Manufacturing optimism for all sides

Fifth column

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is usually known for picking his fights publicly and forcefully without any need to hide behind the diplomatic niceties to avail any plausible deniability.

In early March, when several EU countries, including Germany and Holland, banned political rallies of the Turkish diaspora in a bid to stem growing pro-Erdogan support for the referendum for constitutional reforms, the president hit back with force. He likened the actions of the German government to the “Nazi practices of the past” and called the Dutch “Nazi remnants and fascists” who “do not know politics or international diplomacy”.

Erdogan has even publicly shamed and slammed the US, a long-term ally, for arming the Kurdish terror groups, supporting Isis and its alleged involvement in last year’s military coup that tried to violently topple him.

His victory in the last month’s constitutional referendum seems to have nudged him towards a more nuanced approach, to reconfigure Turkey’s politics and diplomacy. Buoyed by the referendum win, Erdogan’s first foreign visit to India displayed his newly gained confidence and optimism to spur domestic economic growth through regional trade alliances without compromising on his yearning to place Turkey as a bigger player in the political affairs of the region.

This time, he seems to have played his hand pretty well to keep everyone across the divide pleased to varying degrees of satisfaction. Ahead of his India visit, Erdogan, in a television interview, advocated multilateral dialogue to settle the Kashmir dispute, challenging the Indian intransigence that claims Kashmir is an internal matter or a bilateral dispute with Pakistan depending on the political situation in Kashmir. The statement created much consternation in India. But there was enough bait for India in the form of qualified support for its global and nuclear ambitions to refrain from any significant public response.

Erdogan’s call for multilateral dialogue won him instant praise from Kashmiris who are resisting the Indian occupation and want international intervention to resolve the festering problem as India has seven decades experience of using bilateral dialogue to bury the dispute. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a leading Kashmiri pro-freedom leader, hailed the statement as encouraging. “The Turkish president was well aware how Kashmir dispute was the main source of tension between the two nations,” he noted. Sartaj Aziz, the foreign affairs adviser, was also quick to welcome the initiative as he called India’s talk of bilateral dialogue as “no longer credible”.

Short of exclusively backing India, the Turkish president offered support for India’s bid to gain membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) alongside Pakistan. “Both India and Pakistan have the right to aspire for NSG membership,” he declared. In the past, Turkey – an important member of the NSG – had frustrated Indian attempts to gain an entry into the exclusive nuclear club.

For India’s aspirations to join the NSG while campaigning against Pakistan’s entry, Erdogan advised New Delhi to give up such a mindset vis-a -vis Pakistan, saying: “I think India should not assume such an attitude”. He backed the role of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) towards the resolution of the Kashmir dispute while calling for reforms of the UN Security Council (UNSC). India opposes the OIC’s role in Kashmir but advocates the UNSC reforms in its bid to enhance its influence at the international stage by publicly asking for a permanent seat at the premier world body.

Erdogan’s address at the Jamia Millia Islamia, a well-known university in New Delhi, was about the deep cultural ties between the two countries and endless opportunities for future cooperation and collaboration. Noting that the changing circumstances around the world pushed the two countries closer, he criticised the world order for being unfair and reiterated his oft-repeated maxim that the world was “bigger than five” – a reference to the UNSC for its narrow representation and disproportionate power. During his interactions, Erdogan pitched for closer business and economic ties to create a “win-win situation for both sides” as the current trade balance was in India’s favour.

The Turkish president’s India visit must have pleased the House of Sharifs as well. While he articulated support for Pakistan’s position on Kashmir and NSG, he personally praised Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and testified to his credentials as a man of peace. “My dear friend the prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, is an individual with whom I have been discussing these issues at length, and I know he is a man of good intentions. I heard him personally speak of his will to settle this question [Kashmir] once and for all”. This must have come as a psychological boost for the embattled PM only days after the army publicly challenged his authority and rejected the official notification on the infamous Dawn leaks scandal as incomplete.

Back home, according to leading English daily Sabah, the news from India created a “stir in Turkish real estate sector” as the Turkish construction industry expected to claim a significant share in India’s real estate. The optimism was generated by Prime Minister Modi’s desire to work with Turkish contractors to fulfil his government’s plans to construct 50 million homes by 2022.

Following the referendum, Erdogan is keen to consolidate on economic growth ahead of the 2019 presidential elections as he is returning to the fold of the Justice and Development Party as a political president. India, with the second biggest population and seventh largest economy, offers him a great deal of promise as reflected by the joint statement wherein both sides reaffirmed economic and cultural cooperation and agreed to increase their trade to $10 billion by 2020.

The extraordinary part of the joint statement was the condemnation of the “use of double standards in addressing the menace of terrorism” despite mutual disagreements over the definition of terrorism and its application. While the Indian efforts to link the Kashmir’s freedom struggle with terrorism failed to convince Turkey, India has consistently frustrated the Turkish requests to ban Gulen’s Feto which has a significant foothold in India and operates with the full support of the Indian government.

Twitter: @murtaza_shibli