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More strength to the India-Turkey
nexus
By K Gajendra Singh
The
recent visit of Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee to Turkey further consolidates the growing
relationship between the two secular republics.
While Turkey's population is 99 percent Muslim,
India has an 84 percent Hindu population, although both
prime ministers belong to religion-oriented parties that
face resistance from the secular establishments. The
premiers, though, could learn from each other and be an
example to other developing democracies.
Apart
from a call on Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and
other meetings with senior officials, Vajpayee held
extensive talks with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, in which they discussed the international
situation, with emphasis on terrorism and the current
situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The two sides signed
agreements on setting up a joint working group to fight
terrorism, and on enhancing cooperation in science and
technology, and information technology.
On
Afghanistan, both countries expressed identical views,
saying that they were concerned with the re-emergence of
the the Taliban. When asked about the West blaming Islam
as the source of terrorism, Vajpayee told the Turkish
Daily News that "we totally dismiss the proposition that
any religion is a source of terrorism. Such arguments
seek to discredit one of the great religions of the
world. No religion prescribes violence against innocent
people. Our battle is against extremist elements who
misuse and misinterpret religion to justify terrorism
and incite violence."
Erdogan commented that
terrorism "could not be linked to any religion, race or
nationality". "It is a phenomenon. There has to be a
common platform to fight it," he added. "It is not that
terror is terror when it comes to our country, and not
so when it is in some other country ... we should not be
creating artificial terror, terrorists and terrorism."
In a significant departure from its earlier
position, Turkey refrained from even discussing India's
relationship with Pakistan, or the Kashmir dispute. "Our
relations with Pakistan or the Kashmir issue were not
mentioned by the Turkish side, which is in sharp
contrast [to before]," said an official.
Last
year, the Turkish parliament passed a resolution that
favored the involvement of Ankara in resolving the
Kashmir problem. Turkey is an influential member of the
Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) and has made
pro-Pakistan statements in the past.
Vajpayee
stressed that India and Turkey shared the common values
of secularism and democracy and were growing industrial
societies with a similar level of excellence in many
fields. "But we still need to unlock many doors of
economic opportunity. Our bilateral trade in 2002 was
only about US$650 million. We have set ourselves a
target of $1 billion by 2005," he said.
The
working group of economic ministers recommend areas of
cooperation and will report to the government in six
months. Emphasizing the importance of direct shipping
and air links, the two countries began two flights a
week between Istanbul and New Delhi on September 18.
Vajpayee also announced scholarships for 50
Turkish professionals every year under India's technical
and economic cooperation program. He said that a Turkish
delegation had been invited to discuss cooperation in
civilian space technology. And Vajpayee's invitation to
Erdogan to visit India was accepted.
On Iraq,
both sides were of the view that sovereignty and the
territorial integrity of the war-ravaged country must be
maintained and the political process should begin soon
to install a government of the people of Iraq, besides
giving sovereignty over the country's natural resources
to its people. The US has asked both countries to
provide troops for Iraq. India has refused to date,
while Turkey is still debating the issue.
India
also felt the need to intensify defense cooperation with
Turkey, which has been "at a lower level than what we
would have liked". "Our commerce and tourism ministers
also need to establish and maintain contacts. Of course,
the heads of government should also maintain contacts,"
Vajpayee said. They decided that foreign ministers would
meet at least once a year, either in one of the two
capitals or a third country.
Speaking to Turkish
and Indian businesspeople at a meeting of the
Turkish-Indian Business Council in Istanbul, Vajpayee
underlined the importance of the Istanbul region, which
occupies a strategic position in Turkey's international
trade, with a 40 percent share. He asked businesspeople
to cooperate in not only the trade of goods and
services, but also in investments in third countries,
cooperation in research and development, and in new
technology.
The two countries have a number of
economic and other agreements already in place. The
first bilateral trade agreement was signed in 1973,
after which an agreement in 1983 established a joint
economic commission. During the visit of then prime
minister Turgut Ozal in 1986, a civil aviation agreement
was signed and Turkish Airlines flights were first
started between Turkey and India.
In 1995, two
agreements - one on the avoidance of double taxation,
the other on tourism - were signed. A joint business
council was set up in 1996. Four important agreements -
on bilateral investment promotion and protection;
prevention of illicit trafficking in narcotics and
psychotropic substances; on science and technology
cooperation; and on the exchange of trade information -
were signed in 1998.
