NEW DELHI, Oct 20 (DNA): Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided to cancel his two-day official visit to Turkey after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan openly raised occupied Kashmir issue at United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and backed Pakistan at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meet in Paris.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was scheduled to depart on a two-day official visit to Ankara at the end of this month (October) following visit to Saudi Arabia, where he is going on October 27-28 to attend a mega investment summit.

Modi had last visited Turkey during the G20 in Antalya in 2015. He had held bilateral talks with president Erdogan in Osaka, on the sidelines of the G20 in June this year. The Turkish leader had paid a two-day visit to India in July 2018.

However, Erdogan’s strong backing of Pakistan on Kashmir and highlighting widespread human rights violations during his speech at the UN General Assembly last month has not gone down well with India.

The decision to cancel the visit to Turkey marks a low in relations between New Delhi and Ankara, which have never been very warm, the Indian media reported.

Trade and defence cooperation were among the issues that were to be on the table during Modi’s Ankara visit, which had been agreed to in principle.

The Ministry of External Affairs was non-committal over the development. “The visit was never finalised so there is no question of cancellation,” a MEA source told.

In his speech, Erdogan had raised the issue of UN resolutions on Kashmir and alleged that “eight million people are stuck” in Kashmir due to revocation of special status. He had criticised the international community for failing to pay attention to the Kashmir issue.

At the end of September, at an event in Turkey to mark the building of a warship for Pakistan, Erdogan said he will continue to flag the Kashmir issue on the world stage.=DNA

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