AA Edit | Target Turkey, but Show Maturity

Pakistan’s sponsored terror hit in Pahalgam has been adequately responded to with Indian missile strikes hitting its air defence and airfields to a point that Pakistan initiated the calls for the ceasefire within four days of hostilities erupting. India also drew a line in spelling out its doctrine that its response would be as firm to any aid for a terror act that would be construed as an act of war.

It would seem logical, then for the emotions surrounding the events to die down and make way for normal life. But they haven’t, as evidenced in the call for boycotting Turkey because of its authoritarian leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his unyielding support for Pakistan “in good times and bad.”

Turkey has, however, become more of a public target because it took part in offensive operations against India with drones and personnel to operate them from Pakistan. In military terms, the drones meant nothing as 350 of them were shot down by the Indian integrated air defence system.

In a mature democracy, people would understand how things work in geopolitics. If they feel offended at a people’s support for an enemy, it is up to them to boycott, as they may choose to do with Turkey for tourism, imports and films, etc., as much as they do with Azerbaijan for the same reasons.

But, for a government to put under scrutiny all projects involving Turkish firms would mean abandoning what is commonly thought of as a proportionate response. The boycotts are meant to send a social message rather than a political one as many of them die a natural death with the passage of time, as we saw happen with the Maldives in the past.

There can, however, be no compromise on national security. Things may be reassessed if a Turkish company, running 70 per cent of the ground operations in the Mumbai international airport and operating in nine other Indian airports, can become a security threat in view of the changed circumstances after India-Pakistan hostilities. Some economic distancing may become inevitable because of geopolitical divergence, but boycotts have a limited effect.