘New Zealand had failed to take full advantage of the natural trade “bridge” Turkey offered to other countries’ with its ‘liberal investment policy with a State planning organisation set up to help foreign businesspeople’. Australians, however, ‘had … already established a farm in the Gap area to lift viticulture output … We are the major door to the Soviet Union and the Middle East … the emphasis should be “do business”’ (Foley 1991). Two years later, Turkey opened an Embassy in Wellington. Two years after that, New Zealand established a diplomatic office in Ankara after which the Minister signed letters to establish a joint Turkey-New Zealand commission between to develop business, trade and technical relations. New Zealand’s silence on Turkey’s human rights violations continued.

While most media coverage in the National Archives’ memorial files echoed the government’s framing and emphasised trade, one article noted Turkey’s political assassinations and the 12 million Kurds forbidden to ‘speak their own language’. It also reported that New Zealand’s exports (mostly animal products) there had ‘risen rapidly’ from $11 million in 1986 to $44 million the previous year (Collins 1991). A few reporters covered local protests against the memorial, reporting ‘ill-feeling among Maoris and the Wellington Greek and Greek-Cypriot communities’. One report noted ‘tight security’ to protect Turkish officials from ‘Armenian terrorists’ (Armstrong 1990).

In 1992, Human Rights Watch reported an ‘extremely disturbing increase’ in suspicious deaths, including Kurdish leaders, human rights activists and journalists. A year later, a delegation from Turkey visited New Zealand parliament. New Zealand’s Minister for Trade Negotiations boasted that New Zealand’s ‘exports to Turkey have increased by 146% in the first term of this Government’ (House of Representatives 1993). Tepid criticism of the Cypriot invasion came in 1994, via Don McKinnon, Deputy Prime Minister: ‘The Government regrets the Turkish military presence in Cyprus. We have consistently called for its withdrawal’. In the late 1990s, two minor party members of Parliament criticised Turkey’s jailing of ‘large numbers of members of Parliament’ and repression of its Kurdish community (House of Representatives 1998, 1999a, 1999b, 2000).

Ongoing silence: the early twenty-first century

While these debates, memoranda, and coverage suggest that human rights failed to receive consideration in the face of potential economic gain, the financial benefits never fully materialised, and trade between the two countries favours Turkey. Further, while the relationship with Turkey was pursued for economic gain, New Zealand framed it as ‘enemies-turned-friends’, which likely contributed to the Anzac narrative, which was building at the same time.

New Zealand still refrains from criticising Turkey’s egregious violations, declares its enduring friendship with Turkey, and gives it prominence annually in its national Anzac Day commemoration. The monument and park named for Kemal still stand, and New Zealand has constructed a national history related to and about the War without the gruesome annihilation of Tukey’s indigenous Christian populations. Across New Zealand’s modern governments, it has ignored its own citizens of Armenian, Assyrian and Greek origin requesting recognition of the genocides and enabled and contributed to genocide denial, while recognising genocides elsewhere. A few media organisations have challenged this refusal to recognise the genocide, and New Zealand citizens have submitted petitions, albeit without organised campaigns (e.g. New Zealand Parliament, 2021b).

As of this writing, the Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls its relations with New Zealand ‘friendly and positive … based on shared fundamental values’, dating ‘back to the historical encounter at the Cannakale Battle of 1915’, timing that corresponds with the Genocide. Its website noted a 22 April 2010 ‘Turkey-New Zealand Joint Declaration’, depicted as a ‘road map for bilateral relations … mutual political will to enhance cooperation’ (Republic of Turkey Ministry of Foreign Affairs n.d.), a 2012 Joint Economic Commission (JEC) meeting, and the establishment of the Turkey-New Zealand Business Council. Turkish records report that annual trade volume with New Zealand has increased ‘seven-fold in 2015’, reaching 150 million USD. Since the 2000s, the trade balance trade has favoured Turkey as noted: imports reached $105,936,426 NZD while exports were $41,078,572 NZD (Stats NZ n.d..). However, little discussion of Turkey’s genocidal past or ongoing human rights violations has eventuated.

