Some insults are really confessions. Ibrahim Karagül, the former editor-in-chief of the government-aligned Yeni Şafak newspaper and a publicist closely aligned with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has described India as “a puppet in Israel’s hands.” He has also urged the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) to remove New Delhi and admit Turkey in its place. The claim is absurd. Yet its absurdity is precisely what makes it useful: it exposes a political imagination in Ankara that sees sovereign countries not as partners, but as pieces to be rearranged around Turkey’s ambitions.
Accuracy matters. Karagül’s demand is not an adopted Turkish government proposal, and no SCO process to expel India exists. But he is not a random internet provocateur. In tightly managed political ecosystems, loyal commentators often enlarge the boundaries of what the state may later find useful to say. His argument couples the attack on India with calls for a return to “imperial consciousness,” a “Makkah Alliance” led by Turkey, and an independent geopolitical pole stretching across Africa and Asia. India should neither reward the slur with theatrical outrage nor ignore the strategic worldview behind it.
India is the opposite of a proxy
India’s record is the simplest rebuttal. New Delhi belongs to the SCO and BRICS, works with the Quad, sustains important relations with Russia and the United States, and has expanded partnerships across Europe, the Gulf, and the Indo-Pacific. No outside capital scripts this network. It is the practice of strategic autonomy: cooperation without subordination and alignment by issue rather than obedience by bloc. India can work with Washington on maritime security, Moscow on defence, Riyadh on energy, and Israel on innovation while reserving the right to disagree with every one of them.
The relationship between India and Israel is a particularly poor target for the puppet slur. Since full diplomatic relations were established in 1992, the partnership has survived changes of government and shifts in the world order because it delivers practical value. It spans agriculture and water, artificial intelligence, health, defence, homeland security, and counterterrorism. The joint statement issued during the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Israel in February 2026 placed technological innovation and entrepreneurship at the centre of a deeper strategic partnership. That is a compact between capable equals, not a chain of command.
Nor has friendship with Israel prevented India from building deep ties with Arab states or supporting legitimate Palestinian aspirations. That coexistence is not hypocrisy; it is sovereignty. Karagül’s formulation is designed to do two political jobs at once: deny India its agency and turn Israel into a universal explanation for choices that Ankara dislikes. The first is condescending. The second is a familiar conspiratorial reflex. Neither deserves to be mistaken for analysis.
India’s SCO seat is not Ankara’s vacancy
The institutional reality is equally unforgiving. India has been a full SCO member since 2017. Turkey has been a dialogue partner since 2012. At the 1 September 2026 summit in Bishkek, Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated as the leader of a member state; Turkey took part in the wider “SCO Plus” format as a dialogue partner. Even Ankara’s own foreign ministry records this distinction. These statuses are neither equal nor interchangeable, and membership is not a chair that a latecomer may seize by insulting the person already seated in it.
The SCO formally invokes sovereign equality, mutual trust, consultation, non-alignment, and a refusal to target third countries. A campaign to eject a member because it maintains an independent bilateral partnership would violate that spirit. More importantly, India is indispensable to any organisation claiming Eurasian relevance: it brings demographic and economic weight, an Indian Ocean horizon, technological capacity, a major voice in the Global South and hard-won experience against terrorism. An SCO that diminished India to satisfy Ankara and Islamabad would not acquire strategic depth. It would advertise institutional capture.
The Makkah gambit
Karagül places his proposal inside a grander architecture. The newly announced Mecca Joint Defence Agreement links Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, and he treats that triangle as the nucleus of a much larger “Makkah Alliance.” Turkish officials insist the pact is not directed at any country. India should record that assurance and test conduct against it. A defence arrangement that includes Pakistan cannot be assessed in New Delhi as though Islamabad’s revisionist objectives and record of terrorism across borders do not exist.
