Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s state go to to India final week was anticipated to open a brand new web page in bilateral relations, which have historically alternated between formal and lukewarm, at finest. The reason being easy. On problems with mutual concern, each international locations have displayed an absence of sensitivity. Turkey’s place on Kashmir has historically mirrored its proximity to Pakistan, guided by the hyperlinks between the 2 army institutions. Each international locations had been a part of the anti-Communist army alliance, the Baghdad Pact (later Central Treaty Organisation or CENTO), and in each generals had wielded political energy. Membership of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation has been one other abiding hyperlink between the 2 international locations. On the difficulty of UN Safety Council (UNSC) enlargement, Turkey and Pakistan are a part of the Uniting for Consensus group which opposes the concept of including new everlasting members, proposing as a substitute a doubling of the non-permanent class to make the us extra consultant. Extra just lately, on India’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), Turkey supported the Chinese language thought of a criteria-based method for non-Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) member states, supposed to accommodate Pakistan. A private chemistry Towards this unfavorable backdrop is the non-public relationship between Mr. Erdogan and Prime Minister Narendra Modi developed over the past two years on the margins of G-20 summits. Mr. Erdogan’s efforts to shift Turkish international coverage away from its Western orientation had created house for a rising relationship with India which Mr. Modi was eager to take advantage of. There are similarities between the 2 leaders which can have drawn them collectively. Amitav Ghosh wrote about their ‘Parallel Journeys’, their tough financial circumstances (Mr. Modi had run a tea stall on the railway station whereas Mr. Erdogan offered lemonade at a avenue nook), the battle to rise to the highest of their respective political events, an enduring and deep religiosity and distinctive communication expertise. In keeping with Mr. Ghosh, Mr. Modi’s electoral victory in 2014 was harking back to Mr. Erdogan turning into Prime Minister when his Justice and Improvement Celebration (AKP) received in 2002; in each circumstances, their events related to spiritual organisations had overturned lengthy standing ‘secular-nationalist elites’. In his slim quantity A Query of Order – India, Turkey and the Return of Strongmen, printed earlier this yr, describing India and Turkey as two of the world’s largest multi-ethnic and multi-religious democracies in Asia, Basharat Peer identifies “religion and secularism as their common and dominant faultlines”. Their founding fathers (Ataturk and Nehru) had been each charismatic and sought to show their international locations in direction of western modernity on the idea of free and honest elections and non secular freedoms. The financial parallels are much less persuasive however Mr. Peer weaves the political threads collectively by way of the “strongmen” persona of at the moment’s leaders – their guarantees of reviving nationwide satisfaction and restoring greatness, harnessing militant nationalism, impatience with criticism and civil society, and their private charismatic attraction. Curiously, Mr. Modi want to cast off ‘triple talaq’ so as to give larger rights to Muslim ladies whereas Mr. Erdogan reintroduced the ladies’s scarf, overturning the ban that had been launched by Ataturk a long time earlier! Stars not aligned However the non-public chemistry between the 2 leaders, the legacy of mutual insensitivity proved too tough to beat. The celebs weren’t aligned. Vice President Ansari’s go to to Armenia and Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades visiting India within the week previous President Erdogan’s arrival had been hardly good omens. Mr. Erdogan too reverted to the pro-Pakistan default place on Kashmir and the NSG. He acknowledged that whereas India with 1.three billion folks wanted to have its place in the us, he added that the 1.7 billion Muslims additionally wanted to be current. Either side sought to emphasize the potential for larger financial cooperation. Nonetheless, there are clear limits right here, imposed by current agreements. Half of Turkey’s $350 billion international commerce is with Europe. Our bilateral commerce which stands at $6 billion, and is predicted to develop to $10 billion by 2020, can hardly turn into a serious driver. Troubling coverage selections In coming years, Mr. Erdogan has his arms full in coping with the forces unleashed