Kashmir out of the agenda
Professor Mukhtar Khan, who is an expert in international affairs at Delaware University in the US, expressed his opinion on this. He said in an interview to a YouTube channel that foreign policy had become very important for Turkey after the arrival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The world knows how Turkey used Palestine for its own purposes. Turkey sent relief to Gaza 10 years ago. Because of this, relations with Israel had deteriorated considerably. But now Türkiye’s attitude has changed a lot. Now he is engaged in repairing relations with Israel and Palestine has gone out of his agenda.
So the Kashmir issue was a compulsion
Turkish President Erdogan had preferred the Muslim Brotherhood by breaking ties with Egypt during his tenure. At that time Erdogan wanted to make his citizens more staunch towards Islam so that they could become his vote bank. The Kashmir issue is also somewhat similar. Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan was also promoting the politics of Erdogan. When he contested the elections in the year 2018, he went on a tour of FATA where the fundamentalists were happy to see him. Both Imran and Erdogan had become very popular among Islamic leaders. Both these leaders soon became good friends. Because of that only, Turkey started adopting the issue of Kashmir.
one encounter changed everything
In order to help Imran and Pakistan, Turkey started giving space to those Pakistani priorities in foreign policy which were anti-India. Turkey started using Kashmir for its domestic purposes. But when the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) conference was organized in September 2022, everything changed. Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Erdogan met in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, a new color is being seen. According to Mukhtar Khan, after this, Erdogan said for the first time in the United Nations General Assembly that the Kashmir issue will have to be resolved by India and Pakistan. After this, when there was an earthquake in Turkey, India first came forward to help. The people there understood it and praised India.
Kashmir is no longer important for Türkiye
He believes that the issue of Kashmir has probably now become a very low level matter for Turkey. Perhaps because of this, Turkey has decided to join the G-20. Pakistan may be attacking India for organizing G-20 in Kashmir but it did not try to know who all are coming. Turkey probably would not like Pakistan to be sidelined in the G-20. G-20 is a powerful group. In such a situation, he would not like to be isolated in the organization for a country which is not even a part of it. Pakistan is no longer able to influence other countries. Kashmir was only a part of Turkey’s policy for relations with Pakistan.