The Evolution of Turkey’s ‘South Asia Policy’: Continuities and Ruptures in Outlook, Roles, Actors and Constraints

Date01 April 2022
AuthorÖmer Aslan
DOI10.1177/23477970221076754
Published date01 April 2022
Subject MatterResearch Articles
Research Article
The Evolution of Turkey’s
‘South Asia Policy’:
Continuities and
Ruptures in Outlook,
Roles, Actors and
Constraints
Ömer Aslan1
Abstract
Turkey’s South Asia policy remains an underexplored area of research in Turkish
foreign policy literature despite a rich history of Turkish activism in the region.
While bringing to surface Turkey’s perception of South Asia, this article utilises
insights from foreign policy analysis literature to make sense of international
and domestic drivers behind Turkey’s South Asia policies during and after the
Cold War. Using primary resources drawn from Turkish, American, Indian and
Australian archives, memoirs by retired Turkish generals and diplomats, and
interviews the author conducted with retired Turkish diplomats serving previously
as ambassadors to New Delhi and Islamabad, the article argues that Turkey has
felt most motivated to be involved in the region when encouraged by and had
the ability to coordinate its policies with its western partners. I highlight Turkey’s
mediation missions in inter- and intra-state disputes in the region, attempts to
shift its South Asia policy and discuss Turkey’s approach to various hot conflicts
within and between states in the region. I finally provide the place of South
Asia in Turkey’s recent ‘Asia Anew Initiative’ and seek to explain an actor-based
evolution of Turkey’s South Asia policy under the AKP governments over the last
two decades.
Keywords
Turkey, South Asia, India, Afghanistan, Asia Anew, Pakistan
Journal of Asian Security
and International Affairs
9(1) 122–149, 2022
© The Author(s) 2022
Reprints and permissions:
in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india
DOI: 10.1177/23477970221076754
journals.sagepub.com/home/aia
1 Department of International Relations, Faculty of Political Sciences, Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt
University, Ankara, Turkey.
Corresponding author:
Ömer Aslan, Department of International Relations, Faculty of Political Sciences, Ankara Yıldırım
Beyazıt University, Ankara, 06760 Turkey.
E-mail: oaslan@ybu.edu.tr
Aslan 123
Introduction
The AKP government in Turkey announced the ‘Asia Anew’ policy in late 2019
to advance its diplomatic, political and economic footprint in Asia in the coming
years. Yet, a ‘return’ to Asia theme—as implicit in this policy—is not appropriate
for Turkey’s relations with South Asia. South Asia has historically occupied an
important, but overlooked place in modern Turkish foreign policy. Active political
and military engagement in Afghanistan was perhaps the only foreign policy
position the new Republic gladly inherited from the Ottomans. In Afghanistan,
Turkey became one of the major political actors in the modern state-building
process under Aman Allah Khan in the 1920s (Ahmed, 2017). In fact, the first
time Turkey served as a political model for other nations to draw inspiration from
was not 2000s and Middle East, but the 1920s and Afghanistan. Additionally,
Turkey has been involved in mediation activities in conflicts in South Asia from
Pashtunistan issue between Afghanistan and Pakistan and Kashmir dispute
between India and Pakistan.
However, South Asia’s weight in Turkish foreign policy has not been matched
by equal scholarly attention. In otherwise, very concise appraisals of Turkish
foreign policy, several authors limited Turkey’s South Asia relations to the
‘Saadabad Pact’ signed in 1937 between Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq or
Turkey becoming a member of the Baghdad Pact in 1955 (Balcı, 2017; Hale,
2013; Mufti, 2009). Although it is true that once Turkey joined the western
alliance early in the Cold War its ties to Asia became weaker (Anas, 2020, p. 432),
this is no reason to overlook Turkey’s political engagements in South Asia during
and after the Cold War. This research addresses several questions to remedy this
gap in the literature: How has Turkey viewed and understood ‘South Asia’ in the
first place? Which dynamics and motivations shaped Turkey’s South Asia
policies? How have shifts in domestic actors involved in foreign policy making
process over the years influenced Turkey’s South Asia relations? What are the
continuities and ruptures in Turkey’s engagement with the region? How can we
explain when and why Turkey engages the region?
This is an idiographic case study where ‘the aim is to describe, explain, interpret,
and/or understand a single case as an end in itself rather than as a vehicle for
developing broader theoretical generalizations’ (Levy, 2008, p. 4). It seeks to explain
Turkey’s involvement in South Asia across a comparative historical time frame
running from early Cold War to this day. In addition to secondary sources, this
article relies on data collected from primary sources drawn from Turkish, American,
Indian and Australian archives, memoirs by retired generals and ambassadors, and
interviews the author conducted with retired Turkish diplomats serving in New
Delhi and Islamabad. This article makes several arguments. First, Turkey has felt
most motivated to get involved in the region when encouraged by the United States
and had the ability to coordinate its policies with Washington. Except a brief hiatus
in 1978–1979, Turkey never sought ‘strategic autonomy’ from the west in its
involvement in South Asia. Second, notwithstanding the close ties established
between Turkey and India before partition and though geographically not distant,
the degree of foreignness between Turkey and South Asia has been considerable in

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT