Muslim
Brotherhood of Turkey and Pakistan
IHSAN YILMAZ
TURKEY and Pakistan have a long-standing history of a
healthy bilateral relationship. Their ties were cemented in their Cold War
military alignment with American security architecture. In 1955, the two
countries became members of a regional defence pact called the Central Treaty
Organisation. Their relationship developed gradually with the formation of the
Regional Cooperation and Development in 1964 with a bid to jointly enhance the
region’s economic development. Since 1965, the two countries have reached a
strategic consensus on the issues of Kashmir and Cyprus. While Iran and
Pakistan’s relations have been adrift, despite sharing a common border and
cultural similarities, a new era of cordial relations between Turkey and
Pakistan has emerged in the last decade.
In 2003, during Erdogan’s
visit to Pakistan, both states signed a High-Level Military Dialogue for
defence cooperation. The two countries organised multiple
Pakistan-Afghanistan-Turkey Trilateral Summits and, in 2016, signed a strategic
partnership agreement.1 Today, the two
countries, with troubled relations with the United States (US), are Muslim
middle powers with a growing entente in a multipolar
Eurasia.2
Post-2010, the relations between the two countries
began to intensify. Pakistan has consistently sought opportunities to represent
its post-9/11 image as a peace-loving nation versus a hub of terrorism. It is
always in need of allies that would lend support in times of Indo-Pak conflict –
Turkey under Erdogan fits the bill as a brother.3 Similarly,
Pakistan’s geopolitics and size as the second largest Muslim country after
Indonesia, makes it an important ally for Turkey.
The ties between Islamabad and Ankara have
translated into several pacts to support military exchanges and economic
collaboration.4 By
2020, they had signed around 13 memorandums of understanding, with five related
to the defence industry.5 The two countries aim to enhance bilateral
trade to US$ 5 billion (S$ 6.9 billion) by 2023 from the current US$ 800
million under their strategic economic partnership.6
During the post-Cold War era, Pakistan lost much
relevance for the western security architecture. After 9/11, the West’s Mujahideen allies became the primary enemy, and Pakistan
found itself divided between the West and the Mujahideen.7 On the one hand, the regional rivalries and
problems among China, India, Pakistan, Japan, the Quadrilateral Security
Dialogue (Quad), South China Sea littoral countries, Bangladesh and Myanmar
have complicated Turkey’s relations with Asia. However, on the other hand,
Pakistan’s dependency on China, strained ties with the US, conflict with India
and its poor economy have restricted the scope of Turkey-Pakistan relations.8
Pakistan has been trying to compensate for its
strained relations with the West by leaning on China for economic and military
support. However, this has deepened Pakistan’s dependence on China and weakened
its autonomy.9 Even
though Pakistan has significantly moved closer to China, it has not completely
disrupted its relations with the US due to economic and geopolitical
considerations.10 In
fact, it is important for Pakistan to maintain cordial ties with the US and the
West – this could help Islamabad from being removed from the Financial Action
Task Force’s grey list in terms of terror financing.11 Having similar problems, Turkey supports
Pakistan on this front.
Turkey also supports Pakistan’s official
position in Kashmir. In 2019, at a roundtable conference on the margin of the
74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, Erdogan
called the Jammu and Kashmir region an open air prison.12 However, the growing role of India in the
global order has become an important consideration in Turkey’s South Asia
policy. Thus, while maintaining strong military ties with Pakistan, Turkey has
sought similar economic and political relations with India.13 However, India has questioned Turkey’s stand on Kashmir and
the strengthening of its defence relations with Pakistan and has called Turkey
not to interfere in its internal affairs.14
Several Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates, which were previously Pakistan’s close defence partners,
have gradually moved closer to India to expand their defence partnerships
beyond the West. Consequently, Turkey has emerged as an important Muslim
partner for Pakistan in the face of its growing isolation in the Muslim world.15 However, as far
as Turkey’s competition with Saudi Arabia over the leadership of the Sunni Muslim
world is concerned, Pakistan is not likely to take a clear stand, given its
economic dependence on and historic relations with Saudi Arabia.16
As Turkey’s domestic arms industry has grown
substantially in recent years, its defence deals with Pakistan have also
increased. Whilst China is Pakistan’s main source of defence hardware, Turkey
has been increasingly presenting itself as an alternative to inaccessible
American and French equipment and has been easing Islamabad’s near-total
dependence on China.17 Pakistan has also been shifting from upgrading
Pakistani hardware originally procured from other North Atlantic Treaty
Organization countries to the arms made in Turkey.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
reported that Turkey was Pakistan’s fourth-largest source of arms, surpassing
the US, and that Pakistan was Turkey’s third-largest arms importer during the
period 2016 to 2019.18 Pakistan has plans to buy Turkey’s T129 attack
helicopters valued at US$ 1.5 billion. It is also planning to acquire four
corvettes from Turkey. Additionally, Pakistan has several modernisation
projects with Turkey over its fast-attack submarines.19 The arm trade figures
are set to grow as Turkey fulfils recent orders from Pakistan exceeding US$ 3
billion.
