Erdogan’s Turkey sole supporter of Pak for removal from Grey List at FATF Paris Plenary

Pakistan has 66 organisations and 7600 individuals listed under UNSC anti-terror and money laundering resolutions passed after 9/11 attacks.

Updated on: Oct 24, 2020, 12:48:26 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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Turkey was the only country out of 39 members of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) which spoke for Pakistan to be removed from the Grey List at the Paris Plenary meeting on Friday.

Pakistan has suddenly discovered it Ottoman lineage in a bid to get Turkey support for a new radical Islamic order away from the existing one led by Saudi Arabia. (Reuters File Photo)

The Pakistan-Turkey growing equation is development of a new found radical Islamic axis seeking to upstage the established order led by Saudi Arabia. Turkey led by Racep Tayyip Erdogan, who is trying to revive the Ottoman empire legacy for his political sustenance, along with Pakistani deep state are sending irregulars to Azerbaijan in the age old conflict with Armenia.

According to diplomats based in Paris and Brussels, all the countries except Turkey were in favour of retaining Pakistan in the Grey List for the lack of compliance with all the deadlines expired. For the record Pakistan addressed only 21 out of 27 action plan items with another review looming in February 2021. The Paris Plenary was held between October 21-23.

While in the meeting of International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG) before the Plenary, Turkey, China and Saudi Arabia spoke for Pakistan to be removed from the Grey List on technical grounds, only Turkey was left to support its new friend Pakistan in the Plenary.

“Turkey has been fomenting trouble everywhere from Iraq, Syria to Libya and Azerbaijan. They, along with Pakistan, with ISI and military experience of organizing terrorism and Islamist insurgencies, are at the sharp edge of violence, instability and unrest in different parts of the world,” said a Middle-East watcher.

Like Pakistan, Turkey is a pariah state at odds with Russia over Syria and Armenia-Azerbaijan, with US for buying Russian weapons, with EU over migrant issues and with India over its uncalled interference in Jammu and Kashmir. Istanbul has hardly any relations with Beijing even though the former being a major trade power. Pakistan depends on Turkey for defence cooperation and for making statement against India on the J & K issue.

While Pakistan’s FATF Grey List case comes up for review in February 2021, all anti-India terrorists groups and mafia dons are based in that country, be it 1993 Mumbai blast accused Dawood Ibrahim, 2008 Mumbai massacre accused Hafiz Saeed and 2016 Pathankot air base attack accused Masood Azhar.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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