New Zealand and China

When compared to the New Zealand-Turkey relationship, the timeline of ties between New Zealand and China is more condensed. Changes to the relationship have been radical and more rapid, primarily taking shape over the last four decades. The evolution of the relationship is captured here in four parts, commencing with pre-PRC linkages and the establishment of a Chinese consular presence in Wellington up to 1949. This is followed by the relative chilling of ties during the Cold War, and their subsequent expansion after New Zealand’s formal recognition of the PRC in 1972, culminating in the ‘Four Firsts’. The final portion then considers the 2008 Free Trade Agreement as a watershed moment in China-New Zealand relations, after which critiques of the former’s human rights record by the latter dried up almost entirely, save for a few scattered comments from opposition politicians, academics, and dissident groups. China is now New Zealand’s largest trading partner, a shift that coincided with a widely-acknowledged repressive turn in Chinese politics under Xi Jinping’s leadership, making New Zealand’s silence even more curious (Human Rights Watch 2020) (Shirk 2018; South China Morning Post 2017).

Early diplomatic contact: the late imperial and Republic of China (ROC) eras

The earliest recorded New Zealand-China interactions date from the late eighteenth century, when China was a primary international market for Otago seal skins (Richards 1995, 20; Smith 1994, 3–4). From the mid-nineteenth century onward, New Zealand experienced an influx of migrant labourers often driven by conditions in China, namely overcrowding, famine, drought, lawlessness, and political unrest. By 1908, the Qing dynasty established a consulate in Wellington, which the Republic of China (ROC) took over following the Xinhai revolution four years later.

However, the development of deeper ties was hampered by the lack of a New Zealand embassy in Beijing, making the ROC consulate the sole locus of government-to-government contact. As such, official communication was thin and sporadic, ceasing entirely following the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war and the flight of the ROC government to Taiwan.

The available historiographic evidence suggests neither New Zealand society nor its government was particularly cognisant of China until the Second World War, and even then, knowledge was limited to China’s position vis-a-vis the Empire of Japan and strategic importance to the Pacific theatre. One report explained that ‘following the Japanese incursions into China in the 1930s, public sentiment in New Zealand became more favourable towards the Chinese’, but argues this was largely the result of missionary work, rather than intergovernmental relations (Australia-China Relations Institute/New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre 2015, 12).

The pre-recognition cold war period

New Zealand withheld formal recognition of the PRC until 1972, owing to ideologically unfavourable views of the new Communist government. The decisive moment came when the UN declared China as an aggressor in Korean War on North Korea’s side (Roberts 2000, 10). The then-freshly elected National Party government of Sidney Holland chose to bandwagon with other western democracies, refusing to acknowledge the PRC as the legitimate holder of the UN’s ‘China’ seat – the UK being an important exception. Additionally, New Zealand consistently backed the US in its effort to prevent the Soviets from formally installing PRC officials as China’s representatives at the UN between 1951 and 1960. Prime Minister Keith Holyoake (1960–1972) was also an ardent ROC supporter, making personal visits to Chiang Kai-shek and allowing the Wellington consulate to be upgraded to embassy status in 1962. New Zealand only came to recognise the PRC after the US and its allies failed to block UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, which expelled ROC’s delegates and recognised the PRC as China’s sole legitimate representative in the UN.

