The Ottoman Shadow of Terror: How Turkey Is Emerging as a Global Jihad Epicentre Targeting India

 

In the aftermath of the recent Red Fort blast, fingers were pointed towards the usual suspect, our western neighbour and global exporter of terror, Pakistan. However, beyond the usual anticipation, the trails were suddenly going back as far as Ankara. Digital forensics and online communication logs cemented Turkey's unexpected hand. This new discovery identified a concerning detail: the two main accused, Dr Umar Mohammed and Dr Muzammil, were guided through a session-based encrypted app by a handler based in Ankara, Turkey. This individual, who oversaw their terror plot, reportedly operated under the alias "Ukasa.

The revelation, regarding the involvement of Turkey, has rekindled an old strategic security concern, one that often resurfaces with Erdoğan poking his nose into India's internal matters. However, this time it was not an IR stunt nor an isolated event; rather, the result of a quieter, more complex ideological pipeline that has been growing for a few decades now, integrating influences from Turkey, Pakistan, and Bangladesh into India's student and activist networks. India was now staring at a phenomenon that agencies have long watched with caution: a slow but deliberate expansion of Turkey's ideological influence among South Asian Muslim youth, especially educated Muslims of India. The Red Fort case didn't only expose a terror plot but an entire ecosystem growing, expanding, and strengthening quietly for decades, right under our noses.

To understand how Turkey reached this point, it is essential to examine its gradual ideological shift over the past decade. In the early 2000s, Turkey was seen as a secular, democratic model for the Muslim world. Under Erdoğan, this vision shifted theatrically. Inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood's transnational model and strengthened by his own political consolidation, Erdoğan began reimagining Turkey as the natural leader of worldwide political Islam. This ideological pivot, combined with Turkey's growing partnership with Pakistan, transformed Ankara into a vocal critic of India's internal affairs, especially after developments like the abrogation of Article 370 and the Citizenship Amendment Act protests.

Erdoğan repeatedly used international forums to speak on Kashmir, echoing the Pakistani script word for word. The Pak-Turk partnership gained military and diplomatic weight, from modernising Pakistan's fleet and training Pakistani officers to supporting Pakistan's position on international platforms. Turkey left no stone unturned and no script unspoken to benefit the Pakistani narrative. Pakistan, in return, amplified Turkish soft power through its media, diplomatic channels and lobbyists. Bangladesh and Azerbaijan added another dimension. Although Dhaka officially attempts to project a pragmatic approach, in reality, it is following Pakistan's footsteps. Specifically, Bangladeshi Islamist groups bolstered under the Yunus regime, namely, the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, have established strong networks with various Turkish organizations. These Bangladeshi entities historically conserved their ties with Pakistan and mushrooming Indian radical groups like the SIMI, PFI, etc, enabling a flow of ideas, narratives, and enlistments that traverse constitutional boundaries.

This Islamist bloc became increasingly evident as Turkey intensified its outreach to Indian Muslim youth. While Pakistan traditionally relied on covert channels and a network of Islamic clergy, Turkey, on the other hand, adopted a more hybrid soft-power approach through scholarships, cultural institutions, youth conferences, and digital outreaches. Turkish scholarships played the most crucial role. Over the past few years, thousands of Indian Muslim students have applied for Turkiye Burslari, the government's flagship scholarship program. Many successful candidates were former members of well-organised Indian Muslim student bodies that operate on university campuses across the country, like the Fraternity Movement.

On the face of it, these scholarships are presented as opportunities for academic advancement, but in reality, they are carefully structured ideological environments where these students attended Turkish language courses, cultural immersion programs, and got high on "global Muslim solidarity". These platforms also provided a close environment to interact regularly with Pakistani and Bangladeshi peers, communicating propaganda, encouraging and consistently seeding them with ideas of radicalism.

Alongside Turkiye Burslari, the Turkiye Diyanet Foundation offered scholarships to train imams and religious scholars aligned with the Turkish theological worldview. The Diyanet scholarship track is especially influential, teaching young students in Turkish interpretations of Islam, blending religious study with political identity, and producing batch after batch of graduates who return home with a strong sense of ideological purpose. Over time, these students become imams, community organisers, influencers who define the course of an entire community.

While these Scholarships are just one part of a broader strategy, the real players are organizations such as TUGVA, the Turkey Youth Foundation, and IHH, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, to name a few. TUGVA positions itself as a youth empowerment body, but as identified by multiple European research groups, it is an ideological arm of Turkey's ruling party. IHH, though officially a charity, has faced international scrutiny for alleged connections to armed groups in Syria. Both organisations regularly host South Asian youth in programs focused on leadership, resistance, and Islamic unity. These gatherings facilitate the creation of symbiotic networks of ideological sympathy for Turkish deep state actors to ploy upon.

"Nordic Monitor previously reported how TUGVA's partner IHH networked with the Indian extremist and militant Islamist organisation the Popular Front of India (PFI) as part of the Turkish government's outreach to Muslim communities in the Southeast Asia region".

 

However, the most significant and least understood organisation in this ecosystem is the International Islamic Federation of Student Organisations (IIFSO), headquartered in Ankara. Unlike the others, this organisation is not well known outside Islamist circles. Established decades ago as a forum for Muslim student groups across the world, has evolved into a platform where groups like the Students Islamic Organisation of India, Bangladesh's Islami Chhatra Shibir, and Pakistan's Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba share space with youth wings from the Arab world, Turkey and Malaysia, all following a similar moorings for a global Islamic order with turkey at its helm.

