The military gains of the recent operation need to be deftly managed by diplomatic initiatives that show more creativity and soft power than hardline bluster.
Published May 19, 2025 | 9:00 AM ⚊ Updated May 19, 2025 | 9:19 AM
Bosphorus bridge in Turkiye. (iStock)
Synopsis: Turkiye grabbed headlines last week after its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stood by Pakistan, which is reeling under Operation Sindoor. Indian tourists in their thousands have begun boycotting Turkiye and its diplomatic tail, Azerbaijan. It is time to pause and think if all of that is justified or not.
It is well-known that the official residence of the Indian prime minister is 7, Lok Kalyan Marg in the heart of New Delhi. What is less known is that to enter this place, you have to turn in from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Road, named after the founder of Modern Turkey – or Turkiye, as it is now called.
Atatürk is revered by Turks just as Mahatma Gandhi is in India, and to forget him and his influence on his country is just not in order, as we consider something much in the news – India’s relations with Turkiye.
Turkiye grabbed headlines last week after its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stood by Pakistan, which is reeling under Operation Sindoor, India’s bludgeoning missile attacks on terror camps in Pakistan and some of its air bases.
Indian tourists in their thousands have begun boycotting Turkiye and its diplomatic tail, Azerbaijan, universities are calling off partnerships with Turkish counterparts, Bollywood producers are talking of avoiding shoots in Turkiye, customers are advised to stay off figs and dry fruits imported from that country and Turkish corporate firms seem to be on the verge of losing business contracts in India, especially Celebi, which runs airport services.
It is time to pause and think if all of that is justified or not, though I do think India needs to send a message across the world that Pakistan’s military establishment deserves a hard knock for its direct and indirect patronage to violent Islamist groups.
The biggest mistake we could be making is to go for simplistic diplomacy that forces countries into a corner, especially considering the peculiar geopolitical equations that do not easily divide the world into camps like they did in the Cold War era, when the Soviet Russian bloc and the West stood in simple contrast.
As I write this, Ukraine and Russia have held wobbly peace talks in Turkiye’s showpiece city, Istanbul. Turkiye is also a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), led by the United States, with which India has strong trade and diplomatic relations. Turkiye’s strategic location at the intersection of Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, makes it special in both history and geopolitics — and also explains the tourist surge.
The problem is that India’s relations with Turkiye have had important chapters of closeness in the past that cannot and should not be forgotten in a hurry, and the most important of it is that both are democracies and constitutionally secular with a diverse population.
A lot needs to be done carefully, rather than jump into a simplistic “Boycott Turkiye” call, not least because international diplomacy is a tightrope on which forcing the pace can be counterproductive sometimes.
There is a tendency among ultra-nationalists to simply equate leaders with ruling parties, ruling parties with the government, the government with the state and the state with the people. In reality, every society has layers of classes and communities and mood shifts in which political priorities change. It is important for India to engage with Turkiye as a nation, and not go by what I might call narrow Erdoganism.
I have, over the decades, seen dramatic changes in both India and Turkiye with striking parallels between the two countries. Mahatma Gandhi’s Indian National Congress has been replaced by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in India, while Ataturk’s Republican People’s Party (RPP) has been defeated by Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish abbreviation, AKP.
Erdogan’s AKP has revivalist neo-Ottoman dreams paralleling the BJP’s Hindutva renaissance project. RPP is Turkey’s main opposition party, the way the Congress is the main opposition party in India’s parliament. Erdogan has turned Turkiye’s political system from a parliamentary to a presidential one.
Just as we cannot equate Modi and the BJP with India as a whole, we cannot do the same with Erdogan, AKP and Turkey. Diplomatic engagements would require an outreach going beyond the government to influence the average Turk.
We need a Tier 2 diplomacy in which Indians reach out to liberal, democratic Turks to put pressure on their government and build public opinion to explain India’s position on Pakistan-based terror networks.
We do need to remember that Turkiye is the birthplace of Sufism, which has had a strong influence in India and positive interactions with Hindu thought to ensure social harmony. Hyderabad, as a city, has been ruled by Nizams of Turkish origin, some of whom have been progressive and liberal.
Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan was an early supporter of science and technology in modern India and founded Jagirdar’s College, now renamed Hyderabad Public School, which has given us the current CEOs of Microsoft and Adobe!
Erdogan, a populist, has been facing stiff opposition from the Ataturk-founded CHP (the party’s Turkish abbreviation), whose jailed leader Ekrem Imamoglu was elected mayor of Istanbul in 2019 and is the presidential candidate for the next elections due this year.
Imamoglu has been detained on “suspicion” of corruption and links with a terror group, which is ironic, given Erdogan’s support for Pakistan. His arrest is widely seen as a political witch hunt. CHP wants early elections as widespread unrest sweeps Turkiye.
For all practical purposes, Erdogan’s support for Pakistan’s military establishment is part of the monarchical neo-Ottoman Islamist rhetoric he fashions to counter his republican opponents. For India, the challenge is to counter Erdoganism without alienating average Turks.
Progressive, democratic Bharat needs to engage its counterparts in Turkiye and like-minded individuals and institutions across the world. The Modi government is planning a global diplomatic outreach to explain its position after Operation Sindoor, which was in response to the brutal Islamist terror attack on innocent tourists in Pahalgam.
The outreach must go beyond conservative leaders trying to rebuild a lost past by supporting religious obscurantism. In any case, the aftermath of Operation Sindoor is something that needs to be handled carefully by India in a world that has seen the erosion of institutions like the United Nations. India simply cannot afford to step on too many toes.
Talking Turkey has a whole new meaning in a complicated world in which US President Donald Trump is acting on whims, a beleaguered Europe measures its steps carefully, and China remains a strong supporter of Pakistan. The military gains of the recent operation need to be deftly managed by diplomatic initiatives that show more creativity and soft power than hardline bluster.
Perhaps we need to send more soft ambassadors to Turkiye who could explain India’s position. That country has a huge section of people who will understand India because, beyond and beneath apparent religious differences, there is a shared history of Sufism, liberalism, secularism and republicanism.
(The writer is a senior journalist and commentator who has worked for Reuters, The Economic Times, Business Standard, and Hindustan Times. He posts on X as @madversity. Views are personal. Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
