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Erdogan’s getting back on-script – extolling the similarities in Indian and Turkish cultures and restating Ankara’s support for India’s permanent membership to the United Nations Security

Council – did not, however, retrieve the situation. In his “one on one” with the visitor, an apparently unsettled Modi, confused about whether to push his agenda at all, sputtered on about

the enormous potential for Indo-Turkish trade and economic intercourse, after he had, one assumes, desultorily, stated India’s policy of resolving the Kashmir dispute bilaterally with

Pakistan. Had he the presence of mind, and proper briefing by the MEA for just such a contingency (which should have been anticipated; after all Turkey has regularly voted in the

Organisation of Islamic Countries against India on the Kashmir issue), Modi could have stopped Erdogan in full flow by not so delicately raising the issue of “independent” Kurdistan carved

from the Kurdish-majority areas across three countries – Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and flummoxed the Turkish President in return. Ankara, after all, has always dealt savagely with the

freedom-seeking Kurds, refusing in recent times to fall in line with Washington and treat the Kurdish militia, the peshmerga, as the most effective force in the field against the Bashir

al-Assad regime in Syria, which Turkey opposes.