Islamic Diplomacy | Türkiye’s pivot, Pakistan’s mediation leave India on sidelines

The Iran war has unexpectedly revived Islamic diplomacy, with Pakistan, Egypt, and Türkiye driving new peace initiatives across regions

A silver lining for ‘Islamic diplomacy’ from the ongoing war against Iran is that new regional equations are emerging, which may be more enduring than previous attempts to forge such diplomacy.

Even if the peace efforts by Pakistan, Egypt, and Türkiye to end the military strikes against Iran come to nought, the foundations have been laid for peace offensives in multiple regions, which have gone beyond the Gulf.

Türkiye and Qatar are mediating in the conflict in South Asia between Pakistan and Afghanistan, while Cairo is the peace venue in the African civil war in the Sudan between two equally strong militias, which has been going on for three-years. If reports in the last 72 hours are to be believed, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and its Parliament’s Speaker Mohammad Baqer ‌Qalibaf, owe their lives to a Pakistani request to the United States, which, in turn, directed Israel to spare them so that peace moves now underway can proceed unimpeded.

The last five years have seen several half-baked efforts to launch quadrilateral or trilateral fora among Islamic countries. The heads of state of Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have been meeting since 2022 to create a new Arab quad. But it has not gone beyond creating a high-sounding Higher Committee of the Industrial Partnership for Sustainable Economic Development. The committee has so far agreed on nine industrial projects with an investment value exceeding $2 billion, aiming to enhance the industrial sector’s contribution to the GDP of the four countries.

After several summits at the highest level, these countries resolved to prioritise mutually beneficial economic development, combining the Gulf’s economic clout and the extended Arab world’s market potential. A long period of relative peace in the region made it unnecessary to seek other priorities than growth and prosperity for their peoples. The war in Iran and its spillover have changed that scenario in a matter of weeks.

Cynical, though it may sound, the war is a shot in the arm for this quad, and will, henceforth, include political and strategic co-operation in its agenda. A similar, but larger and more ambitious effort around the same time to develop an Islamic Economic Union modelled on the European Union has been a non-starter. Iran gave it the catchy name of the ‘Ummah Union’, referring to the Arab word for the global community of Muslims. However, Malaysia and Indonesia have had new leaders since the start of these efforts, and Bangladesh went through a revolution and regime change. These have negatively impacted the creation of the Ummah Union. Although a non-starter hitherto, what ought to concern India is that Türkiye is the pivot of this effort, and Ankara has described Islamabad as ‘Türkiye’s western anchor in the Indo-Pacific region.’

Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan unveiled an Asia Anew Initiative in 2019, at the heart of which are populous and resource-rich Islamic countries, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Without any broader Islamic Economic Union, Türkiye may go it alone in the Indo-Pacific. During India’s recent engagement of Malaysia and Indonesia, an elephant in the room has been Türkiye. In the last two years, at least, India figures only negatively in Türkiye’s strategic and economic calculations. India may regret its needlessly macho policy towards Türkiye in recent times, only because Erdoğan is friendly with his successive counterparts in Islamabad.

At the time of writing this, the time frame widely speculated in the United States and international media for a peace meeting on Iran to be convened in Islamabad has passed. But Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi clarified that any such meeting would be an ‘event’. It must be preceded by a ‘process’, which is what is currently taking place — the exchange of peace proposals and counter proposals, the issue of direct talks between the US and Iran or conditions for Israel’s participation in ceasefire negotiations.

Unfortunately, a ban in India on accessing Pakistani websites, including its government sites and media, has deprived India’s strategic community — even its Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) — of understanding Pakistan’s crucial role in this conflict. MEA officials in New Delhi, who ought to know instantly what Pakistan is doing, now get to know when its diplomats in Islamabad send classified telegrams to headquarters or when its embassies in Washington, Cairo, or Ankara send second-hand information on Pakistan’s role in the war which undergoes updates on an hourly basis.

This is a sea-change from the time when India got to know within minutes of Pakistan detonating its nuclear device in 1998. The entire country watched in rapt attention when a note was passed to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the Lok Sabha, and he got up to announce that Pakistan had exploded the bomb. Or when a government fell in Islamabad earlier, and an Indian correspondent covering parliament there was requested to call MEA from a public telephone booth — in pre-mobile days — and say ‘yes’ if the no-confidence motion passed and ‘no’ if the government survived. Indian diplomats in Islamabad could not go to the parliament there and watch the crucial vote. Yet another reason why India’s Pakistan policy needs to change with the changing times.

K P Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.