The recent opinion essay in the UK-based Milli Chronicle titled “Soft Power or Soft Pressure? How Turkey is Weaponizing Narratives Against India” by strategic affairs expert Divya Malhotra offers a sharp and largely persuasive reading of Ankara’s evolving foreign-policy playbook.

By unpacking how Turkish leaders repeatedly foreground Kashmir on global platforms, Malhotra convincingly situates Turkey’s rhetoric within the broader grammar of narrative warfare and soft power.

Yet, while her diagnosis of the strategy is sound, the attribution of intent warrants a more careful distinction—between the Turkish state under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkey as a society with its own plural histories, solidarities, and sentiments toward India.

Such a distinction matters, not merely as an academic caveat, but because conflating state-driven ideological agendas with popular will risks misunderstanding both the source of the problem and the pathways toward resolution.

Erdoğan’s Ideology and the State’s Narrative Turn

There is little doubt that Turkey’s current posture on Kashmir aligns closely with Erdoğan’s political worldview. Since consolidating power in the last decade, Erdoğan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have increasingly fused foreign policy with Islamist symbolism and neo-Ottoman ambition.

Speaking at forums such as the United Nations General Assembly and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Turkish leaders have sought to position Ankara as a moral voice for Muslim causes—from Palestine to Kashmir—often privileging emotive appeal over geopolitical nuance.

Malhotra is........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)