In addition to defence relations, Turkish
economic investment in Pakistan has grown in the past decade. However, Turkey’s
recently shrinking economy has restricted its investments abroad. Similarly,
bilateral trade between the two countries has remained stagnant over the past
decade, peaking at around US$ 1.1 billion in 2011, partly due to Turkey’s
protectionism. Free trade agreement negotiations have not progressed either.20 The absence of predictable and sustainable stability in
Pakistan restricts Turkey-Pakistan’s economic relations.21
While there has been growing literature on the two
nations’ strengthening economic, diplomatic, and military ties, the influence
of soft power used by Turkey in Pakistan has received rare attention.22 Turkey’s
cultural contributions to Pakistan are more important than military
contributions.23 Its
soft power and public diplomacy activities include Turkish language promotion
programmes, cultural centres, and charity and social welfare activities through
agencies such as Yunus Emre
Institution, Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency and recently
introduced educational foundations such as the Turkish Maarif
Foundation.24
Following 9/11, while the Middle Eastern
states faced soft power challenges, Turkey was able to skilfully positioned
itself as a potential leader of the Muslim world, challenging Saudi Arabia’s
claims to leadership, and advocating a moderate form of Sunni-Hanafi Islam enshrined in the Sufi mystic tradition.25 However, as
Turkey’s hopes of entering the European Union declined and Erdogan
took an authoritarian turn, Turkey’s pan-Islamic rhetoric intensified to
enhance Turkey’s political stance in the Muslim world. To appeal to the extranational Muslims, Erdogan
has relied on a network of Muslim Brotherhood sympathisers across the Muslim
world under the guise of Islamic solidarity.26
In this context, Erdogan and
then Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan have
emerged as two Muslim leaders who have advanced a foreign policy driven by
Muslim nationalist emo-tions.27 Both leaders joined forces in their jihad against Islamophobia in the West. At times, this has presented
itself as mere anti-western populist rhetoric.28 Also, unlike other political leaders in Pakistan, Khan seemed to be the only leader keen in
explaining Islam to the West, making him an ally of Erdogan.
The two nations agreed to set up a joint television channel to deal with Islamophobia and create an Islamic bloc to solve Muslim
problems.29 Thus, Turkey’s rich history and highly
industrialised film industry strengthened Turkish soft power in Pakistan and
helped Khan implement his Islamist populist vision.30
Turkish entertainment productions,
especially soap operas, have been exported to more than 50 countries worldwide,
resulting in high export revenue annually. Some of these are Hollywoodesque political-action films and television drama
series such as Dirilis’ Ertugrul
(Resurrection Ertugrul), Bir
Zamanlar Osmanli (Once
Upon a Time: The Ottoman Empire), Osmanli Tokadi (The Ottoman Smack), Osmanli’da
Derin Devlet (Deep
State in the Ottoman Empire), and Payitaht:
Abdulhamid (The Last Emperor).31 Even though
they are historical productions, they recreate past glories and project current
socio-political affairs into historical events and formalise new geopolitical
imaginations. All of them rewrite history and reframe geopolitical issues from
an Islamist populist perspective of Erdoganism.32 For example, Payitaht: Abdulhamid
re-narrates the time of the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid
and his struggles for the survival of the Ottoman Empire in the face of
imperialist and sinister anti-Muslim conspiracies of the West, aiming to create
a deja vu effect for the audience.