Turkey’s conduct during the May 2025 confrontation between India and Pakistan had already shown where Ankara’s loyalties lay. Erdoğan publicly backed Pakistan, while his foreign ministry condemned India’s strikes after the Pahalgam massacre. Ankara did not act as a neutral stakeholder sensitive to India’s security concerns; it aligned with Islamabad as New Delhi responded to terrorism originating across the border. For Indians, that record matters more than later assurances of neutrality.
The current project extends that choice. Erdoğan’s ideological circle is trying to turn its alignment centred on Pakistan into a durable Islamist power bloc. It uses military cooperation, religious language, and Ankara’s asserted leadership to demand political conformity. The danger is not Islam or cooperation among states with Muslim majorities; it is Islamism, the weaponisation of religious identity for strategic expansion. India and Israel become targets because both reject Ankara’s veto. The “Makkah Alliance” is political branding for an ambition with direct implications for Indian security.
At the same time, New Delhi should reject Ankara’s conceit that Saudi Arabia, or the wider Muslim world, will march under Turkish direction. Riyadh pursues its own interests and has invested heavily in its partnership with India. So have the UAE and other Arab capitals. India should deepen those ties, not help Ankara fuse diverse states into a bloc hostile to India. No government owns the political meaning of Makkah; invoking it to market a project centred on Turkey is state ambition wrapped in civilisational vocabulary.
Ankara’s contradiction is plain. Turkey seeks NATO’s security umbrella, European trade, working relations with Russia, economic access to China, Gulf influence, a larger SCO role, and deference as a leader of the Muslim world. Hedging is legitimate; India also practises flexible alignment. But India generally adds partnerships without demanding that another sovereign member be erased. Multipolarity is built by partners. Neo-Ottomanism imagines a hierarchy with Ankara at the centre.
That is why “imperial consciousness” is such poor diplomatic advertising. Empires often look glorious from the former capital and rather less attractive from former provinces. Influence in the twenty-first century is earned through economic scale, technological relevance, predictable policy, and trust. Historical costume cannot substitute for any of them.
India’s answer: strategic reciprocity
New Delhi need not trade insults with a columnist. It should answer with policy. First, India and Israel should accelerate cooperation in air defence, unmanned systems, cyber resilience, artificial intelligence, water security, and agricultural technology, with more joint development and production in India. A partnership attacked because it is effective should become more effective.
Second, India should insist inside the SCO that membership rules and institutional culture cannot be weaponised by aspirants. The objective is not to block every Turkish engagement but to make clear that denigrating a member carries a diplomatic cost. Third, New Delhi should apply strategic reciprocity to Ankara: maintain diplomatic and commercial channels, but scrutinise Turkish participation in sensitive infrastructure, dual-use technology, and defence related supply chains in proportion to Turkey’s military embrace of Pakistan. Strategic trust is earned, not owed.
Fourth, India should deepen its Mediterranean and Gulf partnerships with Israel, Greece, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE on their own merits, without forcing them into a crude opposing bloc. India’s advantage is the ability to build overlapping networks around concrete interests. Ankara’s preferred answer is an ideological camp with Turkey as its claimed centre. New Delhi should not imitate that weakness.
A mature Indian position must also avoid the mirrored error of treating the Turkish people as the Erdoğan system. India’s quarrel is with Ankara’s conduct, its choices centred on Pakistan and the imperial ideology used to rationalise them, rather than with Turkish citizens or culture. That distinction is both principled and strategically useful: it denies government propagandists the grievance they need to turn policy criticism into a civilisational feud.
Karagül imagines a Turkey powerful enough to evict India and entitled to replace it. The fantasy reverses reality. A state seeking a larger role must persuade; a confident power does not need to erase a rival. If Ankara wants more influence in Asia, it can contribute to regional stability, respect existing members, and stop allowing Islamabad to define its South Asia policy.
India’s friendship with Israel will be decided in New Delhi and Jerusalem, not in Ankara. It rests on capability, reciprocity, innovation, and a shared refusal to normalise terrorism. India is no one’s puppet. It is a sovereign civilisational state choosing an effective partner. Ankara’s refusal to accept that is not a diagnosis of India. It is the confession of an imperial delusion.