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First Post
05-06-2025
- Business
- First Post
How the West lost Turkey and India is paying the price
As Turkey and Ankara try to cobble together a pan-Islamic bloc rooted in grievance and revanchism, India must do more to support the Saudi–UAE axis in West Asia and reinforce its alignment with moderate Muslim powers like Indonesia read more I visited Turkey some years ago as part of a delegation from the Royal College of Defence Studies, London. Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the Prime Minister, and the Kemalist character of Turkey—defined by Atatürk's vision of secularism, European integration, and military guardianship—was visibly present. We were briefed by officials at the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the EU representative office in Ankara. It was evident that Kemal Pasha's dream of a European Turkey was floundering. The EU wanted Turkey's strategic location and large military-industrial base but balked at fully integrating a Muslim-majority nation. The conditions placed upon Turkey for EU accession were politically awkward and perceived as patronising. The result was a wounded national pride—and the beginning of a long geopolitical drift. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD That drift now affects us in India directly. Turkey under Erdogan has recast itself from a secular republic aspiring to European norms, to a confident, assertive, and increasingly power-seeking leadership role in the Islamic world. Operation Sindoor made this real for India: as Pakistan reeled, Turkey stood firmly by its side—diplomatically, rhetorically, and strategically; hoping to gain from it. From Europe's Rejection to Erdogan's Reimagining When Europe effectively closed the door on Turkish accession, it handed Erdogan the perfect opportunity to remake the country's identity. With the secular military sidelined and public opinion more receptive to Islamic nationalism, Erdogan recast Turkey's foreign policy through the prism of Muslim solidarity and civilisational assertion. The Arab Spring, Syria, Palestine, and Kashmir became not just foreign policy issues but ideological battlegrounds. Turkey's alignment with Pakistan deepened during this phase. Though their diplomatic ties date back to the early years of both republics, the modern warmth is more strategic. Pakistan gained a powerful ally that regularly supports it in international forums like the UN and OIC. For Erdogan, Pakistan offered both a military partner and a religiously resonant cause—particularly the issue of Kashmir, which plays well with Turkish domestic audiences and the broader Muslim world. General Pervez Musharraf was instrumental in bringing transformational effect to Pakistan-Turkey relations because of his lifelong obsessive fondness for everything Turkish going back to his young days when his father was posted to Ankara. Sectarian alignment between the two also plays a role, albeit not a deep one. Both countries are Sunni-majority and largely follow the Hanafi school of jurisprudence. This common ground provides a religious-cultural comfort level, even though Turkey's religious landscape is shaped more by Sufi traditions and state control, while Pakistan's is influenced by powerful clerical networks and sectarian actors. Their real bond, however, is not theological but political - both governments use Islamic identity for global positioning and to challenge India's rise as a pluralist, secular democracy. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Why India Failed to Influence Turkey India, despite its global rise, has failed to gain strategic traction with Turkey. One reason is the mismatch in worldviews. Erdogan sees himself as a leader of the Islamic world; India, with its strong ties to Israel and growing alignment with the West, is viewed as part of an opposing camp. Second, Indian diplomacy has been marginally reticent in engaging Turkey's domestic political landscape. While India has cultivated strong ties in the Gulf and Southeast Asia, it has remained reactive and restrained when it comes to Turkey. Third, India's burgeoning ties with Turkey's rivals—Greece, Armenia, and Israel—though grounded in mutual interest, have confirmed Ankara's perception of India as strategically adversarial. This despite India's proactive action of launching Operation Dost as a humanitarian and disaster relief operation after the devastating earthquake hit Southern Turkey in Feb 2023. India's support was almost the first to reach Turkey. Economically, the India-Turkey relationship lacks sufficient weight to act as a lever. Trade is modest too. This limits India's ability to shape Ankara's choices through economic means. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD What's at Stake for India? The implications of Turkey's hostility go beyond diplomatic sparring. Turkey's backing gives Pakistan added legitimacy in global forums and bolsters its Islamic narrative. Ankara's support to Islamabad on Kashmir complicates India's diplomatic messaging in Africa, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, where Turkey is investing heavily in soft power and religious outreach. More concretely, defence cooperation between Turkey and Pakistan is growing. Joint military exercises, arms deals, and drone collaborations are becoming more common. This has implications for South Asia's strategic balance and could introduce new military technologies into Pakistan's arsenal. The recent Ukrainian drone attack—Operation Spider Web—would have given Pakistan ideas on utilisation of drones in an imaginatively pro-active way against India. Turkey's religious diplomacy also poses a softer but insidious challenge. Through state-backed institutions and media, it is projecting itself as a leader of the global Muslim ummah. This can shape narratives that influence Indian Muslim communities indirectly, especially in an era where identity politics is increasingly global. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD What Must India do? India needs to develop a coherent Turkey strategy grounded in realism, not nostalgia about shared civilisational roots. India must respond clearly to Turkish provocations, whether on Kashmir or Pakistan. Silence has sometimes been mistaken for weakness. New Delhi should be willing to call out Ankara, including at multilateral forums. Deepen ties with Turkey's adversaries—Greece, Cyprus, Armenia, and Israel—not just diplomatically, but in defence, culture, and trade. A robust regional counterweight will force Turkey to reconsider its positioning. Invest in projecting India's narrative as a secular, multi-religious democracy. Partnering with moderate Muslim countries—like Indonesia, UAE, Egypt and now increasingly even Saudi Arabia—can help isolate Turkey's harder posturing. While current trade levels are modest, Turkey's dependence on tourism, select exports, and access to Asian markets gives India some room to explore economic influence, directly or via third parties. Turkey's turn under Erdogan is not temporary. It reflects a deeper shift in identity and ambition—one that rejects the rejection of the West and seeks frontline Islamic leadership, casting aside all 'Kemalian' thought. In aligning with Pakistan, Turkey is not just supporting a traditional ally—it is staking a claim in a multipolar Islamic world where India is seen as the 'other'. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Fortunately, India is no longer a passive observer in West Asia or Southeast Asia. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, New Delhi has made significant and sustained inroads into the Middle East and beyond. The burgeoning strategic and economic partnerships with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Oman reflect a quiet but profound shift—one that positions India as a key partner in regional stability, infrastructure, and counter-radicalism. Simultaneously, India's enhanced ties with Indonesia—the world's largest Muslim-majority country and a democratic, pluralistic nation—serve as a counter-narrative to the Islamist posturing of the Turkey-Pakistan axis. These relationships are not merely transactional but represent a convergence of long-term visions. As Ankara and Islamabad try to cobble together a pan-Islamic bloc rooted in grievance and revanchism, India must do more to support the Saudi–UAE axis in West Asia and reinforce its alignment with moderate Muslim powers like Indonesia. By doing so, New Delhi can effectively dilute the ideological resonance of the Turkey–Pakistan combine and reaffirm its own civilisational model as a viable and inclusive alternative in the Islamic world. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The writer is a member of the National Disaster Management Authority. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
Times of Oman
18-05-2025
- Politics
- Times of Oman
SAF Chief of Staff receives UK military delegation
Muscat: Vice Admiral Abdullah Khamis Al Raisi, Chief of Staff of the Sultan's Armed Forces (SAF) received in his office at Al Murtafaa Camp on Sunday a delegation of the Royal College of Defence Studies in the United Kingdom. During the meeting, the two sides exchanged views and discussed a set of military matters of mutual interest. The meeting was attended by Commodore Ali Mohammed Al Bulushi, SAF Assistant Chief of Staff for Administration and Supply.
India Today
15-05-2025
- Politics
- India Today
Weaponising Indus waters against Pakistan: A war by other means
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated October 10, 2016)In 1990, a Pakistan army brigadier listed three reasons for his country's enduring conflict with India: hatred, Kashmir and water. The hatred was visceral, he noted in his thesis at the prestigious Royal College of Defence Studies in London. The second and third reasons were linked. Pakistan, he reasoned, needed to control Jammu and Kashmir not just for territory but because of the country's water that flowed through it. The officer was General Pervez December 2001, within a week of a sensational attack on Parliament carried out by Pakistan-based terrorists, Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee considered options to make Pakistan pay for its perfidy. The Indian army was mobilised along the border and one of the other punitive measures studied was the Indus Water Treaty of 1960 (IWT). "Officials were called in, presentations made and scenarios drawn up, but in the end, nothing came of it. It lapsed as soon as the military deployment was called off," says one expert who was part of the Modi government has not ruled out a military response to the September 17 attack on an army camp in Uri in which 18 soldiers were killed. The IWT is also on the table but in quite an unprecedented way. On September 26, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a review meeting on the Indus Water Treaty at his 7 Lok Kalyan Marg and water cannot flow simultaneously," Prime Minister Modi said at the meeting. The government also decided to expedite construction of the Pakul Dul dam, Sawalkot dam and Bursar dam, all located on the river Chenab in Himachal the treaty is one of a raft of options being explored by the government to pressurise Pakistan for the September 17 attack on an army camp in Uri where 18 soldiers were killed. The IWT review took place hours before foreign minister Sushma Swaraj attacked Pakistan in the UN General Assembly in New York for its complicity in cross-border was also a day before the MEA announced that PM Modi would not be going to Islamabad for the SAARC summit in November. A