IIFSO's significance lies in its ability to bring together organisations that would otherwise remain geographically and politically parochialised. For example, Bangladesh's Islami Chhatra Shibir has ideological affinity with Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami networks, facing multiple allegations over the years of serving as a recruiting ground for radical groups like Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh. When IIFSO hosts conferences in Ankara or Istanbul, these groups interact with Indian students, creating transnational common ideological bonds. Although they seem harmless on the surface, the networks they cultivate can later become channels for political and ideological mobilisation.

The challenge this ecosystem presents to Indian agencies is non-traditional. These groups, like the Fraternity Movement, operate legally, participate in campus elections, publish academic literature, and run educational programs. They present themselves as moderate student organisations working for the welfare of Muslim students and projecting an image different from that of their predecessors, such as the Students Islamic Movement of India or the Popular Front of India, both of which faced prohibitions due to overt extremist activity. However, these leaders are articulate, English-speaking, digitally savvy, globally connected, and often directly plugged into Turkey's scholarship programs and youth networks. Unlike SIMI or PFI, they do not threaten violence or challenge the state overtly. Their power lies in narrative shaping.

These narratives increasingly mirror the political messaging emanating from Ankara and Islamabad. Whether in protests, online campaigns, opinion columns, or student movements, themes such as "Muslim victimhood," "Hindutva as global fascism," and "Turkey as the defender of oppressed Muslims" appear repeatedly. These are the same narratives that the Turkish and Pakistani state machinery use against India in international diplomacy.

Bangladesh adds another layer of complexity, although on the outside the Bangladeshi state seems firm against radical groups, inside organisations like Islami Chhatra Shibir maintain underground influence, especially on campuses in Dhaka and Chittagong. Their historical links to Jamaat-e-Islami and operational connections to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh create a porous ideological corridor across the Indo-Bangla region. JMB's operational ability to organise sleeper cells and effect terror attacks inside India is well documented, especially in West Bengal and Assam. When ICS members attend youth conferences in Turkey alongside the league of the Indian Students, the result is a merging of ideological and geographic networks that Indian agencies must monitor carefully.

Perhaps the most overlooked dimension of Turkey's outreach is its engagement with Indian political ecosystems, as these student leaders, with connections, exposure, and backing from Turkey, have entered or are entering politics in India and are gradually making inroads into Indian policymaking. Turkey mastered something that perhaps many successive Indian governments failed to achieve strategically for global ambitions, as influence does not require espionage but only emotional loyalty.

The question, therefore, is not whether Turkey is sending operatives into India. It is whether Turkey is shaping the worldview of young Indian Muslims in ways that could, over time, affect India's internal constitutional integrity. India is witnessing a new form of ideological storm, not what Europe faced with Muslim Brotherhood networks or what Malaysia faced with transnational Salafi preachers. The battleground is no longer the madrasa or the border district. It is the university campus, the scholarship program, the social media feed, and the student hostel.

The network that emerges is hard to diffuse, sophisticated, and complex to counter with traditional security tools. It blends political messaging, religious identity, academic opportunity, and global solidarity into a coherent narrative that appeals to young people searching for purpose and motive. Many of these students may not be radical at the beginning, but at the same time are not immune to radical ideas or propaganda seeding. But idealism is exactly what transnational Islamist movements rely upon.

Turkey has built an ideological ecosystem that now intersects with Pakistan's strategic objectives and Bangladesh's human networks. India, therefore, faces a three-front challenge—one that operates not in jungles or safe houses, but in classrooms, youth conferences, and WhatsApp groups. Whether India chooses to confront this challenge through engagement, counter-narratives, policy intervention, or security measures, it will have to remain one step ahead without fail, every minute and every second.

References:

Bozkurt, A. (2021, December 13). President Erdoğan's family foundation TÜGVA runs jihadist boot camps in Turkey. Nordic Monitor. https://nordicmonitor.com/2021/12/president-erdogans-family-foundation-tugva-run-jihadist-boot-camps-in-turkey/

Bozkurt, A. (2022, March 17). Erdoğan steps up campaign to export Islamist ideology with the help of TDV foundation cash. Nordic Monitor. https://nordicmonitor.com/2022/03/erdogan-steps-up-campaign-to-export-islamist-ideology-via-tdv-foundations-cash/ (Turkiye Diyanet Vakfı, TDV)

Vashistha, A. (2025, November 13). Turkiye denies reports of radicalisation drive against India. Rediff. https://m.rediff.com/news/commentary/2025/nov/13/turkiye-denies-reports-of-radicalisation-drive-against-india/e8c5e9cbdc03af049620ac3fead60038

"An Indian security report claims that Turkey has allocated massive funds to the Turkish intelligence to radicalise Indian Muslims with the help of preachers recruited from surrendered ISIS cadres." Turkey radicalising Indian Muslims with the help of ISIS cadres – Indian reports. EurAsian Times. https://www.eurasiantimes.com/turkey-radicalizing-indian-muslims-with-the-help-of-isis-cadres-indian-reports/ EURASIAN TIMES

"In order to radicalise Indian Muslims and achieve large-scale destabilisation through a 'transfer of know-how', Turkey is alleged to be channelling funding into the activities of former ISIS members in India" Fragkos, E. (2021, January 28). Turkish funding for anti-India extremism (Question E-000549/2021 to the Commission). European Parliament. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2021-000549_EN.html

Firstpost Explainers. (2025, November 4). After Pakistan, has Yunus gifted ‘Greater Bangladesh’ artwork featuring India’s northeast to Turkey? Firstpost. https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/pakistan-muhammad-yunus-gift-greater-bangladesh-artwork-india-northeast-turkey-row-13947854.html