All these productions overlapped with Khan’s
Islamist populism rhetoric. Thus, unsurprisingly, he told the nation to watch Ertugrul Ghazi (Dirilis’
Ertugrul), a Turkish drama dubbed in Urdu. It is
a historical narrative and adventure story about Ertugrul,
son of Suleiman Shah, father of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, Osman.33 Ertugrul Ghazi in
Pakistan was aired in April 2020 on the national media platform Pakistan
Television Cooperation (PTV). Khan remarked:
‘Turkey has made this film or drama series which they
call Resurrection, they made this film. And for this first time, they depict
how the Turks progressed and how they conquered half of Europe as one of the
greatest forces of time… the Western culture and civilization has hijacked us
to such a great degree that we are unaware of our own past.’34
Khan felt that the medium of films should be
used to educate the ‘aloof’ and ‘West-inspired’ younger generations about the
Muslim world’s ‘glorious past’, ‘triumphs’ and ‘heroic figures’ so that the
‘western civilisational hegemony’ is ‘broken’ with
series such as Ertugrul. As a counter to ‘third-hand
culture’, Ertugrul Ghazi has gone beyond pop culture
to seep into deep fissures of Pakistani society’s imagination and conception of
Turkey.35
The show’s official Urdu YouTube channel, called the
TRT Ertugrul, by PTV, has around 18 million
subscribers. By April 2022, views of its first episode on YouTube alone
exceeded 125 million, and the show’s Turkish cast members are now celebrities
in Pakistan. Now, markets in Pakistan are full of fan merchandise. Retail
brands are not just limiting themselves to the cast of Ertugrul
Ghazi; rather, they are using slogans of ‘uniting cultures’ and ‘Muslim
heritage’ to sell their merchandise.36
In a country already sympathetic to Turkey, the large
audience for the show makes it a highly useful transmission device for
religious populism in a transnational sense for Erdogan.
The instrumental value of the soft power of the show is such that Justice and
Development Party (AKP) has been highly successful in transmitting its
narrative of glorification of the Turkic ethnicity as the guardians of the
Sunni Muslim world.37
The civilisational
populist discourse of the show has allowed its Pakistani viewers feel part of
the Muslim ummah that has been a victim of the
whims and control of the ‘western world’ – throughout the show, Ertugrul is busy unmasking the plans of the Crusaders,
pagans and internal traitors.38
Despite the rhetoric and the ongoing positive
trajectory of Turkey-Pakistan relations, the two countries have not been able
to substantially deepen economic, security, and regional cooperation due to
several constraints, including complicated relations with third countries,
distance and weak economies on both sides. Pakistan’s regional and
international isolation is also a challenge in the pursuit if its relations
with Turkey. Having said that, Turkey has been easing Pakistan’s over
dependence on Chinese arm procurements.
Turkey has also been successful in its soft power projection in Pakistan. Its soft power instruments have been implemented in full force in the country. Erdogan and his ruling AKP have been very active in Pakistan, using cultural centres, facilities, schools, aid, Islamist populist movies and television drama series to transmit anti-western sentiments and propagating Turkey as one of the key countries that has countered the West in the past and can resist western hegemony today. This Islamist civilisational populist narrative has resonated with many people in Pakistan.
Footnotes:
1. Rahat Shah, ‘Explaining Pakistan-Turkish Relations: Islamism and Naya Pakistan’, Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 2022, p. 5. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/25765949.2022. 2057718.
2. Arif Rafiq, ‘The Turkey-Pakistan Entente: Muslim Middle Powers Align in Eurasia’, Middle East Institute, January 2021. https://www.mei.edu/publications/turkey-pakistan-entente-muslim-middle-powers-align-eurasia.
3. Tanzeela Khalil, ‘India-Pakistan Relation-ship: A Case of Perpetual Instability’, NUST Journal of International Peace & Stability 3, 2020, pp. 79-93.
4. ‘Turkey-Pakistan Defence Industry Deals Peak in Last Two Years’, The Middle East Monitor, February 2020. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200226-turkey-pakistan-defence-industry-deals-peak-in-last-two-years/.
5. Ibid.
6. Baqir Sajjad Syed, ‘Pakistan, Turkey to Transform Ties into Economic Partner-ship’, Dawn, February 2020. https://www.dawn.com/news/1534568
7. Omair Anas, ‘A Post-Cold War Era Context of Turkey’s Asia Relations’, in Omair Anas (ed.), Turkey’s Asia Relations. Palgrave Mcmillan, 2022, p. 73 (pp 57-84).
8. Ibid., pp. 64 & 81.
9. Ibid., p. 74.
10. Zahid Shahab Ahmed and Abdul Basit, ‘Turkey’s Relationship with Afghanistan and the Pakistan Factor: An Examination of Historical and Geopolitical Factors’, in O. Anas (ed.), Turkey’s Asia Relations, 2022. Op. cit., pp. 113-130.
