Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
The Turkish government has discreetly imposed a comprehensive ban on the export of arms and defense-related items to India, one of the world’s leading arms importers, in order to support Pakistan, as disclosed by a Turkish government official during a closed-door session in the Turkish Parliament.
According to the minutes of the debate at the Foreign Affairs Committee on July 10, 2024, Mustafa Murat Şeker, deputy chairman of the Presidency of the Defense Industry (SSB), Turkey’s top arms procurement agency, inadvertently disclosed the government’s secret policy regarding India.
Warning that some of his disclosures were sensitive, Şeker told lawmakers that not a single sale of any article that could be construed as part of the arms and defense industry was approved by the government when the customer was based in India.
Despite his apparent concern about the fallout if the information became public, Şeker went ahead and revealed the secret ban, according to the minutes obtained by Nordic Monitor.
“India, for example, is one of the world’s top five arms importers, a massive market, importing close to $100 billion. However, due to our political circumstances and our friendship with Pakistan, our Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not give us positive feedback on exporting any products to India, and consequently, we do not grant any permits to our companies in this regard,” he said.
The sale of Turkish defense articles abroad requires prior approval from the Turkish military, the SSB and the Foreign Ministry. India has ended up on a blacklist of countries to which military and defense items cannot be sold by Turkey.
Turkish-Indian ties have worsened markedly in the last decade of the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan due to policy choices, specifically Ankara’s blanket support of Pakistan in its disputes with India, resulting in a widening divide between the two G20 member nations.
Nordic Monitor previously published a report detailing how Turkey has secretly assisted Pakistan in establishing a cyber army aimed at shaping public opinion, influencing the views of Muslims in Southeast Asia, launching attacks against the US and India and undermining criticism directed at Pakistani rulers.
The proposal to establish such a unit was first put on the table during private talks in Islamabad between then-Turkish interior minister Suleyman Soylu and his host, Shehryar Khan Afridi, the then-minister of state for interior, on December 17, 2018. The matter was discussed at the senior level and kept confidential from most of the staff at Islamabad’s interior ministry.
The plan was also green-lighted by Imran Khan, prime minister at the time who simultaneously held the position of interior minister, during a meeting with Soylu the same day.
The first public admission of this clandestine agreement was made by Soylu during an interview on October 13, 2022 with a local TV station in Kahramanmaraş. Commenting on a recently approved controversial social media law that effectively criminalizes and stipulates prison sentences for criticism on social media in Turkey, Soylu recalled his talks during the visit to Islamabad. He said a Pakistani minister pulled him into a private room after talks between the delegations and asked for his help with the establishment of a cyber system.
Turkey responded positively to this request, Soylu revealed, sending five police chiefs from various departments at the Security Directorate General (Emniyet). The team worked for months in Pakistan to get the project off the ground and finally completed it. The cooperation has since continued under successive governments, with some 6,000 Pakistani police officers trained by Turkey for this and other projects.
President Erdogan’s secretive paramilitary group SADAT, led by his former chief military aide Adnan Tanrıverdi, has also been involved in conducting anti-India operations. The group enlisted Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, a Kashmiri-born convicted felon who served time in a US federal prison, to mobilize resources against India.
Fai’s US-based organization, the Kashmiri American Council (KAC), an outfit that was funded by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), networked with SADAT’s front organization, the Union of NGOs of the Islamic World (İslam Dünyası Sivil Toplum Kuruluşları Birliği, İDSB). KAC was officially listed as one of the İDSB’s two member organizations in the US, and Fai was a member of the İDSB’s council, the organization’s highest decision-making body.
A review of SADAT’s past work shows that Fai frequently participated in events organized by SADAT and even met in person with Tanrıverdi, a retired military officer who still advises the Turkish president, albeit in an unofficial capacity, after his resignation in January 2020.
In 2014 the Erdogan government reversed its earlier policy of monitoring and, when necessary, cracking down on jihadist networks that dispatched militants and funding overseas, including to Kashmir. In fact, it protected and even supported some of the jihadist groups that targeted India.
One of those jihadist groups is Tahşiyeciler, which was flagged as a security threat by military and law enforcement agencies in the early 2000s. Led by Mehmet Doğan (aka Mullah Muhammed), who openly declared his admiration for Osama bin Laden and advocated for armed jihad in Turkey, Tahşiyeciler has been under surveillance since that time. It faced a crackdown in January 2010, which authorities designated as an al-Qaeda sweep.
However, in 2014, Doğan and his associates were saved by Erdogan’s government when it intervened in their case. Police chiefs and prosecutors who had pursued the group were subsequently punished with dismissals and/or unlawful imprisonment by the government. As a result, the group now operates actively in Turkey with complete impunity.
The group praises Turkish fighters who travel to Kashmir, considering them harbingers of the Mahdi, a messianic figure prophesied by the Islamic Prophet. The leadership of the group believes that the Mahdi’s army will first crush India and China before turning its attention to Europe.
Turkey and India are at odds over a proposed initiative introduced by India, the United States and the European Union at the G20 leaders’ summit in New Delhi on September 9, 2023. The initiative seeks to establish a substantial economic corridor linking Europe with the Middle East and India via rail and sea routes. It aims to connect India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan, Israel and the EU through strategically placed shipping ports and an extensive railway network.
Excluded from this corridor, Turkey openly expressed discomfort with the initiative, which it believes undermines its role as a trade hub and favors Greece and other regional competitors. Instead, Turkey supports China’s expansive Belt and Road projects.
Ankara is also advancing the realization of an alternative route, known as the Development Road, which aims to connect Europe and the Middle East through Turkey. “We say there can be no corridor without Turkey. The most suitable route for traffic from east to west must pass through Turkey,” said Erdogan on his return flight from India last year.
Erdogan said they are discussing a corridor that goes from Iraq, Qatar and Abu Dhabi through Turkey to Europe. The corridor is a 1,200-kilometer (745-mile) transportation route comprising railways, motorways and pipelines. It will stretch from Iraq’s Faw Port in Basra to the Turkish port of Mersin and is estimated to cost $20 billion.
Turkey’s anti-Indian policies have prompted New Delhi to seek alliances with countries where Turkey faces challenges in its neighborhood, such as Greece, Cyprus and Armenia, in order to send a message to Ankara that it is prepared to play hardball. As a result, security, military and intelligence cooperation among India, Greece, Cyprus and Armenia has been significantly enhanced in recent years.
