Qatar funds Turkish incursion into India to support extremist groups

Nora Bandari

Wherever there are terrorist groups, the Qatari and Turkish allies are found, as Turkey supports extremist terrorist groups from the Arab region to Asia, funded by the Qatari regime, which works to supply the necessary funds to enable Turkey to spread their terrorist plans throughout the world.

Turkey’s efforts to support extremism in India

In this context, the Indian newspaper Hindustan Times published reported on August 1 that Turkey is supporting extremist organizations in India, noting evidence confirming that Doha has been one of the means for Turkish interference on the Indian subcontinent, making Ankara second after Pakistan in terms of supporting militants in India.

The Indian newspaper pointed out that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has provided support and funding to extremist organizations in the southwestern state of Kerala over the past months, as well as the disputed Kashmir region bordering Pakistan. The report noted that Erdogan seeks to portray himself as a protector of Muslims around the world, demanding that others follow him, and he therefore makes great efforts to push Muslims in India towards extremism and to recruit militants in order to achieve his plan to expand Turkey’s influence in South Asia.

Evidence of involvement

One indication of Qatari support to facilitate the Ankara mission in India is that some members of an extremist organization in Kerala traveled earlier to Qatar to meet Turks in search of funding for their organization, according to the Hindustan Times, citing security sources in India, who also reported that Indian intelligence has information about financial support for India’s protests last year with the hope that they would continue.

The Qatari-Turkish cooperation to support terrorism has not been confined to the Asian country. Swedish website Nordic Monitor revealed on July 31 that it had obtained judicial documents related to the killing of Turkish Brigadier General Sameh Terzi by Turkish intelligence for discovering the size of Qatari support for extremists in Syria via Turkey.

Qatari support for terrorism

Turkey resorted to Doha to support extremist organizations in India due to the fact that Qatar has a long history of supporting terrorist groups in the Asian country, which was revealed by the Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA) on August 15, 2017, which indicated that the bulk of the “charity” money channeled from Qatar to the Malabar region is distributed to agencies with links to terrorist groups. Also, in October 2016, the Indian security forces arrested the terrorist Omar al-Hindi in the city of Kannur in Kerala. Hindi was the head of ISIS in southern India and had received funding from Qatar.

In January 2019, the NIA announced that Indian youth had traveled to Doha and became extremists, and they even made preparations to go to Syria in 2013 to join terrorist groups, especially ISIS. The intelligence agency also revealed that Qatari financial contributions have flowed to extremist organizations in India in recent years, specifically in the state of Kerala, which are transferred through the Ministry of Awqaf in Doha, as well as financial transfers by Qatar Charity and a number of other Qatari funds, according to the Times of India.

New Ottoman scheme

Hisham al-Najjar, a researcher specializing in Islamist movements, told the Reference that this comes in the context of the new Ottoman scheme, which includes not only regions in the Arab and Middle East region, but also in Europe, Asia and the Indian subcontinent, as it is a global project aimed at declaring Erdogan’s caliphate in 2023, through both direct and indirect interference in states, the use of soft and tough power, and placing all Islamist militants and extremist groups under the supervision of Turkish and Qatari intelligence.

Najjar said that Turkey is first testing existing governments by establishing unbalanced relations that are in the interest of Turkey at the expense of the sovereignty of the country and its economic interests, wealth and capabilities. If Ankara is rejected by those countries, which is what happened in India, then Turkey automatically begins implementing its alternative plan of unleashing its agents, terrorists and extremists.

Ankara achieves this by targeting strategic areas in India, with the aim of creating instability and conflicts in the hope of enabling Turkey’s takfirist agents to gain even partial power through which they can enable the Turks and Qataris to extort India and ignite riots, taking advantage of terrorist activity to steal wealth, noted Najjar, adding that Qatar and Turkey are implementing this scheme in nearly every country in the world.