During the visit of prime
minister Bulent Ecevit to India in April 2000, a
memorandum of understanding on cooperation in
agriculture and allied sectors was signed. Other
agreements are an extradition treaty signed in June,
2001, a protocol on tourism (2002) and an air services
agreement (2003).
India's exports were $564
million and imports $70 million in 2002 - a total trade
turnover of $634 million. The main Indian exports are
tea, iron ore, finished leather, drugs, pharmaceuticals
and chemicals, dyes, intermediates and coal tar
chemicals, inorganic and organic agro-chemicals,
cosmetics and toiletries, jute products, paints, enamels
and varnishes, glass and glassware, plastic and linoleum
products, chemicals and allied products, metal products,
machinery and instruments, transport equipment, iron
products, cotton yarn fabrics and make-up. The principal
Turkish exports to India are spices, synthetic rubber,
raw wool, raw cotton and waste mineral, metal scraps,
organic and inorganic chemicals, machinery and transport
equipment.
Important visits
Much has
been made of the first visit by an Indian prime minister
in 15 years. After Jawaharlal Nehru's June 1960 visit, a
month before a military takeover, the return visit by
Turgut Ozal could only take place in 1986 as the two
sides were on the wrong sides of the Cold War, and it
was only by the mid-1980s that ties began to thaw.
The initiative was taken by Ozal to revive
relations. Then premier Rajiv Gandhi visited Ankara in
1988. The third Nehru/Gandhi prime minister, Indira
Gandhi, did not visit Turkey although she was highly
popular in the country, especially among women and
leftists, who saw her visit neighboring Syria and hoped
- in vain - that one day she would visit Ankara too.
They admired her forthright action in aiding
Bengalis win independence from Pakistan to create
Bangladesh in 1971, and many intellectuals and major
newspapers like Milliyet and Cumhuriyet wrote against
Pakistan's Yahya Khan's genocide against Bengalis.
Indeed, many Turks privately congratulated Indian
diplomats when Pakistan troops surrendered in
Bangladesh. While the Turkish foreign office took its
time, like its super ally, the US, in recognizing
Bangladesh, the Turkish ruling party advised that it was
agreeable to the new state's recognition. In a press
meet during his 1972 visit, Pakistan's new prime
minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, expressed his readiness
to have talks with the leader of "east Pakistan". The
Turkish interpreter translated it as Basbakan (prime
minister) of Bangladesh.
After Rajiv Gandhi's
visit in 1988, many efforts were made to arrange a visit
by a Turkish prime minister. But there were always
fast-moving political developments in Turkey. When a
visit by prime minister Suleyman Demirel was being
envisaged, president Ozal died of a heart attack.
Then, Tansu Ciller became prime minister. With a
PhD in economics from the US, she had been brought in by
Demirel as a pretty and articulate economic expert on
facts and figures, which went over Demirel's head, as
well as those of many others in his conservative party.
This was to counter Ozal's party, which was
using many US-trained expatriate Turks in an attempt to
turn around the economy. Demirel, who wanted a proxy as
prime minister, never allowed Ciller to carry out
reforms or find a solution to the country's Kurdish
problem. She was also opposed by the armed forces, but
managed to last until September 1995.
There were
several subsequent changes in prime ministers, and it
was not until Bulent Ecevit's trip in 2000 that Turkey
was able to arrange a visit - and he had been invited in
1993 when he was only one of the opposition leaders. He
had learnt Sanskrit for a better understanding of the
Bhagvat Geeta, and Bengali to appreciate Rabindra Nath
Tagore and translate his Geetanjali. It had
always been his dream to visit India, and the
Shanti-Niketan University established by Tagore.
During this period there was also political
instability in India, with the short-term tenures of
prime ministers V P Singh and Chandrasekhar, and later
of Dev Gowda and Inder Gujaral. All these were minority
governments with shaky support and were preoccupied with
survival.
As for visits by an Indian foreign
minister, the fault lies with the highly protocol-minded
Mandarins in the Turkish foreign office, notoriously
suspicious of outsiders and wanting no one less than the
very top leaders. Hopefully the more pragmatic,
eastern-looking Turkish leadership will modify the
attitude of the Mandarins, many of whom know little
about Turkey east of Ankara and hanker for minor posts
in Europe rather than challenging ones in China, India
and Indonesia, for example.
