The Pakistanization of Turkey?

The Pakistanization of Turkey? Why Tactical Supports of Yesterday Could Be Turkey’s Ideological Crisis Tomorrow

On December 29, just before New Year’s Eve celebrations, three Turkish police officers were killed during a deadly clash with ISIS militants in the city of Yalova. The official narrative framed the event as a successful counterterrorism raid, but the symbolism was hard to miss: a jihadist group infiltrating an Anatolian city close to Istanbul and engaging state forces for hours, just days before New Year’s Eve (Gall, 2025; Associated Press, 2025).

To treat this incident merely as another episode in Turkey’s counterterrorism struggle is to miss the broader ideological risks that are accumulating beneath the surface. As someone observing regional politics and political/social movements, I believe Turkey today is at risk of what I call “Pakistanization” -not in the literal sense of becoming like Pakistan, but in the structural sense of repeating a dangerous pattern Pakistan set in motion during the 1980s.

What Pakistanization Means

In the 1980s, under the military dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan strategically embraced radical Islamist groups, most notably the Afghan Taliban and Arab jihadists like Osama bin Laden. These alliances were politically beneficial. Backed by U.S. and Saudi money, Pakistan positioned itself as a frontline state in the war against communism and projected influence into Afghanistan. (Abbas, 2014)

But what began as strategic engagement with extremists transformed over time into ideological infiltration. The very groups the state supported abroad began reshaping the domestic sphere -culturally, religiously, and politically. Militancy penetrated schools, mosques, courts, and military academies. Over the decades, Pakistan became not just a state that tolerates extremism, but one whose ideological core shifted in the direction of the actors it once “used.” (Afzal, 2018; Behuria, 2007)

Tactical Extremism in Turkish Foreign Policy

In its Syria policy since 2012, Turkey has arguably made similar tactical calculations. Ankara offered support to various radical groups fighting the Assad regime, ranging from soft Salafi militias to hardline jihadists that included affiliates of al-Qaeda and, in some cases, ISIS defectors. While officials denied any support to designated terrorist groups, the porousness of Turkish borders and the ambiguity of its alliances were widely documented by analysts and journalists. (Okyay, 2017)

The goal, as in Pakistan, was not ideological; it was strategic. Turkey sought to expand its influence in northern Syria, block Kurdish militias, and shape the post-Assad future. Yet the line between strategic pragmatism and ideological complicity is thinner than it seems. Ideas travel. Fighters return. And when states refuse to clearly distinguish between religion and militarized theology, the cost is paid in the reconfiguration of domestic society in addition to foreign policy.

At the same time, Turkey was undergoing a profound internal transformation. As its foreign policy grew more assertive, its domestic politics became increasingly autocratic. Through states of emergency, successive constitutional reforms, the erosion of judicial independence, and the dismantling of parliamentary checks; political power became concentrated in a single executive authority. In this environment, the Turkish state launched sweeping purges, targeting individuals and groups perceived as threats to regime stability. Many were arbitrarily labeled as “terrorists”, often without proper evidence or due process. It is both ironic and revealing that just a week before the Yalova incident, on December 21, 2025, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced on his official X account that 1,601 individuals had been arrested and 1,524 placed under judicial control over the past year for alleged links to the Hizmet Movement (aka Gulen Movement),broadly prosecuted under terrorism-related charges. Even more striking, 76 additional suspects were detained in just the previous two weeks for activities such as using payphones to communicate, posting on social media, or donating to organizations deemed affiliated with the group. Such broad and arbitrarily applied anti-terror laws have created institutional ambiguity in distinguishing real terrorists from dissenting voices, ultimately weakening the fight against actualextremism.

This level of sweeping repression has created a chilling effect across civil society, silencing dissent while hollowing out Turkey’s professional and bureaucratic institutions. But more dangerously, it has dismantled the ideological infrastructure of the republic and the society. Traditional sources of ideological moderation were either co-opted or criminalized. The state’s own ideological compass blurred, as broad definitions of terrorism replaced clear constitutional principles.

This vacuum did not remain empty for long. As long-standing ideological traditions were suppressed, a new ideological terrain began to take shape; one that was emotionally charged, and increasingly hostile to pluralism. In the presence of institutional ambiguity, extremist ideologies found new audiences and new legitimacy, especially among disenfranchised youth, and networks influenced by transnational extremist rhetoric. Much like Pakistan in the aftermath of its alliance with the Taliban, Turkey’s retreat from pluralist secularism created the perfect conditions for ideological radicalization to migrate from the margins to the mainstream.

How Extremist Ideas Reshape States

ISIS is not just a terrorist organization. It is an ideological movement built on a specific interpretation of Islam known as Salafi-jihadism -rooted in puritanical Wahhabism, shaped by thinkers like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and obsessed with creating a total religious state through violence, apocalypticism, and the destruction of pluralism. (Maher, 2016) One might assume that Turkey -with its secular constitution, democratic history, and strong civil society- is immune to such ideas. But the Pakistani case reminds us: ideological submersion doesn’t come as a sudden wave; it seeps through the cracks of institutional weakness and political opportunism.

Today, Turkey is showing worrying signs of ideological drift:

• Legal pluralism has deteriorated, as the judiciary increasingly aligns with the ideological priorities of the Erdoğan regime, undermining impartiality and rule of law.
• Checks and balances have eroded, particularly in the aftermath of the 2016 purges, allowing religious-nationalist narratives to gain dominance across the bureaucracy, education system, and political leadership.
• The proliferation of unregulated NGOs and unplanned migration policies, while aimed at humanitarian aid, has introduced new actors into the social fabric reshaping identity politics, especially in conservative and vulnerable regions.
• Educational reforms and curriculum revisions have infused civic education with themes of religious duty, Ottoman nostalgia, and historical grievance, narrowing the intellectual space for critical thinking and pluralist values.

These shifts may seem politically manageable, even useful for consolidating voter blocs. But history warns us: states that entangle their legitimacy with radical ideology often lose the ability to control it.

Final Thoughts

The ISIS-police clash in Yalova was not just a failed raid. It was a symbol of what happens when extremist ideologies are not kept at the margins but are given breathing room through strategic ambiguity. The fact that ISIS operatives could embed themselves in Turkey should not surprise us. It should alarm us.

Much like Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FETA) in the 1980s became incubators of global jihad, Turkey’s own border provinces such as Hatay, Kilis, and Gaziantep have in the past served as ideological and logistical hubs for foreign fighters and jihadist recruitment. Without corrective ideological and institutional measures, Turkey risks seeing its internal landscape gradually reshaped from within.

To be clear: Turkey is not Pakistan. It has different institutions, traditions, and societal dynamics. But the pattern of ideological feedback loops between foreign policy and domestic identity is real. If Turkey continues to tactically engage with radical actors for geopolitical gain, it risks importing both fighters and frameworks. The real threat, then, is not just that ISIS might strike again. It is that their intolerant, absolutist, and puritanical vision of society may find space within Turkey’s own ideological ecosystem; not because they conquered it, but because Turkey made space for them.

The solution is not simply tighter border controls or intelligence crackdowns though both remain necessary. What Turkey needs above all is institutional and ideological clarity. This begins with ending the arbitrary use of anti-terror laws and reasserting pluralist secularism -not as an attack on religion, but as a constitutional framework that safeguards diversity, pluralism, and individual freedoms. It requires a legal system capable of extremism and upholding the rule of law against ideological encroachment. In foreign policy, Turkey must establish clear red lines between pragmatic engagement and ideological compromise, especially when dealing with actors whose values undermine democratic principles. And perhaps most urgently, Turkey needs a civic education system that equips the next generation to distinguish faith from fanaticism, and encourages critical thinking over ideological conformity.

Unfortunately, Turkey is entering the new year not just with fireworks, but with funerals. It’s a reminder: what Turkey tolerates in its foreign policy today may define its national identity tomorrow.

References

1. Gall, Carlotta. “Turkey Says 3 Police Officers and 6 ISIS Militants Are Killed in Raid.” The New York Times, December 29, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/world/middleeast/turkey-isis-raid.html.
2. Associated Press. “Official Says 6 Islamic State Militants and 3 Police Officers Killed in Clash in Northwest Turkey.” PBS NewsHour, December 29, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/official-says-6-islamic-state-militants-and-3-police-officers-killed-in-clash-in-northwest-turkey.
3. Afzal, Madiha. Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism, Society, and the State. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2018.
4. Behuria, Ashok K. “The Rise of Pakistani Taliban and the Response of the State.” Strategic Analysis 31, no. 5 (2007): 699–724.
5. Abbas, Hassan. The Taliban Revival: Violence and Extremism on the Pakistan–Afghanistan Frontier. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.
6. Okyay, Asli Selin. “Turkey’s Post-2011 Approach to Its Syrian Border and Its Implications for Domestic Politics.” International Affairs 93, no. 4 (2017): 829–846.
7. Maher, Shiraz. Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.