The lack of diplomatic recognition during the early Cold War years meant that contact occurred via other pathways. With no formal dialogue between the two governments, communication instead took place between representatives of the two societies, some of whom were ideologically sympathetic to Mao Zedong’s revolutionary cause. The most well-known example is Rewi Alley, a Canterbury-born labour activist who initially travelled to China in the 1920s after serving for New Zealand in World War One. In 1937, he helped found the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (Gongye Hezuoshe) – better-known as the Gung Ho International movement – becoming radicalised and ingratiating himself to the upper echelons of the Communist insurgency. Alley remained in China after the civil war and became a vocal supporter of the CCP both inside and outside China, authoring several important pieces of propaganda (Alley 1961). Another prominent PRC-friendly New Zealander of the period was Victor Wilcox, a dairy farmer and unionist in Waiharara, Northland, and long-time member of the Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ) who was unofficially accorded the status of head-of-state in Beijing through to the 1970s (Australia-China Relations Institute/New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre 2015, 14).

However, the examples of Alley and Wilcox do not necessarily suggest that closer ties between China and New Zealand eventuated because the latter was ‘soft’ on communism. Indeed, pro-China New Zealand communists are notable by their exceptionalism during the pre-recognition Cold War years, when links were forged from society-to-society because official diplomacy was ideologically and politically impossible, and New Zealand’s governments vehemently opposed China’s communist regime. It bears mention, however, that before the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the ascendency of Deng Xiaoping two years later, little information on the human costs of the 1949 revolution and subsequent totalitarian period were known outside China, in New Zealand or anywhere else, and thus were not subjects of public discussion until sometime later.

A shift in ties: 1972–2008

Several conditions underlaid the re-establishment of diplomatic contact in 1972, after which the previous antipathy of New Zealand’s government towards China began to change. From China’s perspective, the most important factor in establishing official government-to-government contact was that New Zealand recognise and respect the ‘One China’ principle, which was affirmed in a Joint Communique issued on 21 December (The Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in New Zealand, n.d.). For New Zealand, however, the politics were not as straightforward. John Marshall’s National government sought to avoid the impression that by recognising China’s new regime, its support for the ROC was slackening, and pursued a way to balance the reality of the PRC’s existence with its commitments to anti-communism. However, the Labour government of Norman Kirk, elected in December 1972, saw these objectives as incommensurable, and chose to uphold PRC legitimacy, both bilaterally and in the UN.

As in the relationship with Turkey sketched above, the 1970s and 1980s brought shifts in New Zealand’s security and economic policies which pushed it towards new allies and trade partners. Geopolitics in Europe proved a key driver of these changes. Prior to deregulation of the economy in 1985, approximately 80% of New Zealand’s foreign exports went to the UK (Huang and Young 2013). However, once the UK became more integrated with the rest of European common market, New Zealand found itself needing new trade partners, and the emergent economies of East Asia offered promising solutions. China’s program of reform and opening afforded new opportunities for business travel, which expanded during Robert Muldoon’s years as Prime Minister (1975–84) (Kohn 2008). By the mid-1980s, New Zealand appealed to emergent interests in China as a relatively uncomplicated, ‘low key’ place to get acquainted with western business practices and acclimate itself to the international marketplace (Noakes and Burton 2019, 419).

Expanding commercial ties between New Zealand and China were not severely interrupted by the Tiananmen Square demonstration of June 1989, the resulting crackdown on demonstrators, or by diplomatic consequences. In response to the incident, Prime Minister David Lange issued a strongly worded condemnation, as did his Embassy spokesperson Graeme McGuire, joining leaders in many other liberal democracies (McCraw 1994) Yet even in this high-profile instance, the implications for trade were a primary concern of New Zealand lawmakers, according to a May 1989 floor debate in Parliament (House of Representatives 1989, 277–278).

While debates as to whether retaliatory sanctions against China for the Tiananmen Square massacre continued in some countries until 2005, the 1990s began a period in China-New Zealand relations defined by what the latter calls the ‘Four Firsts’ – milestones in the relationship with China to which no other western country could lay claim at the time. In July 1997, New Zealand became the first developed democracy to agree to terms on China’s WTO accession. This action led directly to New Zealand being the first to formally recognise China as having a market economy in 2004. The third and fourth ‘Firsts’ followed in late 2004 when New Zealand and China began negotiating a free trade agreement (FTA), and in 2008 with the announcement of the final deal.