Towards the end of
1994, during the Pakistani president's visit, the
visitors brought out albums full of gory photos
supposedly from Kashmir (they could equally have been
from violent Karachi, which was then equated with
"Lebanonization"). Against any brief from the Foreign
Ministry and much to the shock of his foreign minister,
a socialist and admirer of India, President Demirel
announced at a press conference that Turkey would join
the OIC contact group.
Worse, he said that an
agreement on Kashmir would be acceptable only if it was
acceptable to Pakistan. The Turkish ministry tried to
cover it up by editing out this part of the conference,
but this writer was able to lay hands on the uncensored
version and sent a message to Demirel, "What if the
people of Jammu and Kashmir agreed to the solution?"
Many Turks, diplomats and others telephoned
their support to the writer, even from New York. That
was the reason that the writer recommended that
Demirel's visit to India be preferred to the rising star
prime minister Ciller, as Demirel would stay in the post
for another six years and could do with a bit of
"enlightenment" on South Asian issues. Ciller's
government fell in 1995 and her position in a highly
male chauvinistic political elite, in spite of their
European pretensions, weakened. She is not even a member
of parliament now and at one time was under
parliamentary investigation for taking money from a
slush fund just before her government fell.
Demirel, a seven-time prime minister as well as
president, who had visited Pakistan six times, was most
surprised that during his visit to India, except for the
irrepressible Najma Heptullah, deputy chairperson of the
Upper House, no one even raised the issue of Pakistan
with him. In fact, he gingerly brought up the subject
himself by starting with China, Bangladesh, and then
coming to Pakistan.
Indian leaders said that
they wished Pakistan well, which had a very salutary
effect on Demirel. Turkish support to Pakistan on
Kashmir was based on Pakistan's unreserved reciprocal
support for Ankara on the Cyprus issue, in which it was
in bitter dispute with Greece. The Cyprus problem could
now be solved, but Turkey is using it to leverage entry
into the European Union. Or rather, the ruling Justice
and Development Party (AKP) leadership is using it to
carry out constitutional reforms to bring in more
freedoms in line with EU norms and to take away the
decisive role in politics of the Turkish armed forces,
the self-styled custodians of secularism in Turkey.
Islamist roots
All Islamist political
parties formed since 1969 have been banned, and the
coalition government of Islamist prime minister
Necmettin Erbakan was made to resign in 1997 by the
armed forces. Current AKP leaders like present premier
Erdogan and others were prominent but moderate members
of Erbakan's Welfare Party.
The AKP leadership
is more inclined to expand relations with the countries
to the east. Erdogan has visited most countries in
Central Asia, although it is being discouraged from
visiting Iran at this juncture by the US and the
cautious Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.
An early
visit by Erdogan to India, though, could further change
the relationship between the two countries. It could
also be a lesson to the likes of Gujarat Chief Minister
Narendra Modi and others in their attitude to Muslims.
Modi is accused of facilitating and encouraging communal
violence between Hindus and Muslims in the state. In
fact, Modi's government is now under scrutiny by the
Supreme Court for failing in its duty to protect the
weak.
Modi and his kind could learn that even
pro-Islamist political leaders in a secular system can
be quite different from the perception and caricature of
Muslims. Exchanges of visits by ministers and others
like judges, lawyers, educationists and women's
organizations would even enlighten Indian Muslims and
bring them out from their self-created ghettoes.
Trade and industry
It is a positive
step that Turkish Airlines has recommenced flights
between Istanbul and New Delhi. The flights were started
by Ozal after his 1986 visit, but they tapered off and
ceased in 1994, mostly because of obdurate, shortsighted
and counter-productive policies by the civil aviation
establishment in India.
Air India, which used to
be a fine organization, has been savaged by the
political elite, which, along with concerned
bureaucrats, now act as dogs in a manger. Around the
time that its Istanbul-Mumbai flights collapsed, Turkey
had started flights to Central Asian capitals like
Tashkent (which is 40 kilometers closer to Delhi than
Chennai by air). This writer proposed that flights to
Tashkent could return via Delhi, and while Turkey was
open to the suggestion, the Indian government showed
little interest.
In trade, the balance of which
is now very much in India's favor, the problem is that
Turkish businesspeople are more geared towards the EU,
with which Turkey has has a customs agreement since
early 1996. Procedures here are well organized and
streamlined, while the reverse is true with India. The
Turks are descendents of those who built Roman and Greek
theaters, stadiums, plazas and temples (Turkey has more
Greek sites than Greece and more Roman sites than
Italy). They have grabbed large construction projects in
the Persian Gulf and North Africa, and could teach the
Indians a thing or two.
