There is a commonality of governance between Pakistan and Turkey that binds them. Both believe they can bluster, blackmail and intimidate their way on to the global stage

There is an open shadow-boxing of a considerable bitterness that is ensuing between New Delhi and Ankara as each seeks to hit the other where it hurts. While Turkey has always had fraternal relations with Pakistan — the former has stood by the latter during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars — the sheer distance and limited strategic overlap between New Delhi and Ankara ensured a modicum of agnosticism in the bilateral relationship between themselves. The advent of Turkey’s autocratic strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2003 has revived the nationalistic impulse and ambitions that are instinctively revisionist and reimagining the lost glory of the Ottoman Empire.

Today Erdogan’s imperious grandstanding in the international affairs is in stark contrast to that of other Middle Eastern powers. Turkey does not shy away from breaking ranks with its ostensible allies like the US to assert its own voice and relevance in global geopolitics. Recognising the desperation and isolation of the Pakistani diplomatic fate, with most members of the Organisation of Islamic (OIC) embarrassingly distancing themselves from the Pakistani position on Kashmir, Afghanistan and terror — Erdogan (along with Islamabad’s “all-weather-friend” China) has stepped in to fill the void and support Islamabad in most multilateral forums.

While Turkey “fully supported” the Pakistani position on the recent Kashmir-related concerns, India hit back deliberately, visibly and cuttingly by cosying up to the three nations that are known to have anti-Turkey stands ie, Greece, Armenia and Cyprus. India further retaliated by freezing the export of dual-usage materials like explosives and detonators to Turkey as also by putting the $2.3 billion deal to construct support vessels for the Indian Navy in a Turkish shipyard on the backburner.

The Turkish outreach to endear itself to the Pakistanis has been a project in the making with it incredulously withdrawing its envoy from Bangladesh in 2016 after Dhaka had executed the head of Jamaat-e-Islami, Motiur Rahman Nizami. That Nizami was held responsible for at least 480 deaths in the Pakistani pogrom preceding the independence of Bangladesh mattered little. Turkey’s position on the 1971 war trials has been decidedly pro-Pakistani and it noted that Nizami had not committed any “earthly sins.”

Today, this ensures that despite incontrovertible evidence to prove Pakistan’s complicity in the terror industry, Turkey has provided yeoman service to it by routinely bailing it out from getting “black-listed” by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Pursuant to such reciprocal gratification, Pakistan offered the rare succour to Turkey in its offensive in northern Syria against the Kurdish forces, with Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan unequivocally telling Erdogan: “Pakistan stands in full support and solidarity with Turkey.” India noted that it was “deeply concerned” over the “unilateral military offensive” by Turkey. In many ways, the Turkish and Pakistani narrative are eerily similar with their restive, uneasy and interdependent moorings with the US. The “nationalistic” leaders in both Ankara and Islamabad are not wary of flexing their circumstantial muscle to extract their respective pounds of flesh.

While Imran Khan has cried himself hoarse with the “nuclear” threat in the Indo-Pak imbroglio, the Turks are muddying the waters with the presence of 50 B61 nuclear gravity bombs at Incirlik airbase, which complicates the situation for the US as it plays out as a utility-lever for Erdogan.

Turkey is too committed in its path to retract from the definitive track in the Indo-Pak dimension. The recent moves will only strengthen the “divide” between New Delhi and Ankara. Pakistan’s ability to unilaterally appropriate, invoke and posture the historical Khilafat movement as an exclusive Pakistani initiative has also helped feed the romance associated with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and its powerful sense of hurt in modern Turkey.

The Turkish bid to reclaim the times of the Caliph has necessitated that it is seen to be espousing the cause of the Ummah (even if it does not apply to co-religionist Kurds) across the world and posture itself as the leader of the Islamic world. Turkey has tied up with Pakistan and Malaysia (who, too, is toeing the Turkish line on Pakistan) to jointly start a English language channel “dedicated to confronting the challenges posed by Islamophobia and setting the record straight on our great religion — Islam.”

Erdogan’s quest for carving out an important role for itself in the global sweepstakes has seen it do reckless realpolitik, even if it amounts to reneging on previously-held positions or questioning its own commitment and sincerity in furthering the cause of the Ummah.

Erdogan, who had earlier called the Chinese treatment of its beleaguered Uighurs a “great embarrassment for humanity”, did a quick flip-flop and then stated that “Turkey firmly supports the ‘One China’ policy. It’s a fact that residents of all ethnicities in China’s Xinjiang are living happily amid China’s development and prosperity.”

Both Turkey and Pakistan have been routinely called out for their strong-arm, illiberal and unilateral actions — with “nationalistic” leaders in both countries short-selling and waylaying the dreams of their founding fathers — the secular Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The hurry to stich its aspired destiny has led Turkey to convenient alliances with communist China or even Russia’s Vladimir Putin to spite the US.

If Pakistani dalliances with terror organisations have been well documented, questions about Erdogan’s dubious commitment in taking on the most dangerous terror organisation in the world ie, the Islamic State (IS), have raised many eyebrows. On the contrary, the Kurds, who have been at the forefront of fighting the IS, are getting bombed by the Turkish forces. Wikileaks published up to 58,000 mails documenting Erdogan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, buying oil from the cash-strapped IS.

There is a certain commonality of governance instincts between Pakistan and Turkey that is amoral, transactional and churlish. It binds the two nations, who believe they can bluster, blackmail and intimidate their way on to the global stage. India needs to recognise the inevitability of the fractious relationships with both countries as pacifism is a logical anathema to the chosen path by Ankara and Islamabad.

(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)