Opinion | Turkey: Why Nobody Trusts It, But Everyone Deals With It

Indian opinion has turned sharply against Turkey due to its political and military support for Pakistan in the conflict with India following the Pahalgam terror attack. Turkey has traditionally leaned towards Pakistan, but this has not stood in the way of India trying to forge a pragmatic relationship with a significant regional power like Turkey. However, this policy of tolerating gratuitous Turkish provocations in recent years on the Kashmir issue seems to have run its course.

Turkey and India have had a relationship marked by indifference. Since 1947, the two countries have been in different political orbits, with India choosing nonalignment and Turkey preferring to be a member of US alliances. Under President Turgut Özal, Turkey had sought to build more broad-based external ties and reached out to India in the mid-1980s, beginning a process of closer engagement between the two countries.

Engagement In the '80s

In 1989, I was sent to Turkey as an ambassador. In that role, I maintained a productive dialogue with Necmettin Erbakan, the founder of the Justice Party, and kept him briefed about developments in Kashmir. To his credit, the Islamist media under the control of his party did not publish any commentary on Kashmir critical of India. Erdogan belonged to Erbakan's party, as did Abdullah Gul, who, too, was friendly with us and later became the President of Turkey. Gul visited India in 2010.

Prime Minister Modi, too, has been engaging Erdogan, who had shown an inclination to explore constructive ties with India during the early years of his rule. He visited India in 2008 and then in 2017. Modi attended the G-20 meeting in Antalya in 2015. 

When Ties Began To Fracture

However, the deterioration of ties between the two countries began when Erdogan in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in 2019 criticised India's move on Article 370. As a consequence, India decided to put off a proposed visit by Modi to Ankara. In early 2020, India summoned the then Turkish ambassador to lodge a diplomatic protest after Erdogan, on a visit to Pakistan, said the situation in Kashmir was worsening. 

However, in 2022, Modi met Erdogan at the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Uzbekistan. Erdogan attended the G-20 summit in New Delhi in September 2023, where discussions took place on bilateral cooperation in potential areas like trade and investment, defence and security, civil aviation, and shipping.

Many broad factors had dictated India's constructive approach towards Turkey, despite provocations. For our West Asia policy, where India has many vital interests, it was felt that we should engage all key players in the region.

Turkey Under Erdogan

Under Erdogan, Turkey has pursued an activist interventionist policy in West Asia. It has influence in the Turkic Republics of Central Asia, where India has equities. With its Heart of Asia initiative aimed at promoting peace in Afghanistan, Turkey sought to extend its influence in the Indian neighbourhood. India was even invited to be a part of the discussions under this format.

Beyond that, Turkey is a notable Black Sea power. Its control of the Bosphorus Strait gives it enormous leverage over Russia, whose only warm water Black Sea fleet's access to the Mediterranean is through this Strait. For Ukraine, too, this egress through the Bosphorus is vital for trade, as otherwise, it is landlocked. 

Turkey is a NATO member but has flourishing ties with Russia, to the point of helping it bypass Western sanctions. Its bilateral trade and energy ties with Moscow are pivotal for both sides. It is not surprising that even with Turkey countering Russia's interests in Syria, arming Ukraine and refusing to recognise Crimea as part of Russia, it is able to position itself as a mediator in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The 'Market' Element In Turkish Diplomacy

Turkey's diplomacy has a “bazaari” (market) element to it; it is bargain-oriented. It is doubtful that any country trusts Turkey, but all deal with it. It is a NATO member but it defied the US by acquiring the S-400 system from Russia. It has a major US base at Incirlik, but the US is not allowed to use it for operations in West Asia. In Syria, it has worked against the US vis-à-vis the Syrian Kurds, and against Russia by supporting Islamic groups and backing Jolani. It has extracted substantial funds from the EU by threatening to open the doors for Syrian refugees to flood Europe. It plays hot and cold with Israel. 

Therefore, India developing leverage over Turkey is not an easy proposition. As it is, India-Turkey trade and investment ties are limited.

The Turkey-Pakistan Brotherhood

Turkey's relations with Pakistan have been forged over the years. During the Khilafat Movement, Indians had donated money and gold to support Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his followers. But today, it is Pakistan that benefits from this historical support from the subcontinent. Turkey and Pakistan were members together of the US alliance systems, such as the Baghdad Pact and the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). The two countries were part of the Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD) format too, along with Iran.

Turkey says it is grateful for the support it receives from Pakistan on all issues in which it has been isolated, including its invasion and occupation of Northern Cyprus. Ankara claims that it is politically and morally obliged to support Pakistan in return, and that this support should not be seen as an ‘anti-India' stance. 

The Kashmir Issue

But Turkey is being disingenuous when it says this. As chairman of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Contact Group on Kashmir, it has gone out of its way to support self-determination in Kashmir and has condemned us for human rights violations. Turkish media outlets also actively assist Pakistan in disseminating propaganda against India on Kashmir in the Islamic world.

President Erdogan is the only foreign leader who mentions the issue of Kashmir in his UNGA address (most recently, he has been joined in this by Azerbaijan). Erdogan talked of the humanitarian situation of his “brothers and sisters” in Kashmir while on an official visit to Pakistan a few years ago, giving his concern an Islamic twist. Unlike the last five years, Erdogan did not mention Kashmir in his UNGA address in 2024 because it wanted to secure India's support for its membership application for BRICS.

India And Turkey

Turkey and Pakistan have military ties, the scope of which is a matter of concern to India, given that Turkey, as a NATO member, has access to the grouping's standard military technologies. It manufactures an advanced version of F-16s under license, and one can presume Pakistan has access to some degree of Turkish support for its own F-16 fleet. Other than this, Turkey has considerable shipbuilding expertise, to the point that India itself had a $2.2 billion contract with Turkish shipyards, specifically the Anadolu Shipyard of TAIS. The contract facilitated the construction of five Fleet Support Ships (FSS) for the Indian Navy by the Hindustan Shipyard Limited in Visakhapatnam, which involved technology and engineering support. This contract was terminated in April last year.

India has shown its displeasure with Turkey by cancelling, for national security reasons, the contract of Celebi Aviation, a leading global Turkish company specialising in ground handling, cargo and warehouse and general aviation services, which has operations in nine major Indian airports. The Turkish company has gone to court on this. The public mood in India has become quite negative, to the point that there are moves against travel to Turkey for tourism.

India Has A Few Cards, Too

Turkey is quite vulnerable on many counts should India choose to retaliate for its provocations on Jammu & Kashmir. It is in illegal occupation of Northern Cyprus, it launched military operations against its Kurdish minority and grossly violated their human rights, it has committed periodic aggression against Iraq by bombing the Kurdish population there to combat terrorism, it is violating Syrian sovereignty by occupying parts of its territory, it is in constant confrontation with Greece, it has intervened in the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, and so on. Its Ottoman-era expansionist ambitions are a concern to the Arab world.

India has all these diplomatic cards to play against Turkey, should it choose to do so. Meanwhile, we are strengthening our ties with both Greece and Armenia.

(Kanwal Sibal was Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia, and Deputy Chief Of Mission in Washington.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author