Science and
technology
During his visit to India in 1995,
Demirel, an electrical engineer, to begin with, instead
of being shown around India's mediocre textile mills,
was taken to Mumbai's Bhabha Atomic Research Center and
the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR).
On return, while briefing his party, he marveled
at the research being done at the TIFR and the thousands
of nuclear physicists and engineers India had (that was
before the May 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests). In fact, in
the early 1990s, informal interest was expressed in
Indian missiles, which was naturally not taken note of.
Even now, Turkey's research institutions are
rather primitive and India could really help them out.
So also in oil drilling and railways, where India could
join hands with Turkey. Sooner or later, if oil from the
Middle East is blocked and the Caspian basin comes onto
the market, as must happen sooner or later, Turkey's
ramshackle railways would need upgrading to transport
heavy goods from Europe to the Caucasus and Central
Asia.
In the arms sector, there is much more to
gain for India with closer relations with Iran, a
strategic partner against Pakistan. Turkish equipment is
of US origin and the Israelis could offer better
solutions. But this avenue could be pursued.
Leadership
While it is difficult to
say who will govern India after next year's elections,
barring accidents, the AKP and its leadership will stay
in power with its two-thirds majority for another four
years as there appears little chance of the decimated
opposition parties picking themselves up too quickly.
The AKP remains clean, unlike the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) that leads India's coalition
government, whose members have been embroiled in many
scandals. In Turkey, Erdogan and others have a
reputation of honesty gained when serving under Erbakan
- the BJP also had a good reputation while running
municipalities, but once in government its slide has
been sharp.
Indeed, the AKP government is
establishing commissions to inquire into corruption
among the leadership of former ruling parties, which is
bound to further tarnish them. According to some polls,
the popularity of the AKP has risen by 5 to 7 percent
from 34 percent. (This figure is still low considering
the party's majority in parliament, but such are the
quirks of Turkish politics.)
Terrorism
As for the joint working
group on terrorism, the two countries face different
kinds of terrorism. India's is religion-based and is now
mostly supported from outside the country. After the
most recent elections in Jammu and Kashmir state, the
freest in recent times, efforts to further soothe and
bring local terrorists into the mainstream are showing
results. But with support from Pakistan, and other
Islamic countries and organizations, it is easy to
create acts of terrorism not only in Kashmir but
elsewhere in India.
And disasters like the
Gujarat pogrom provide recruits to foreign jihadis.
Until Gujarat, almost no Indian Muslims had joined
al-Qaeda or helped the Taliban, according to a former
Indian head of counter terrorism. He rightly bemoans
that India should reply tit for tat.
Turkey's
problem is its Kurdish Marxist-led rebellion. Kurds, who
form 20 percent of the population, have carried on an
insurgency since 1984 against the state, led by Abdullah
Ocalan of the Marxist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). It
has cost over 35,000 lives, including 5,000 soldiers. To
control and neutralize the rebellion, thousands of
Kurdish villages have been bombed, destroyed, abandoned
or relocated; millions of Kurds moved to shanty towns in
the south and east or migrated westwards. The economy of
the region is shattered.
With a third of the
Turkish army tied up in the southeast, the cost of
countering the insurgency at its height amounted to
between $6 billion to $8 billion a year. The rebellion
died down after the arrest and trial of Ocalan, in 1999,
but it has not been eradicated. After a court in Turkey
in 2002 commuted to life imprisonment his death
sentence, and parliament granted rights for the use of
the Kurdish language, some of the root causes of the
Kurdish rebellion have been removed.
But clashes
still occur between Turkish security forces and the PKK
- now also called Kadek. It has shifted almost 5,000 of
its cadres to the Kandili mountains in northern Iraq.
They have refused to lay down their arms as required by
a new "repentance law", passed by the Turkish
parliament. The US's priority to disarm PKK cadres has
not been very high, and it is doubtful if, in the
prevailing conditions in Iraq, they will have much
stomach to do that.
