Recep For Trouble

Indians are cancelling their travel plans to Türkiye in droves. Travel websites are no longer selling holiday packages to picturesque Cappadocia or Antalya. For, it didn’t go unnoticed in India that during Operation Sindoor Pakistan military was using Turkish weapons to escalate the conflict. Initial investigations suggest that the hundreds of Pak drones deployed against India were of Turkish make.So, there’s a growing demand now to boycott everything Turkish, from apples to Turkish delight. Ankara has solidly backed Islamabad in the military hostilities with New Delhi. And while Pak army chief Asim Munir and the military-ISI complex were seen to be the architects of the conflict, the figure who may have been egging on Rawalpindi GHQ is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.But what could possibly be his gameplan here? What’s Türkiye cooking in South Asia, a region not traditionally part of Turkish foreign policy-security calculus? Look closer and a potential recipe for trouble emerges.There are Brotherhood ties | Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) are from the Muslim Brotherhood family. This makes him Pakistan’s natural ideological cousin.There are two strands to his politics – Islamist conservatism and Turkish nationalism. With Erdogan effectively burying Ataturk’s secular Republicanism, Pak leadership has long viewed his Islamist project in Türkiye as a template. Think Ertugrul redux.Strategically, therefore, a compact between the two Sunni Muslim nations – one a nuclear state, the other a Nato member – smoothly fits with Erdogan’s plans for enhancing regional Turkish influence from the Bosphorus to the Indus.An Ottoman play on Kashmir | Erdogan fully backs Pakistan’s position on Kashmir. This plays well with his conservative vote base. And he likes to play the neo-Ottoman ‘caliph’ for them. It also aligns with his regional power tussle with Gulf Arab monarchies, particularly Saudi Arabia. The latter has long seen Pak nukes as an insurance against Shia Iran. In fact, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has reportedly said that if Riyadh ever needed a nuclear bomb, he could buy one from Islamabad.It’s against this backdrop that Erdogan’s moves in South Asia need to be seen. With Gulf Arab monarchies strengthening their ties with India in recent years (driven by a powerful economic-security logic) and becoming more sensitive to New Delhi’s position on Kashmir, Erdogan sees an opportunity to undercut the Arabs by staunchly standing with Pakistan in its disputes with India. This is Erdogan playing out his own Ottoman-Mamluk war.Plus, given the emerging Gulf-US-Israel dynamic in West Asia, as exemplified by the Abraham Accords, Erdogan is looking at South Asia to cultivate leverage. And Islamabad is only too happy to oblige – it needs as many foreign stakeholders in Pakistan as possible so that it doesn’t become the vassal of any single player.Arms and the family | Another factor driving Erdogan’s foreign policy is the domestic Turkish arms manufacturing industry that is closely tied to his family. His son-in-law Selcuk Bayraktar is the chairman of Turkish defence contractor Baykar, the maker of Bayraktar drones. Erdogan apparently likes to keep strategic businesses within the family.But other Turkish defence companies too have benefitted from substantial govt contracts and investments in R&D. Erdogan uses this new depth in Turkish defence industry to push a militarised foreign policy. In fact, Turkish defence industry has emerged as a key pillar of Turkish economy, serving as a stabiliser in times of turmoil.Therefore, Turkish arms flow to regional actors such as Qatar, UAE and groups in Syria to serve multiple agendas. Türkiye, incidentally, is Pakistan’s second-largest arms supplier after China. Hence, Erdogan’s defence assistance to Islamabad is part of his military-strategic regional play.Kurds to IMEC, local polls to far politics | Much of Erdogan’s long political survival is down to his pragmatism. Case in point, he now seems to be making a pitch to Türkiye’s Kurds. The imprisoned leader of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, recently gave a call to end the armed struggle against the Turkish state.This comes after Erdogan and his allies made a wily move late last year and dangled the possibility of a compromise. PKK has now said that it will indeed follow through on Ocalan’s call and dissolve its guerrilla units.This has significant ramifications for Türkiye and its neighbours. Erdogan needs a deal with the Kurds to extend his political tenure, which is looking vulnerable after substantial reverses in Turkish local polls last year. But a deal with the Kurds will also entail compromises that may not be acceptable to his hardcore, conservative, nationalist vote base.Sultans, after all, don’t make compromises. Plus, accommodation of Kurdish demands could also revitalise Turkish democracy to the detriment of Erdogan’s strong-arm authoritarian tactics.But the need for political survival brings out the pragmatist in Erdogan. And it is this ruthless pragmatism that the Turkish president also brings to his foreign policy. With Israel dealing a body blow to Hamas and Hezbollah, Trump looking to revitalise the Abraham Accords, and given the possibilities held out by the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, Erdogan knows he needs to maintain Türkiye’s position as the gatekeeper to Europe.Hence his plan to dabble in South Asia to counter headwinds in West Asia. But should those winds become favourable for Ankara, sultan Erdogan might change his positions yet again. Change, after all, is the Erdogan doctrine.Illustration: Uday Deb