2008–2023: deepening ties through free trade

The 2008 FTA represents an important watershed in the China-New Zealand relationship for two main reasons. First, China subsequently became and remains New Zealand’s biggest trade partner. As evidence of the deepening ties and New Zealand’s esteem for its trade relationship with China, talks commenced to revise and upgrade the FTA beginning in November 2016 under the National government of John Key and were completed in early 2021 under Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government (New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade n.d.). Figures 1 and 2 below give an indication of the 5-year trend in China-New Zealand trade and some of the key commodities exchanged, current as of June 2020, the most recent date for which data are available.

Figure 1. NZ-PRC trade, 2015–2020.

Figure 2. Stats NZ/Tatauranga Aotearoa https://statisticsnz.shinyapps.io/trade_dashboard/.

Second, and most importantly, critiques of China’s human rights records nearly vanished from official records after 2008. Never particularly inclined to engage in biting commentary of abuses inside China, parliamentary debate focused almost exclusively on the trade relationship and, in many instances, the importance of preserving that relationship by not mentioning human rights issues. Indeed, the parliamentary record indicates an increasingly strong note of pragmatism in New Zealand’s policy towards China in the years leading up to the FTA. One exchange that took place on 9 December 2004 is particularly telling. Asked by Green Party MP Rod Donald why the Labour government was negotiating a free trade deal with a country known that ‘kills people who speak up for democracy’, Labour MP Phil Goff replied that the FTA ‘will increase the level of trade with China by between $260 million and $400 million a year for 20 years. That is necessary to create literally tens of thousands of jobs’ (House of Representatives 2004, 17624). On another occasion in June 2005, Green Party MP Keith Locke inquired, ‘How bad does China’s human rights record have to become before the Prime Minister would think again about giving preferential trade access to that regime?’ to which Labour MP Michael Cullen responded ‘If we were to choose with whom we traded purely on the basis of total support for every action Governments took, we would be confined to a very small range of trading partners’ (House of Representatives 2005, 20873).

As the FTA upgrade was being negotiated, talk of China in New Zealand’s Parliament was trade-focused and almost uniformly positive, the thriving economic relationship a point of pride rather than derision or suspicion. In March 2019, MP David Parker (Minister for Trade and Export Growth) noted that two-way trade had crested $30 billion for the first time (House of Representatives, 2019a, p. 9825). In May of the same year, Parker told Parliament that ‘goods exports increased by 52% in March, $1.5 billion for the month – a new record’ and spoke of strides made towards upgrading the successful FTA (House of Representatives, 2019b, p. 10731). Announcing the conclusion of negotiations in November, Parker stated: [The FTA upgrade] ‘ensures that our trade agreement will remain one of the best that any country has with China. This is great news for our exporters, including those in the agricultural sector, who are getting top prices for their food and fibre products’. The deal was lauded as a ‘historical 24 hours for New Zealand trade’, and ‘a big win for the PM’. The ease of access to Chinese markets was contrasted with the relative trade difficulties New Zealand was experiencing with the US and EU at the time (House of Representatives, 2019c, p. 14713).

In highlighting the primacy of trade considerations to New Zealand foreign policy, some qualifying statements must be made. The first is that when human rights concerns have been raised in parliamentary debates about China, they are nearly always raised by opposition politicians, with the Green Party being the most outspoken. Indeed, the record reveals that no member of a governing party raised a question about human rights in China at any point between 2000 and 2021. Neither did they deny the importance of human rights, but to the extent they responded to such questions by others, it was only to refocus the discussion on the overriding importance of trade. The silent streak came to an end only in May 2021 when then-Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson responded to ACT Deputy Leader Brooke van Velden’s query as to whether there had been any communication from the Labour government with the Communist Party of China regarding the ‘genocide’ in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Robertson responded

Officials have engaged with representatives of the Chinese Government regarding the grave human rights situation in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. I have made it clear that we continue to raise these concerns directly with China at all levels. Signed a joint statement alongside 38 other countries expressing concern. No direct contact with the Chinese Government regarding ‘genocide’. (House of Representatives 2021, 2418)

Robertson did not clarify any further what ‘engagement’ meant, however.

