Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
Turkey has quietly imposed a total ban on arms and defense exports to India, one of the world’s top arms importers, to help Pakistan, Turkish officials said at a closed-door meeting of the Turkish parliament.
According to minutes of a discussion at the Foreign Affairs Committee on July 10, 2024, Mustafa Murat Şeker, deputy chairman of Turkey’s top arms procurement agency, the Defence Industries Board (SSB), inadvertently divulged the government’s secret policy regarding India.
Shekel warned that some of the disclosures were confidential, telling lawmakers that sales of any items that could be construed as part of the arms and defense industry were not approved by the government if the customer was based in India.
According to minutes of the meeting obtained by Nordic Monitor, Šeker secretly announced the ban despite fears of repercussions if the information became public.
“For instance, India is one of the top five arms importers in the world and is a huge market with imports of nearly $100 billion. However, due to the political situation in our country and friendly relations with Pakistan, the Ministry of External Affairs has not responded positively to export of any products to India and as a result has not given any permission to our companies in this regard,” he said.
Any sale of Turkish defence equipment abroad requires prior approval from the Turkish Armed Forces, the SSB and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and India has been placed on the blacklist of countries to which Turkey cannot sell military and defence equipment.
Turkey-India relations have deteriorated significantly over the past decade of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule due to policy choices, particularly Turkey’s full support for Pakistan in its conflict with India, which has led to a widening rift between the two G20 member states.
Nordic Monitor previously published a report detailing how Turkey covertly assisted Pakistan in shaping public opinion, influencing the views of Muslims in Southeast Asia, attacking the United States and India, and establishing a cyber army aimed at undermining criticism of Pakistan’s rulers.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan walks hand in hand with Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif during his visit to Pakistan on February 16, 2023.
The proposal to set up such a unit was first floated during an informal meeting in Islamabad between then Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu and his host, then Interior Minister Shehryar Khan Afridi, on December 17, 2018. The issue was discussed at the highest levels and was kept secret from most Interior Ministry officials in Islamabad.
The plan was also approved by Imran Khan, who was then prime minister and interior minister, in a meeting with Soylu on the same day.
The first public acknowledgement of the secret agreement was made by Soylu in an interview with a local TV station in Kahramanmaras on October 13, 2022. Commenting on Turkey’s recently approved controversial social media law, which effectively criminalizes criticism on social media and provides for prison sentences, Soylu recounted a meeting during his visit to Islamabad, where after a meeting between the delegations, the Pakistani minister called him into a private room and asked him to cooperate in building a cyber system.
Turkey responded positively to the request and sent five police chiefs from different divisions of the General Directorate of Security (Emniyet), Soylu said. The team worked for months in Pakistan to set up the project before finally completing it. The cooperation has continued under successive governments, with Turkey training around 6,000 Pakistani police officers for this and other projects.
In this January 2020 photo, Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai (center) is seen speaking about an upcoming International Kashmir Conference to be held with the backing of Turkish paramilitary group SADAT.
Erdogan’s secret paramilitary organisation, SADAT, headed by former Chief Military Adviser to the President, Adnan Tanriverd, is also involved in carrying out anti-India operations and has enlisted Kashmiri-born convict Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, who served time in a US federal prison, to help mobilise resources against India.
Fai’s US-based organisation, the Kashmir American Council (KAC), received funding from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and was networked with the Islamic World NGO Coalition (İslam Dünyası Sivil Toplum Kuruluşları Birliği, İDSB), a SADAT front organisation. KAC was officially registered as one of İDSB’s two affiliates in the US, and Fai was a member of the İDSB’s Council, the organisation’s highest decision-making body.
An investigation into SADAT’s past activities revealed that Faye frequently attended events organized by SADAT and met directly with Tanriverdi, a retired military officer who continues to informally advise the Turkish president after stepping down in January 2020.
In 2014, Erdogan’s government reversed its previous policy of monitoring and, if necessary, cracking down on jihadist networks that were sending fighters and funds abroad, including to Kashmir. In fact, the government was protecting and even supporting some of the jihadist groups that targeted India.
One such jihadist group, Tahsiyeciler, was flagged up as a security threat by the military and law enforcement in the early 2000s. Led by Mehmed Dogan (aka Mulla Mohammed), who professed admiration for Osama bin Laden and advocated armed jihad in Turkey, Tahsiyeciler had been under scrutiny since then, and in January 2010 faced a crackdown in what authorities called an anti-al-Qaeda operation.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the G20 Summit in September 2023.
But Dogan and his associates were saved when Erdogan’s government intervened in their case in 2014. The police chief and prosecutor who had been pursuing the group were subsequently fired or wrongfully imprisoned by the government, and as a result, the group now thrives in Turkey with complete impunity.
The group praises the Turkish fighters who have crossed into Kashmir as forerunners of the Mahdist messiah predicted by the Islamic prophet, whose forces it believes will first conquer India and China before turning its attention to Europe.
Turkey and India are at odds over an initiative proposed by India, the United States and the European Union at the G20 summit in New Delhi on September 9, 2023. The initiative aims to establish a large-scale economic corridor linking Europe, the Middle East and India by rail and sea. It aims to link India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan, Israel and the EU through strategically located ports and an extensive rail network.
Turkey, which was excluded from the corridor, has openly expressed its displeasure with the idea, which it says would undermine its role as a trade hub and give an advantage to Greece and other regional rivals. It instead supports China’s vast Belt and Road project.
The extremist cleric Mullah Mohammed el-Kesli, whose real name was Mehmet Dogan.
Ankara is also pushing for an alternative route, known as the Development Road, which aims to link Europe and the Middle East through Turkey. “There can be no corridor without Turkey. The best route for traffic from east to west has to go through Turkey,” Erdogan said on a flight back from India last year.
Erdogan said they were discussing a corridor from Iraq, Qatar and Abu Dhabi through Turkey to Europe, a 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) transport route including rail, highways and pipelines stretching from the Iraqi port of Faw in Basra to Turkey’s port of Mersin at an estimated cost of $20 billion.
Turkey’s anti-India policies have sent a message to Ankara that it is ready to take a tougher stance by exploring alliances with neighbouring countries such as Greece, Cyprus and Armenia. As a result, security, military and intelligence cooperation between India, Greece, Cyprus and Armenia has significantly strengthened in recent years.
Mustafa Murat Shekel
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