After India cancelled a shipbuilding order, Turkey halts its arms exports

India’s relations with Turkey may take a new turn after reports emerged that the Turkish government has imposed a moratorium on the export of arms and defense equipment to India. This was made clear during a recent appearance by a senior government official before the Turkish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. The decision came several months after the Indian Navy cancelled a major shipbuilding contract it had previously signed with a Turkish shipyard.

According to the minutes of a committee meeting seen by Nordic Monitor, defence procurement official Mustafa Murat Seker confirmed the Turkish government’s ban on arms exports to India. Seker told MPs that the government had not recently approved any sale of defence products if the customer was based in India.

“India is one of the top five arms importers in the world, a huge market with an import volume of nearly $100 billion. However, due to our political situation and our friendship with Pakistan, our foreign ministry is not positive about the export of arms to India and does not issue any permits to our companies in this regard,” Seker said.

The SSB, the Foreign Ministry and the military must approve any sale of Turkish defence equipment abroad. Relations between India and Turkey have deteriorated in recent times. Turkish foreign policy supports Pakistan in its dispute with India, particularly in the Kashmir region. In retaliation, India has also improved its relations with countries that have disputes with Turkey, including Armenia, Cyprus and Greece.

In April, India terminated a lucrative shipbuilding consultancy contract with Turkey’s Anadolu Shipyard, part of the TAIS consortium. The $2 billion deal included the construction of five fleet support ships (FSS) for the Indian Navy at India’s Hindustan Shipyard with technological and engineering support from Anadolu. India instead opted to have the ships built locally without Turkish involvement.

India said the termination of the contract was part of the government’s current policy to increase local shipbuilding capacity. The underlying reason for this was probably India’s earlier expressed unease over Turkey’s relations with its arch-rival Pakistan.