11. Ahmed and Basit, Turkey’s Relationship, op. cit., p. 124.
12. Muhammed Huseyin Mercan and Guliz Dinē, ‘Turkey’s Policy Towards Crisis Regions in Asia After 2002’, pp. 163-184; and O. Anas (ed.), Turkey’s Asia Relations, 2022, pp. 169-170.
13. Anas, A Post-Cold War Era Context, op. cit., pp. 62-72.
14. Merve Seren, ‘Turkish-Asian Coop-eration in Diversified Strategic Environment’, pp. 131-162; and O. Anas (ed.), Turkey’s Asia Relations, 2022, p. 137.
15. Anas, A Post-Cold War Era Context, op. cit., p. 71.
16. Ahmed and Basit, Turkey’s Relationship, op. cit., p. 124.
17. Rafiq, The
Turkey-Pakistan Entente, op. cit.
18. Ibid.
19. Seren, Turkish-Asian Cooperation, op. cit., p. 145.
20. Rafiq, The Turkey-Pakistan entente, op. cit.
21. Anas, A Post-Cold War Era Context, op. cit., p. 76.
22. See for one of the few exceptions, Ihsan Yilmaz and Kainat Shakil, ‘Transnational Islamist Populism between Pakistan and Turkey: The Case of Dirilis-Ertugrul’, European Center for Populism Studies. https://www.populismstudies.org/transnational-islamist-populism-between-pakistan-and-turkey-the-case-of-dirilis-ertugrul/
23. Ahmed and Basit, Turkey’s Relationship, op. cit., p. 119.
24. See in detail, Sinem Adar and Halil Ibrahim Yenigün, ‘A Muslim Counter-Hegemony? Turkey’s Soft Power Strategies and Islam-ophobia’, Jadaliyya, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/38646
25. Ibid.; Ahmed and Basit, Turkey’s Relationship, op. cit., pp. 121.
26. S. Al-Sarhan, Erdogan and the Last Quest for the Greenmantle, 2019. https://icsr.info/2019/05/23/erdogan-and-the-last-quest-for-the-greenmantle/
27. Anas, A Post-Cold War
Era Context, op. cit., p. 63. For Imran Khan’s
Islamist populism, see in detail, Ihsan Yilmaz and Raja M. Ali Saleem, ‘A
Quest for Identity: The Case of Religious Populism in Pakistan’, Populism
& Politics. https://www.populism
studies.org/a-quest-for-identity-the-case-of-religious-populism-in-pakistan/; Ihsan Yilmaz and Kainat Shakil, ‘Imran Khan: From Cricket Batsman to Populist Captain Tabdeli of Pakistan’, European Center
for Populism Studies. https://populismstudies.org/imran-khan-from-cricket-batsman-to-populist-captain-tabdeli-of-pakistan/;
and Ihsan Yilmaz and Kainat Shakil, ‘Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf: Pakistan’s
Iconic Populist Movement’.
https://populismstudies.org/pakistan-tehreek-e-insaf-pakistans-iconic-populist-movement/
28.
Ihsan Yilmaz, ‘Hagia Sophia and Turkish Anxiety to Lead the Muslim World’,
Berkley Forum, 27 July 2020.
https://berkleycenter.
georgetown.edu/responses/hagia-sophia-and-turkish-anxiety-to-lead-the-muslim-world
29. Rahat Shah, ‘Explaining Pakistan-Turkish Relations: Islamism and Naya Pakistan’, Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 2022. DOI: 10.1080/25765949.2022.2057718, p. 1-2.
30. Ibid., p. 2.
31. Senem Ēevik, ‘Turkish Historical Television Series: Public Broadcasting of Neo-Ottoman Illusions’, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 19(2), 2019, pp. 227-242.
32. Ihsan Yilmaz, Creating the Desired Citizens: State, Islam and Ideology in Turkey. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2021; Ihsan Yilmaz and Galib Bashirov, ‘The AKP after 15 Years: Emergence of Erdoganism in Turkey’, Third World Quarterly 39(9), March 2018, pp. 1,812-1,830.
33. Shah, Explaining Pakistan-Turkish Relations, op. cit., p. 2.
34. ‘PM Imran Khan Talks About “Dirilis Ertugrul”,’ October 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybe J67nQj40,
35. Yilmaz and Shakil, Transnational Islamist Populism, op. cit.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.