review of the Most Favored Nation (MFN) status granted to Pakistan in 1996 is also on the cards. But it is the proposed review of the 66-year-old IWT, that is causing acute consternation within Pakistan."Between the two countries, revocation of the treaty is an act of war," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's foreign policy advisor Sartaj Aziz said in a September 26 briefing to the National Assembly. Revoking the treaty could harm India's standing at a time when it is trying to build a global consensus to isolate Pakistan over its state sponsorship of terrorism. What New Delhi seems to be contemplating, however, are ways to fully utilise its award of waters and thereby hold out a threat of reduced water flow into 1960 Indus Water Treaty split six rivers between the two countries-the 'eastern rivers' Ravi, Beas and Sutlej to India and the 'western rivers' Indus, Jhelum and Chenab to Pakistan. India is allowed to draw 3.6 million acre feet from the three western rivers flowing into Pakistan, which it has never utilised because of inadequate storage capacity."Water is the only tool of leverage India has over Pakistan," says Brahma Chellaney of the Centre for Policy Research, who authored a paper for the Vajpayee-led government on IWT options. "We are only talking of India reasserting its basic rights for the development of states like J&K, which doesn't have sovereignty over its own water resources."Water is an extremely sensitive topic in Pakistan. It is one of the reasons they have consistently objected to almost every project undertaken by India. "They are a one-river nation. If you stop the Indus, there is nothing there," says a former you try to stop the waters of Pakistan, you will escalate the conflict to a very serious level," General Musharraf said, warning of 'nuclear war' in an interview to India Today television on September is finding even the existing award of nearly 80 per cent of the Indus waters insufficient. On March 8 this year, Pakistan's upper house, the Senate, passed a resolution urging the government to review the IWT by inserting new provisions enabling Pakistan to get more water. A minor reduction in the supply of water to Pakistan could have catastrophic effects on the agriculture-dependent paranoia has caused it to repeatedly challenge even 'run of the river' dams allowed by the IWT and built by India. In the last such verdict in January 2014, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague arbitrated in India's favor on the issue of the Kishanganga hydroelectric power project near Bandipore in J&K."Our diplomatic initiative is to separate the people of Pakistan from jehadi elements. Stopping water could prove counter-productive because it will actually fan anti-India sentiment within Pakistan," says Uttam Kumar Sinha of the defence ministry-run think-tank, the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA).advertisementTHE HYDROLOGICAL CHALLENGEIf the government is to make good on its promise of creating massive storage facilities to store its share of the Indus river, it will need to create roughly the equivalent of one-third of India's largest reservoir, the Indirasagar on the Narmada (9.8 lakh acre feet). This promises to be an uphill task going by the glacial pace of big dam construction in India, the huge costs involved and the displacement of people. Experts say it will be at least a decade before solutions like the completion of the three dams on Chenab bear economist Sucha Singh Gill from the Chandigarh-based Centre for Research in Rural & Industrial Development (CRRID) says the government's announcement has the makings of a 'mega misadventure' and 'grandstanding'. "India has neither the capacity to divert nor store the waters of the Indus river system. Developing capacities to regulate river flows needs years."It's one of the reasons why former Punjab CM Captain Amarinder Singh believes the NDA's move on the IWT is deflection. "(It) is an evident and desperate attempt to draw public attention away from the Uri terror attack. What is being contemplated would be hugely detrimental to India. Barring water-scarcity during the winter harvest, it would be suicidal for India to block the natural flow of the rivers into Pakistan. Without the requisite infrastructure, we would end up flooding our own hinterland," he most doable measure in the short run is the Tulbul Navigation Project, which the government has resolved to speed up. The project, called Wullar Barrage by Pakistan, was put on hold after objections in 1987. The project aimed at increasing water levels in the Jhelum river to allow for round-the-year navigation between Anantnag, Srinagar and Baramulla. A decision to restart it was taken in 2009 but the file remained stuck at the Prime Minister's experts doubt the current measures will work. Himanshu Thakkar, convenor SANDRP (South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People), Delhi, equates the government's dam-building tool with punishing Pakistan by "cutting your nose to spite your face in Kashmir, which is already bleeding away". But ex-water resources secretary Dhruv Vijai Singh says, "It's a step in the right direction but the water should be utilised for the benefit of the people and not as a political tool."Wahid Para, PDP spokesman in Srinagar, seems to sense an opportunity in Modi's implicit plan to make Pakistan pay by regulating riverine flows. Para echoes the long-standing discourse of mainstream political parties in the Valley-that "Kashmiris have suffered the worst damage in the IWT between India and Pakistan. Pakistan has always cited Kashmir as a disputed territory, yet it signed the IWT which involved rivers flowing out of the state!" Clearly, a case where Pakistan kept its own interests at heart over that of Kashmir' to India Today MagazineMust Watch
