AT PENPOINT
The visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Pakistan was not just friendly and fraternal, but it represented yet another meeting between the heirs of two of the three non-Arab Muslim empires, all under Turks, which took over the leadership of the Muslim world in the 15th and 16th centuries. The relationship of the Turkish Republic to the Ottoman Caliphate, as that of Pakistan to the Mughal Empire, is that of a white dwarf to a star. Stars (including our own sun) consist of hydrogen fusing into helium, which gives the immense energy they produce. When all the hydrogen is consumed, the helium begins to fuse, but ultimately it too is consumed, and what is left is the stellar core. Turkey and Pakistan are the white dwarves left of the Ottoman Empire and Pakistan of the Mughal after their helium was fused.
Classically, Ajam meant Persia, but all non-Arabs came to be called Ajamis, and all lands outside Arabia were considered Ajam. Turks were Ajamis par excellence, and set up three empires in Ajami lands, though it was only one that continued a large number of Turks. The Anatolian Peninsula had fallen under the dominion of the Seljuq Turks about 1000 years ago, and they encouraged immigration from the Turkish heartland, what are now the Central Asian Republics.
Similarly, the Mughal Empire was set up on top of the Delhi Sultanate, which might be said to have begun with the Mamuluks, even though the earlier Mahmud of Ghazna was ethnically a Turk, who played such an important role in the promotion of Muslim rule in the Subcontinent which culminated in the Mughal Empire.
The Mughals never acknowledged the Ottoman Caliphate. The earlier episodes, where the Sultans of Delhi obtained an appointment from the Cliph, were from the Caliph in Cairo, where the Caliphate had been re-established in 1261 after the 1258 fall of Baghdad to the Mongols. But by the time the Ottomans took the Caliphate in 1517, Babar was on the verge of establishing the Mughal Empire, by taking the Delhi Sultanate from the Lodhis, in 1526.
However, the Mughals never pressed the claim to the Caliphate for themselves. When the Mughal dynasty came to an end in 1857, the Muslims of the Subcontinent began reciting the titles of the Ottoman Sultan in the Friday and Eid sermons.
That was the reason why Indian Muslims mounted a medical mission to Turkey during the 1911-1912 Balkan War, and why the Khilfat Movement was launched when Istanbul was occupied by the British, and not only the Sultanate, but the Caliphate was to be abolished. The Muslims of India were moved to agitate on this issue because they needed a Caliph to validate their prayer. Incidentally, that is the reason why Turks have special regard for Pakistanis, considering them the heirs of those who sent the medical mission.
The bond between Turkiye and Pakistan was thus based on experiences before the latter even came into existence. The goodwill between the two countries is not based on Pakistan being a Turk country, nor on the basis of being ajami countries, but on the basis of being Muslim. Both are members of the OIC, where they tacitly accept Saudi leadership, but have not raised the Ajam-Arab dichotomy, while it is clear that they are among the leading Muslim powers of the world. Only Egypt in the Arab world compares, while Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia also do in the South-Est Asian region.
The CENTO phase of their relationship started in 1955, and lasted until 1979, when CENTO was dissolved immediately after the Iranian Revolution. Iraq left CENTO as early as 1958. Iran was the third Turkic Empire of the period, when the Safawis and then the Qajars proved to be persistent foes of the Ottomans. The Safawis clashed with the Mughals over their borders, in the areas that are now Afghanistan. Indeed, the creation of Afghanistan was not just a reflection of the will of Ahmad Shah Abdali, but also of the decline of the two Empires.
Is it reductionism for the two states to work on such things as increasing bilateral trade? It is certainly important for them, as well as the people involved, whether producers, traders or consumers, but will it satisfy the wish of both peoples for the two states to be part of a single organic whole? That wish is driven by a desire to see the end of their present subordination.
Similarly, the meeting takes place at a time when both countries, despite the collapse of CENTO, remain allied to the USA. These alliances differ, Turkey’s being closer, as it is a member of NATO, while Pakistan has been designated a major non-NATO ally. However, this closeness seems not to have earned all that much US goodwill. The USA supports neither Turkey over the Northern Cyprus issue nor Pakistan over the Kashmir issue.
Though Erdogan is portrayed by some as a paladin of Islam, he not only remains in NATO, but continues to recognize Israel. True, he did not recognize it, but he has been in office, as PM since 2003, and then as executive President since 2014. He can hardly complain that he hasn’t had the time. Shehbaz’s fulsome praise of Erdogan’s services to the Palestinian cause show the direction in which he would like to go.
It is worth noting that Turkish intelligence is supposed to be backing the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militants, whose head Ahmad Al-Sharaa has become President of Syria. It is thus through Erdogan that the USA is supposed to be controlling Ash-Sharaa, who is being persuaded to pursue a more moderate course of action.
US President Donald Trump has chosen to receive Indian PM Narendra Modi, who represents an India that needs to be courted as a regional counterweight against China.Pakistan and Turkey are both inclined to China, Pakistan perhaps more so, through the Belt and Road Initiative. Turkey would like the BRI to make it more attractive to the European Union, which it wishes to join. It is perhaps a coincidence that the most virulently pro-Israel US President in recent years should be meeting the Indian PM belonging to the party that is friendliest to Israel just after the most cataclysmic Israeli violence against Palestinians since 1967.,
It is also worth noting that he is giving him the sort of arms that will either force an arms race in the Subcontinent or force Pakistan to accept Indian hegemony. The F35 is a stealth fighter which the USA plans to replace the F16. Pakistan is replacing its F7 fleet with F17s. That involves replacing one Chinese plane with another. Will Pakistan opt to replace the F16 with a Chinese plane, so new that it has been variously designated the J36, J37 or J50? Egypt has already opted to replace its F16s with Chinese J10s. a plane which the PAF is also taking up.
Erdogan has long been accused of pursuing a ‘neo-Ottoman’ foreign policy. However, the interest in Pakistan is best described as ‘post-Ottoman’, for after the contacts between the Ottoman Sulaiman I and the Mughal Jehngir, relations did not really develop until Sultan Abdul Hamid II took an interest in those British Indian subjects who accepted his Caliphate. If Erdogan takes an interest in Pakistan, that might be the influence at work.
Within the framework of nation-states, Pakistan and Turkey have no great links in common, but they probably have more than India and Israel. However, it is only when religion is included within that framework, that linkages emerge. While Turks and Pakistanis share a common religion, both Israel and India have subject populations of that religion, Palestinians and Kashmiris respectively.
Is it reductionism for the two states to work on such things as increasing bilateral trade? It is certainly important for them, as well as the people involved, whether producers, traders or consumers, but will it satisfy the wish of both peoples for the two states to be part of a single organic whole? That wish is driven by a desire to see the end of their present subordination.