by his insurance policies within the area and domestically. A decade in the past, Turkey had a booming financial system, Mr. Erdogan had clipped the wings of the military, Turkey appeared a reasonable and progressive Islamic state, and prospects for EU membership had been shiny. Then got here the Arab Spring and Turkish coverage adopted a mix of pan-Islamism and neo-Ottomanism. Elections within the aftermath of the Arab Spring had been anticipated to usher in the Muslim Brotherhood, a motion with which AKP was carefully aligned. However by 2013, two issues had emerged. President Mohamed Morsi in Egypt had been eliminated and the military was again in energy in Cairo with the tacit understanding of each the West and Saudi Arabia, and Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad’s regime had confirmed to be much more resilient than anticipated. The jihadi freeway that Mr. Erdogan opened up on the Turkey-Syria border for radicalised Europeans, Central Asians, Afghans, Arabs and Africans to enter Syria created a backlash. Whereas the Russians had been focusing on the Islamic State (IS) in Syria to prop up the Assad regime, the U.S. was utilizing its Turkish airbases for strikes towards the IS and more and more counting on the Syrian Kurds for floor operations. Relations nosedived after the taking pictures down of a Russian Su-24 killing the pilot. Six months later, Mr. Erdogan needed to apologise to Russia to get sanctions lifted. In the meantime, Turkish Kurds (the outlawed PKK) linked up with their Syrian counterparts, the PYD and its militant wing YPG, spurring Kurdish nationalism because the PYD referred to as for a Rojava (homeland). Throughout 2016, Turkey suffered greater than 200 terrorist assaults, attributed to the IS and the Kurds, killing greater than 300 individuals. Having repaired relations with Russia, Mr. Erdogan is keen to restore relations with the U.S. which had frayed throughout the Obama years. He was fast to go with U.S. President Donald Trump for the early April Tomahawk missile strikes on the Shayrat air base in Syria, calculating appropriately that he might handle the fallout of this with Russia. Mr. Trump reciprocated by telephoning him to congratulate him on his profitable referendum in April. This has been adopted up with an invite to the White Home on Could 16-17. Turkey is eager to affix within the assault on the IS stronghold of Raqqa to make sure that the YPG is stored underneath examine however the Syrians oppose a task for Turkey. In the meantime, Turkish troopers have occupied al-Bab in northern Syria, beating the YPG to it. The thought of a contiguous Kurdish enclave on its southern border is anathema for Turkey. It has turn into a robust votary of sustaining Syrian territorial integrity at the same time as Russia and the U.S. are speaking about autonomous areas underneath completely different teams, separated by buffer zones to make sure peace. Exploiting a failed coup At the same time as Mr. Erdogan copes with international coverage challenges, he demonstrated his political agility by exploiting final July’s failed coup to spherical up all potential opponents previous to the April referendum. It’s estimated that about 120,000 authorities workers have been suspended or dismissed, primarily from the judiciary and the schooling branches, suspected of being Gulen sympathisers. As well as, 7,500 troopers and officers together with over 100 with the rank of a brigadier and above, and over 10,000 police cadres have been sacked. Greater than a dozen schools and universities and a thousand colleges are closed; licences of 24 radio and TV channels have been revoked and over 100 journalists have been arrested. With all this, Mr. Erdogan’s referendum, which proposes 18 amendments to remodel Turkey right into a extremely centralised presidential authorities, was handed with a slim majority of 51.4% versus 48.6%. The proposed adjustments allow Mr. Erdogan to get two phrases of 5 years every after the 2019 elections, appoint at will vice-presidents and cupboard members and 12 out of 15 supreme court docket judges, abolish the put up of prime minister, offers for simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections and coterminous tenures, enlarges the parliament to 600 seats whereas lowering the minimal age of candidacy for parliament to 18 years. That is an bold agenda, even for a extremely dedicated and pushed chief like Mr. Erdogan and can maintain him busy for the subsequent two years. Opening a brand new web page in India-Turkey relations clearly wants to attend for higher occasions. This commentary initially appeared in The Hindu. STRATEGIC STUDIES COMMENTARIES GOVERNANCE AND POLITICS WEST ASIA GREAT POWER DYNAMICS INDIAN FOREIGN POLICY
