Air-Force [OpEd] How the Turkish Air Force Should Rebuild Its Airlift Fleet (2026-2040)

[Yasar_TR]

Your last statement on putting Arabs and south asians down is funny because. Its easy to be secular when there is no significant minority present.Turkey is 95% Muslim you are not even close to be diverse as south asia.South asian countries meanwhile are a melting pot of religions and languages. Dont be so egoistical to think you guys are much "Evolved" than others.

This is the type of response you would get from people who have a chip on their shoulder. It is not becoming of you.
Where in @TR_123456 ’s post there is any notion of putting anybody down, or even an insinuation that Turks are more evolved than any other nation?
It is a common mistake most westerners and non Turks make, whereby they see us as Middle Easterner or similar to Arabs. We are not the same. Their values and ours are very different.
You don’t need diversity in religion alone to break up or merge nations in to one. Turkiye has it’s own diversity in the form of Sunnis and Shias (~15%) as well as Kurds (~15-20%), Turks (~70%) and Arabs (8-9%).
(Also at least on paper, 99% of Turkiye is Muslim with various sects and orders)
There are many diverse and mixed people living in Turkiye. There are more Bosnians in Turkiye than in Bosnia. There are Albanians, Muslim Greeks and Armenians in addition to Arabs and Kurds . As it is written in our constitution everyone who is bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship is a Turk.

Then, more educated and informed the nation becomes the more the above law is understood and accepted. General literacy is over 97.5%. But as you would know literacy doesn’t mean educated/civilised. There are many university graduates that don’t fall in to latter either.

 

[Nilgiri]

You need to take a look at the history between the two people(not the countries),during our war of independence Indian Muslims(now Pakistan) helped us with gold weapons and volunteers.
Mothers sent their sons to fight for us,thats where it started.
We do not forget such things so we helped them back throughout history.
There is no treaty needed when two peoples no matter what stand by each other.

@Nilgiri ,you are better with explaining things.

It seems to have all started from some pie in the sky thing with C-17 being produced in India downstream. Way too early to count those chickens before they hatch.... eggs not even laid yet on it. If US restarts main facility, I doubt Indian order of like 10 - 20 more is going to be enough to shift something to India anyway.

As for the history, its complicated. Much water has flowed under the bridge in that "Indian Muslim" means something pretty different now doesn't it?

Jinnah (founder-lawyer of Pakistan) was deadset against the khilafat movement (doing these donations and organising political support to late Ottoman empire i.e the caliph) at the time.

He despised the pan-islamists and even most islamists by principle who were within the fold of muslim league (which was still divided into factions regd some longer term nationstate vs unity inside India).

The potency of muslim league was mostly found in Bengal actually at the time....compared to punjab/sindh and what is known as Pakistan today....and then the complicated intervening story of why/how Bengali part of Pakistan would separate too from project gone way wrong.

Similar reasons Ataturk despised both too (and would end the Khilafat movement from Turkish side ~ 1920 I think).

This was part of reason Jinnah left the congress party in 1920....in that if they (Gandhi et al) are going to make compromises with islamists (for political expediency to put pressure against British whereve possible), well outside the national bounds.... then he is also better off working in compromise fashion with muslim league long term.

This is how his own views would change on number of things (in order to get Pakistan whatever the cost and compromise with other types of muslim leaguers), whether he was secular at all deep down ( a debate that continues) and then the other ML factions essentially taking over the whole project after Jinnah died anyway (i.e he ended up being something of a flash in the pan compared to what the heavyset ideology was in rest of ML main people and then the militarism/dictatorships that swooped in inevitably).

So the lineage from khilafat movement donations ----> Pakistan (even the original 1.0 version pre-Ayub) is not solid.

 

[Nilgiri]

As per @TR_123456 has mentioned, during Turkish independence war (1919-1923), Indian Muslims sent over 1.5 million pounds of gold and manpower to help fight against British led coalition. This fight also helped spark the independence fire among British occupied lands. Hence Gandhi’s affection for Mustafa Kemal’s military prowess. (But not his Secular views).

It was driven much more by Gandhi seeing a political expediency with various muslim league factions inside India at time (post ww1 regd their views/desires on ottoman sultan i.e caliph to be kept going rather than what came about in treaty of sevres)....rather than much to do on anything with Ataturk (who decidedly was anti-Ottoman empire at this point himself, given what it had failed on....and also why Ataturk played his part in ending Khilafat movement promptly and turned renewed focus on Turkish nationalism for the republic foundations).

This was calculated to bring additional pressure upon the British.....Gandhi and secular factions inside the INC felt that was the main priority compared to the compromises made with hardset non-secularists that are islamists/pan-islamists in doing this (and the damage this would do in fanning what it did with similar non-secularists in Hindu side).

Jinnah (founder of Pakistan later) predicted all of this fairly accurately as he was at this point in time ideologically principled on secularism at least outwardly. i.e DONT mix religion into political ideologies at all....especially pertaining to things outside borders.

Gandhi didnt listen and Jinnah would leave INC fairly quickly after this divide. Course of what would become the Pakistan movement within the Muslim League is then a long detailed and complicated story.

But both Britain and Islam existed outside India's borders, so its lot easier said than done too.

 

[Nilgiri]

This alone shows how much an average turk doesnt know about the subcontinent. Indian muslim doesnt mean its pakistani. Pakistan has only roughly 36% of muslim population of south asia. India has 31% and Bangladesh has 23%.lets ignore all of them right? Your argument is ridiculous by all logic. Many nationalist indian leaders like Gandhi supported the ottomans even though it never made any difference for indian independence. Let me get one thing straight. Your alliance has always been about religion and mutual benefits. I dont have any problem with that. Many countries around the world have relationship like this. But onething i dont understand is why some turks always deny this.

Issue is how the vanguard assertions form in geopolitics to begin with.

There is no good reason to get lost in weeds with Turks on this matter....when Indian democratic, secular and repulican/institutionalism credentials meant very little to the US in cold war....in the level it armed/backed Pakistan regime (even over things like the Blood Telegram).

Several orders of magnitude and cogent action US did far more than Turkiye today in this current geopolitical environment....putting aside China (given CCP uniparty is not natural peer ideology to India like US/West are in their republics).

India moved onto better relationship with the US post cold war....and now sees new iteration with Trump transactionalism and where that comes from in deeper US deep state too.

With rise of BJP in India and AKP in Turkiye, certain pegs fit neater in certain holes in perceptions/summaries and lot of nuance and context gets lost in translation/memory for many.....and I dont really blame them given abscondings/erosions away from the frameworks/ethics that are readily seen (wholly or selectively given human nature).

i.e its hard work to keep a preferable dynamic like with Ecevit quoting the Gita before he intervened in north Cyprus...and contrast of that with the now (with regds to the secular democratic republic system of both).... and signals maybe again in future things change again in the relationship. Nothing is set into stone forever.

....but the precedent is already set in cold war with behemoth like the US to begin with....and (forget about Pakistan)....Nixon even valuing relationship with CCP totalitarians much more than India republic democrats.

You tell me what is the major takeaway from that? In case of Pakistan, large part of it is letting our 30% investment ratio play out (on GDP etc) another 10 years compared to their 10%.

Discussing gym exercise theory (i.e ideology and enmeshing ideologies together for some attempted win-win) takes second place in world compared to the actual bulking up. Later actually provides the leverage and wherewithall....and makes whatever opponents (transient or longer term) do much more less relevant automatically.