Turkiye's support for Pakistan signals a bigger neighbourhood problem for India

Scroll.in

a day ago

In the recent India-Pakistan military conflict, Turkiye stood steadfast in offering unambiguous support to Pakistan before and after the conflict.
Sources close to the Turkish government claimed that Turkish cargo planes carried military supplies to Pakistan, although this was denied by Turkish officials. This is one of the loudest statements Turkiye has made in a long time, marking a clear departure from its previously stated Asia Anew Initiative, as Turkiye reprioritises security over trade in its South Asia policy.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spoken several times since then, reiterating his country's support for Pakistan.
Turkiye has clearly made up its mind on how it looks at South Asia and who it sees fit to support in the region.
This has not happened overnight. Nor is it temporary. Turkiye is operating within its conception of a 'securitised South Asia,' where its national security is linked to the region.
Nearly all statements coming from Turkiye after the Indian military action have condemned the 'provocative steps' and claimed that strikes inside Pakistan raised 'the risk of an all-out war'.
No other Muslim or Arab nation, except Azerbaijan, issued a direct condemnation of the Indian operation.
Turkiye and Pakistan share predicament
There is general agreement that in the post-Cold War era, both Turkiye and Pakistan have lost their relevance to the Western security architecture. Both have been searching for ways to stay relevant in the changing security landscape.
Turkiye's NATO allies have been harsh in their criticism of its growing ties with Russia, particularly after it purchased the S-400 missile defence system.
Its allies have denied Turkiye crucial defence technologies and supplies to the extent that in today's Middle East, non-NATO members Israel and the UAE have received the best of NATO defence technology, which Turkiye has been denied, including the F-35.
Pakistan, too, is vulnerably dependent on the Chinese defence industry – its only option after the West abandoned it.
Turkiye's Pakistan policy may not be India-centric, but they need each other because they have few allies.
The bigger question, however, is whether Turkiye can or should have a Pakistan policy at the expense of its relations with India.
Choosing Pakistan over India
There is an unspoken consensus in Ankara and Riyadh that Pakistan is far too important to be written off. Islamabad has already become Turkiye's most important defence ally outside NATO.
However, this has come at a heavy cost: an antagonised India. Almost every Muslim nation, not just Turkiye, faces the same dilemma. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have, however, successfully de-hypenated their relations with India and Pakistan.
Turkiye tried to maintain a degree of ambiguity about its relations with Pakistan for a long time and sought close and confident ties with India.
Turkiye's offer to India was equally important, as it involved strategic relations with New Delhi in exchange for the normalisation of ties with Pakistan, including a peaceful resolution of their disputes over Jammu and Kashmir.
For that, the Turkish president used all possible tactics to bring New Delhi on board, which mostly resulted in public and diplomatic backlash.
The period 2019-2022 could be counted as the lowest point in Turkiye-India relations when the two countries waged a massive media campaign against each other. This was in the wake of the revocation of the special status accorded to Jammu and Kashmir within the Indian federal structure.
Since 2022, there have been signs of withdrawals on the Turkish side as India gave Turkiye a clear message that Turkiye's special ties with Pakistan and supporting its Kashmir politics are the biggest obstacles in India-Turkiye relations.
In 2022, Turkiye and Pakistan supported Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Armenia, defeated and isolated, rushed to India for crucial defence supplies, including India's indigenous air defence system, Akash.
Not just Armenia, India quickly reached out to Turkiye's regional rivals and detractors, Iran, Greece, Cyprus, UAE and Israel, seeking close defence and strategic relations. Many in Delhi explained this as a reaction to Turkiye's defence relations with Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Maldives.
Turkiye's rising influence in its immediate neighbourhood may challenge India's interests. By aggressively marketing its defence sector in Asia, Turkiye has attracted new clients and potential allies whose perspectives on regional security may differ from those of Delhi.
India's foreign policy has gradually shifted. India has started reimagining itself as a resurgent power, taking pride in self-reliance (Atmanirbhar Bharat).
'India First' becomes India alone
In the ruling party's ideological discourse, India First has always been echoed as a slogan, which means India's interests are the supreme objectives of its new foreign policy. Realist pundits in New Delhi have often defined, even exaggerated, 'India First' as 'India Alone'.
This contradicts a previously practised the ' Gujral Doctrine ' that offered support to the neighbouring countries without expectation of reciprocity.
India's geopolitical imagination of itself is even more complex. It goes well beyond the boundaries of its existing nation-state.
Today, India sees itself as a reduced geographical version of a larger civilisational India. These two imaginations of India – 'India First' and India as the magnanimous neigbour seeking no reciprocity – demand distinct and occasionally contradictory foreign policies. 'India First' represents that realism that originates from the perceived trauma of the dismemberment or shrinking of a civilisational India.
On the other hand, Turkiye and China are aggressively advancing transnational foreign policies by instrumentalising their Turkic and Ottoman pasts and the Belt and Road Initiative, respectively.
Under Narendra Modi, India has successfully built bilateral partnerships worldwide, leaving regional cooperation forums, including the South Asian Association forRegional Cooperation (SAARC), mostly unattended or underrepresented.
India's growing disinterest in regional cooperation forums has allowed India's neighbours to look beyond India. This has provided an opportunity for China, Turkiye, and the United States to ignore India's regional leadership in South Asia.
India must be worried that the securitisation of South Asia has helped China, Turkiye, and other powers find new defence partnerships in its neighbourhood.
The change was coming gradually and silently, away from the glare of diplomatic crises.
The end of ambiguity in Turkiye's South Asia policy and the burgeoning Turkiye-Pakistan defence relations is a new reality that India must deal with.
What is apparent, however, is that India does not have a Turkiye policy beyond transactional interests and temporary anger, which is insufficient to counter a rising power like Turkiye.
It might need its allies within the Arab and Islamic world, particularly Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia to discourage Turkiye from its South Asian ambitions.
Yildirim Beyazit University. He is also the Director of Research at the International Dialogue and Diplomacy Foundation in New Delhi.