Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s gratuitous suggestion of “multilateral dialogue” to resolve the Kashmir issue is exceedingly strange, coming as it does from the leader of a country that invaded Cyprus 40 years ago, creating in the island country a division of territory and people, and a problem that exists till date. Then, there is Turkey’s other problem, with the Kurd secessionists. President Erdogan says Turkey’s fight is not with the Kurdish people, but with terrorist groups like the PKK, but he seems conveniently to forget that New Delhi’s biggest problem in Kashmir is also with terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Hizbul Mujahideen, whose leadership is based in Pakistan, or Pakistan-controlled territory. In March, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern at the killings, displacement of civilians and other human rights violations in the Kurdish south-east of Turkey between July 2015 and December 2016. Nearly 2,000 people, including women and children, and soldiers, were killed in this time during security operations, according to the report, which also says anywhere between 3.5 million to 5 million people have been displaced. Not surprisingly, Turkey has rejected this report as “biased”.
President Erdogan, who recently won a referendum to give himself more powers, has purged the army and government of about 1,00,000 dissidents following the July 2016 attempted coup. He has jailed over 150 journalists, shut down a similar number of media outlets and thrown behind bars leaders and parliamentarians of the opposition party. Last week, the Turkish Parliament rubber-stamped the extension by another three months of the state of emergency imposed after last year’s failed coup. In fact, so low is his international stock right now that India must be one of the few countries in the world to welcome him. The Turkish president mentions his lengthy discussions with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, indicating that the latter was willing to arrive at a settlement of the Kashmir question “once and for all”. He may also like to find out from the Pakistan military their thoughts on the matter, as well as on the terror groups that exist and thrive in that country, and what Pakistan has done to punish the perpetrators of the attack in Mumbai and other terror strikes in India. It is difficult to believe Erdogan is so naïve as to ignore Pakistan’s record on proliferation and suggest that India and Pakistan have an equal claim to NSG membership.
