Foreign policy is rarely a matter of single decisions. It is usually a long drift in one direction, occasionally interrupted by moments that make the drift visible. Operation Sindoor was such a moment for Turkey. In the five days of military conflict between India and Pakistan, Turkey moved from being a country with strained but manageable ties to India to being something materially different. It became a state that supplied drones, deployed military advisors, and propagandized on behalf of the side that had sponsored the Pahalgam massacre.

What Turkey actually did

On May 8 and 9, 2025, the nights when Pakistan launched its drone counterattack against Indian targets, the drones doing the attacking were not, for the most part, of Pakistani manufacture. They were Turkish. Indian forensic analysis of downed drones identified them as Asisguard Songar and Baykar YIHA models, both Turkish-made. The drones were used in a coordinated assault against 36 Indian locations stretching from Leh to Sir Creek, a target list that included airbases, command posts, and religious sites in border areas.

The Turkish involvement went beyond hardware. According to multiple Indian intelligence-sourced reports, Turkish military advisors were embedded with Pakistani forces during the conflict, helping to plan and coordinate drone operations. India Today reported that two Turkish military operatives were killed in Indian counter-strikes during Operation Sindoor. In the days before the conflict began, six Turkish C-130 transport aircraft landed in Pakistan, sparking speculation about arms deliveries that Ankara denied but global air surveillance systems independently confirmed.

On the propaganda front, Turkey’s state broadcaster TRT........

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