Last week, reports began doing the rounds that a closed-door meeting of a Turkish parliamentary committee had discussed a de facto ban on defense exports to India. According to news reports on the meeting, a top defense procurement official told Turkish lawmakers that Turkey no longer approves defense sales to firms based in India “due to our political circumstances and our friendship with Pakistan.”
India’s external affairs ministry dismissed these reports as “disinformation” and passed the question back to the Turkish embassy in New Delhi.
Tensions have simmered between the two countries for a while. Last year, India canceled a lucrative deal for naval shipbuilding worth $2 billion, upsetting Turkish policymakers.
On the face of it, relations between the two countries needn’t be so testy. For all their differences, there are several similarities between Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They are both uneasy Western allies, trying to establish strategic autonomy in their own regions. They have sought to diversify partners and walked a cautious line on Ukraine. They have also harnessed strands of religious nationalism and civilizational pride to popularize foreign policy among their voters.
Yet, Erdoğan’s ambitions for leadership in the Muslim world have increasingly clashed with New Delhi’s interests, particularly on Kashmir and Pakistan. Things came to a head in 2019 when India controversially revoked the partial autonomy of its state of Jammu and Kashmir. Erdoğan then emerged as one of New Delhi’s most vocal critics, second only to Pakistan. He has brought up Kashmir consistently and repeatedly at the U.N., eliciting complaints from India over what it calls are breaches of its sovereignty.
Turkey’ steadfast advocacy has stood in sharp contrast to Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, which have largely maintained a studied silence on Kashmir in recent years. But that is because the roots of Erdoğan’s activism also lie, in some measure, in his quiet rivalry with the Gulf.
For over a decade, Erdoğan has quarreled on and off with Saudi Arabia and its allies. The two sides fell out as early as during the Arab Spring when they differed over the uprisings, and in particular, the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2018, ties plummeted after the Saudis were accused of killing journalist Jamal Khashoggi at their embassy in Istanbul.
Erdoğan then took advantage of Saudi Arabia’s sectarian feud with Iran, presenting himself as a more unifying leadership figure for the Muslim world. He forged delicate ties with countries as diverse as Iran, Pakistan, Qatar and Malaysia to rise above the shadows of Saudi influence. To buttress his clout, Erdoğan championed geopolitical causes with wider appeal in the Muslim world, including the rights of Muslims in Kashmir, Palestine, and — for a brief while — even Xinjiang.
Yet, in recent years, the page has often turned dramatically owing to economics. Driven in large part by Erdoğan’s decision to keep interest rates low after the pandemic, Turkey’s economy has reeled under cataclysmic inflation rates. This May, annual consumer price inflation surged over 75 percent — up from just under 70 percent in April. That is, in fact, the result of a cool-down: Last June, economists estimated that the inflation rate had breached three figures. Meanwhile, the Turkish lira tumbled as funds fled the country in search of better rates of return. And although unemployment hit a 10-year low in 2023, it was still at a restive 9.4 percent.
As Turkey’s economy floundered and domestic discontent became more palpable, Erdoğan showed an astonishing capacity to put geopolitics behind him and make common cause with his enemies. Last year, he went to the Gulf, including a much-touted rapprochement trip to Saudi Arabia, where he attended business forums, courted foreign investors and sold Turkish drones. The visit was partly facilitated by Saudi Arabia’s own efforts to mend ties with Iran and other rivals in the region, and Erdoğan responded by tempering his ties with the Muslim Brotherhood — a key demand put forth by the Saudis.
Erdoğan has also quietly buried the hatchet with China over Xinjiang. Last month, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan visited China for three days, where he appeared to express some sympathy toward the Uyghurs but also echoed some of Beijing’s language on global geopolitics.
So far, the olive branch has not come to India. The reason for that probably cuts both ways. Erdoğan has been unwilling to abandon his stance on Kashmir. But New Delhi has also been uncompromisingly hostile toward any overseas commentary on Kashmir — arguably even more than Beijing on Xinjiang. The decision to scrap the shipbuilding deal also shows that New Delhi is keen on pivoting toward self-reliance over foreign trade: Shortly after that agreement was called off, an Indian firm based in Kochi was roped in to execute the project.
With his other frenemies, Erdoğan had sought to make a case partly economic and partly strategic to reset ties. But that charm offensive has not reached New Delhi just yet.