How Erdoğan’s neo-Ottomanism guides Turkey’s Pakistan policy

Pakistan’s drone attack on India raises the question of who supplies them. Turkey’s name secures prominence. Turkey is Pakistan’s second-largest arms exporter. China takes the first position. Apart from arms trade and commerce, the biggest adhesive is religion. Hanafi Sunnis constitute 78 per cent of Turkey’s population.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s uncompromising conviction in support of Islam and the Islamic cause is non-negotiable. His deluded vision of neo-Ottomanism is modelled upon the erstwhile Ottoman Empire with Islam, territorial expansionism, and anti-Westernisation persuasions. Bringing the Islamic world under one canopy and ensuring and stamping his unshakeable leadership and authority constitute his dreadful phantom.

Erdoğan construes the India and Pakistan conflict as a religious one. The Pakistan army chief General Asim Munir’s communally charged and Hinduphobic speech on April 16 corroborates with Erdoğan’s line. Erdoğan has always stood with Pakistan on the Kashmir issue. His anti-India tirade is open and unabashed.

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However, India was one of the very early responders to Turkey’s massive earthquake in 2023 under the name ‘Operation Dost’ with National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams, relief material, medicine, medical teams, field hospitals, specialised equipment, and search and rescue dog squads. What India got in return was Turkey’s supplies of drones to Pakistan. Therefore, morality and humanity do not matter to Erdoğan. Islam matters, and interest matters.

The Pakistan-Turkey nexus underlines Islamism. Jihadism is an acceptable modus operandi to ensure the protection of the Islamic cause. Everything is seen through the religious lens. Ideological jaundice is so overwhelmingly thick that no light of reason penetrates it. Reason is blasphemy. The death cult blinds the human rational and ethical compass to exercise any reflection or rationalisation. Amid all these, Erdoğan harbours the hope of becoming the new Caliph of the Islamic world or literally the Islamic Ummah. To fulfil this deadly dream, it can go to any extent and deploy any means in its custody. He finds in the ongoing India-Pakistan conflict a strong opportunity to unleash his neo-Ottoman aspiration.

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Moreover, Ankara-Islamabad strategic bonhomie became evident when the remains of the drones fired by Pakistan found on Indian territory were forensically examined and reportedly of Turkish-made Asisguard Songar models. Turkish Ada-class anti-submarine corvette stations and Turkish C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft are at Karachi Airport. They confirm Turkish support for Pakistan.

Moreover, the Turkish drone deployed to infiltrate the Indian airspace confirms the Turkish role in enabling Pakistani firepower. Pakistan uses the Turkish Asisguard Songar drones as a retaliation to India’s Operation Sindoor on May 7. Erdoğan expressed his solidarity with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in the immediate aftermath of India’s attack on the terror camps and infrastructures and supplied covertly the munitions and drones to strengthen Pakistan’s escalation ladder.

Turkish Asisguard Songar drones are designed to carry out day and night military operations. It was launched in 2019 and delivered to the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) in 2020. Its width from rotor to rotor is 140 cm. It can carry a maximum weight of 45 kg. Its ascending capacity is 3000 metres above sea level and 300 metres above ground. The portable unmanned aerial system captures real-time video and photographic coverage of the ground reality. Its operational radius is between 3 and 5 km. Pilot cameras and gun-mounted cameras are integrated into the system for surveillance and exploration.

Automatic and manual options are given for manoeuvrability. It responds to global navigation systems for establishing communications during operations. Most importantly, it can also return home in the event of loss of communication. The drones include five variants: Songar 5.56 x 45 mm Assault Rifle, Songar 2×40 mm Grenade Launcher, Songar 6×40 mm Drum Type Grenade Launcher, Songar 3×81 mm Mortar Gripper, and Songar 8 x Tear/Smoke Grenade Launcher. These variations depend on the munition payload. Versatility is its hallmark.

Erdoğan supplies them to Pakistan to use them against India. He invests significantly in the countries under the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and adds steroids to his ambitious neo-Ottomanism. Turkey allegedly sponsors terror to underline its service to the Islamic cause and to put in place Turkish irredentism subtly. It has become the ideological incubator of Jihadism. Pakistan is Turkey’s junior partner and indulges in ideological competition. It encourages neo-Mughalism to assume a fake imperial antecedent. The adoption of Mughal historicity supplements Pakistani unhistoric, artificial nationhood, and its media promotes.

Pakistan’s Kashmir claims legitimise its Islamic character. Kashmir and jihad give Pakistan a distinct identity in the Islamic world. This proves its fitness to become an Islamic country. The neo-Mughalism narrative helps Pakistan to play to an ideological gallery in the hinterland and beyond. Pakistan, therefore, will not shun its animosity against India. Erdoğan is trying to become the leader of the Islamic world, and Pakistan, its junior partner, makes the best use of Turkey to get drones and projects them to India to prove its strength.

Turkey uses civilisational exceptionalism as a political project and underlines Islam as a civilisational other to the West. Anti-Westernisation is its political methodology to undergird civilisational exclusivism. This is the most deadly project combining religion with politics to ensure civilisational exceptionalism. Jihadism is a lethal modus operandi.

The conception of an ‘Islamic bomb’ corroborates the jihadi ideology. As per this conception, the nuclear weapon developed by any Islamic nation becomes the shared property to be used by the Islamic world. It is a nuclear sword to wage jihad. It gives an Islamic nation ruthless bargaining power. This is what Pakistan does all the time with India since it became nuclear-capable. It aids and abets terrorism and wrongdoing.

Pakistan has been using this gimmick effectively and securing undue importance. Radical Islamic ideology has assumed significance through the conception of the Islamic bomb. The architects of this conception were Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who conjoined Islam with a bomb to make political Islam more lethal. The term acquired currency in the 1970s. Needless to say, it emanated from Pakistan. Pakistan’s military-Islamic thinking gets the required impetus to unleash against its actual and assumed enemies.

Jajati K Pattnaik is an Associate Professor at the Centre for West Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Chandan K Panda is an Assistant Professor at Rajiv Gandhi University (A Central University), Itanagar. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.