While in the post-2008 era both National and Labour governments have been loath to jeopardise trade with China by being vocal, noticeable differences exist across governing parties. For example, Labour PM Helen Clarke met with the Dalai Lama in 2007, but National’s John Key did not, taking office just weeks after the FTA with China came into force. As Anne Marie Brady has noted, extensive Party-to-Party ties exist between both the CCP and Labour and the CCP and National Party. However, as the more staunchly pro-business of the two, it is National that has been perceived as more sympathetic to China, with Labour somewhat more prone to downplay linkages (Brady 2017). After relinquishing the Prime Minister’s office in December 2017, National Party representatives struck a markedly more China-friendly tone, building ties, which had never before been built between the two countries. For example, interim National Party leader Simon Bridges made headlines in 2019 when, along with MPs Gerry Brownlee and Jian Yang, he accepted a meeting with Guo Shengkun, who heads Beijing’s Ministry of State Security, and publicly praised the CCP (Bateman 2019).

Compared to the National Party governments of John Key and Bill English (2008–2017), the Labour government of Jacinda Ardern (2017–2023) was more prone to speak out on human rights concerns in China, albeit in mostly unobtrusive ways that stop well short of chiding China’s government for its role in any abuses. For instance, in late 2018, Ardern told a post-Cabinet meeting press conference that she was increasingly concerned about reports of mass detention and religious persecution in Xinjiang but evaded the question of how to broach it with her Chinese counterparts. ‘Generally speaking, we take the opportunity to raise issues of concern, [but] it would be pre-emptive to say what I would discuss’, she said (Coughlan 2018). In 2021, Ardern drew fire from domestic and international sources for refusing to refer to the incarceration of Uyghur Muslims in patriotic education facilities as ‘genocide’. It was later reported that Labour had requested ACT’s parliamentary motion on the subject ‘soften its language’, which Uighur Solidarity Aotearoa NZ called a ‘farce’ (Ensor, 2021). Additionally, Ardern drew the ire from ‘5 eyes’ security partners – all traditional allies with whom NZ is usually expected to bandwagon – for opting out of making public statements like those made by governments in Canada, Australia, the UK and US, condemning China for its treatment of Uyghurs, its handling of the Hong Kong protests, and other violations, which one Tory MP in the UK called ‘one hell of an ethical mess’ (Bourke, 2021).

Late in Ardern’s time in office, the question of economic dependence on China became a complex issue in New Zealand politics, with government unable to rebuke China too forcefully for fear of souring trade links (Young 2023). Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has stated, “New Zealand may soon find itself ‘at the heart of a “storm” of anger from China’ if relations were to deteriorate to the degree they have between China and Australia, with obvious implications for trade (McClure, 2021). For this reason, Mahuta has publicly advocated ‘diversifying’ New Zealand’s trade relationships, without necessarily divesting from China. This wording is careful and deliberate, since any hint of a firmer line with China is likely to bring charges of hurting New Zealand business. Indeed, National Party MP’s have already suggested ‘steadily deteriorating relations’ with China, something Ardern denied, while still acknowledging the values gap in respect for human rights. ‘New Zealand and China have differences of views on some issues, as we do with any other country … however this is a robust and mature relationship, [and] we manage these differences together in a mutually respectful way’, she said (Roy 2019).

Conclusion

Our purpose here has not been to suggest that human rights are unimportant to New Zealanders or their elected representatives, but that there may be conditions under which they take a backseat to other concerns. Indeed, one survey by the Pew Research Centre found 80% of New Zealanders support trying to ‘promote human rights in China, even if it harms economic relations’ (Silver et al. 2021). However, this contention does not reflect the empirical realities observed in New Zealand’s bilateral ties with Turkey or China.

