DESPARDES — President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to travel to Islamabad next month with a high-powered delegation comprising senior officials as well as businessmen.
PM Khan and President Erdogan were to meet in December in Kuala Lumpur along with leaders from Iran, Qatar and Indonesia to further their joint agenda of launching an English language news channel to counter stereotypes about Islam.
Building interfaith harmony and deconstructing Islamophobia are the twin objectives of the global initiative the three Muslim countries’ leaders announced to undertake on the sidelines of UN General Assembly sessions in September.
Both Mahatair and Erdogan were instrumental in highlighting the longstanding issue of Kashmir dispute at the international fora in New York. At the annual session where world leaders gather, Turkish and Malaysian leaders castigated New Delhi for revoking the special status of Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJ&K) and committing grave human rights violations in the disputed region.
The stand these countries took remain problematic for Delhi.
Khan is also expected to travel to Malaysia in the beginning of February as part of what media says is the PIT-government’s damage control efforts after Pakistan pulled out of the Kuala Lumpur summit in December.
Official sources reportedly confirmed that PM Khan is scheduled to travel to Kuala Lumpur on an official visit in the start of February.
Observers believe Khan’s upcoming visit to Kuala Lumpur post-summit and the visit of Turkish president to Islamabad would help remove chinks and further the initiative the three countries have announced to tackle the Islamophobia narratives on the global level.
Unrelated, PM Khan has been invited to the D8 Summit in Dhaka in the third week of April. The developing-8 nations group includes Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Iran, Nigeria, Egypt and Bangladesh.
The Developing-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation (D-8) has proposed the establishment of its first high-technology industrial park in Malaysia by end-2020.
A Turkish company has agreed in principle to offer technology to the industrial park, says a report.
Last week, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina while commenting on India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), said she really doesn’t understand why India did so and that the act was “not necessary”, adding that it was “their internal matter”.