Iraqi Kurds have been
ambivalent to the PKK, helping them at times. Ankara has
entered north Iraq from time to time - despite protests
- to attack PKK bases and its cadres, and it keeps
between 5,000 to 10,000 troops in the region. Ankara has
also said that it would regard an independent Kurdish
entity in Iraq as a cause for war. It is opposed to the
Kurds seizing the oil centers of Kirkuk or Mosul, which
would give them financial autonomy, and this would also
constitute a reason for entry into north Iraq.
The roots of the Kurdish problem were sown
during the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the birth
of the Turkish Republic after World War I when the
Christian West used the stick of religion and
nationalism to break up the empire. The first to leave
were the Balkan Christians, and in the late 19th century
it was feared that even the Kurds might desert, like the
Egyptians. But the last straw was the revolt by Muslim
Arabs, for the Ottoman caliphs were always Muslims first
and then Turks. Hence, Turks manifest a pervasive
distrust of autonomy or models of a federal state for
Iraqi Kurds. It would affect and encourage the
aspirations of its own Kurds.
Kurds after the
1991 Gulf War
The 1990-91 Gulf crisis and war
proved to be a watershed in the violent explosion of the
Kurdish rebellion in Turkey. A nebulous and ambiguous
situation emerged in north Iraq when, at the end of the
war, Bush Sr encouraged the Kurds (and the hapless
Shi'ites in the south) to revolt against Saddam
Hussein's Sunni Arab regime. Turkey was dead against it,
as a Kurdish state in the north would give ideas to its
own to Kurds.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab states
in the Persian Gulf were totally opposed to a Shi'ite
state in south Iraq. The hapless Iraqi Kurds and
Shi'ites thus paid a heavy price. Thousands were
butchered. The international media's coverage of more
than half a million Iraqi Kurds escaping towards the
Turkish border from Saddam's forces in March 1991 led to
the creation of a protected zone in north Iraq, later
patrolled by US and British war planes. The Iraqi Kurds
did elect a parliament, but it never functioned
properly. Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal
Talabani run almost autonomous administrations in their
areas. They make forced handshakes under US pressure.
This state of affairs has allowed the PKK a free run in
north Iraq.
After 1991Gulf war, Turkey lost out
instead of gaining. The closure of Iraqi pipelines,
economic sanctions and the loss of trade with Iraq,
which used to pump billions of US dollars into the
economy and provide employment to hundreds of thousands,
with thousands of trucks roaring up and down to Iraq,
further exacerbated the economic and social problems in
the Kurdish heartland and the center of the rebellion.
Earlier, the 1980s war between Iraq and resurgent
Shi'ites in Iran helped the PKK to establish itself in
the lawless north Kurdish Iraq territory. The PKK also
helped itself with arms freely available in the region
during the eight-year long war.
US request
for Turkish and Indian troops
But many Turks
still remain fascinated and some determined with the
dream of "getting back" the Ottoman provinces of Kurdish
majority Mosul, now in Iraq. They were originally
included within the sacred borders of the republic
proclaimed in the National Pact of 1919 by Turkish
leader Ataturk and his comrades, who organized the
resistance for Turkey's independence from the occupying
World War I victors.
So it has always remained a
mission and objective to be reclaimed some time. The
oil-rich part of Mosul region was occupied by the
British forces illegally after the armistice and then
annexed to Iraq, then under British mandate, in 1925,
much to Turkish chagrin. Iraq was created by joining
Ottoman Baghdad and Basra vilayats (provinces).
Turks also base their claims on behalf of less than half
a million Turkomen (ethnic Turks living in Iraq), who
lived in Kirkuk with the Kurds before Arabization
changed the ethnic balance of the region.
So
Turkey has strategic interests in what happens in
Kurdish Iraq in particular and Iraq in general. But with
devastating blasts in Baghdad during August and lack of
warm reception from friendly tribes in Iraq, Turkey
remains like Hamlet - to send troops or not. Or rather,
when?
During his visit, Vajpayee made it clear
that India would consider the question of sending Indian
troops to Iraq only after a resolution had been passed
for giving a mandate by the United Nations. India also
has to worry about the ongoing and increased jihadi
activity in Kashmir. The situation in Iraq, with another
attack on the UN headquarters on September 22 is going
to get worse rather than better.
India also
faces elections in five states soon, and sending Indian
troops to Iraq, with memories of deaths of hundreds of
thousands of Indian troops under the British during
World War I and the occupation, begs an electoral death
wish.
K Gajendra Singh, Indian
ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey
from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served
terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He
is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic
Studies. Email Gajendrak@hotmail.com
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