As we have shown, New Zealand’s posture towards two known rights abusers, has changed markedly over time. A key turning point in both cases was New Zealand’s need to seek new trade relationships in the 1970s and 1980s. From this point onwards, critiques of human rights abuses in China and Turkey were largely muted, when made at all. Indeed, both relationships appear stable and, to have deepened amid authoritarian turns in Xi’s China and Erdoğan’s Turkey. Moreover, as we noted at the outset, New Zealand has taken official stances in the case of other rights-abusing states, so why not these? What drives New Zealand’s silence on abuses in countries of which it was previously critical?

We contend that security alliances and liberal democratic identity are insufficient explanations. Otherwise, New Zealand would be expected to respond to China and Turkey as its ‘Five Eyes’ partners (US, UK, Canada, and Australia) have done. While New Zealand has followed its neighbour Australia with regard to Turkey, it broke with its traditional security partners, including the US, on both Turkey and China, and has become much more economically reliant on China than the US (though Australia is also highly dependent on China, which takes in roughly 32% of Australia’s total exports) (Australian Government, 2022). Instead of bandwagoning with one superpower or the other, New Zealand has chosen a hedging strategy that includes a lack of criticisms directed at key trade partners.

The evidence suggests that in both cases, New Zealand’s historic responses to past and present human rights violations are shaped by sensitivity to economic priorities. In the Turkish case, New Zealand reversed its earlier position: It had condemned Turkey’s extermination of its indigenous Christian populations before, during, and after the First World War and actively supported these victims. But in the mid-1980s, as New Zealand was seeking new trading partners, it switched its allegiance, embracing Turkey and ignoring its victims, including those who had sought refuge in New Zealand. Human rights concerns took a backseat to potential economic benefits, which never fully materialised. Despite that, the New Zealand-Turkish relationship remains strong. A similar outcome eventuated with China, as New Zealand sought closer economic integration with the world after deregulation. China has since blossomed to become New Zealand’s leading trading partner. Well-publicised abuses continue in Turkey and China while past abuses remain unacknowledged and unredressed, while close commercial ties continue

In the context of the combined literature of political science, political economy and international relations, this finding makes sense as a feature of liberal electoral democracies playing two-level games: Robert Putnam noted that failures to satisfy domestic constituents when making foreign policy decisions could result in electoral losses. Given how strongly economic issues tend to feature in voting behaviour – i.e. that voters tend to vote based on economic performance and prospects, or perceptions of them – some prioritisation of economic opportunity over human rights is unsurprising (Lewis-Beck & Paldam, 2000; Putnam, 1988). However, this same finding contradicts the idea that democracies can be expected to consistently stand up for human rights abroad. Rather, they speak when the costs of doing so are low and tend to stay silent when those costs are high. In other words, human rights may matter to New Zealand’s politicians and public, but this does not always translate to a full-throated defence of human rights in the world.

Future research could expand on these findings by testing the generalisability of these case studies. However, the benefits of this paper’s approach are the rich details about when and why a liberal democracy like New Zealand that touts human rights as a priority ignores some of the worst human rights violations abroad. If these findings are a feature of electoral democracies more broadly, scholars may consider how small states like New Zealand might economically flourish and still condemn human rights violations. They could also consider alternative democratic systems, such as deliberative democracy, which empowers informed mini-publics to participate in important decisions (Armoudian and Poulsen 2023), including on human rights. Models such as these can, at times, counteract the problems of financially-motivated interest group influence in important public interest decision-making.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Armoudian

Maria Armoudian are Senior Lecturers in Politics and International Relations at the University of Auckland, New Zealand

Stephen Noakes

Stephen Noakes are Senior Lecturers in Politics and International Relations at the University of Auckland, New Zealand