Why Shashi Tharoor's Comments Miss the Mark on Kerala's Aid to Turkey in 2023

The earthquake that had struck Turkey and Syria in 2013 was a catastrophe of staggering scale, claiming over 53,000 lives and displacing millions. Less reported was that its epicenter was in Turkey’s southeastern Kurdish regions.

(Photo: Vibhushita Singh/The Quint)

Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor's recent comments—arguably ill-timed—suggested that perhaps the aid that the Kerala government sent to Turkey in 2023 was misplaced. He gives two reasons: firstly, Turkey is not a friendly nation, and secondly, the money could have been better utilised in the aftermath of a disaster in Kerala itself.

The second reason can be safely ignored. We receive as much aid as we give out—there cannot be miserliness in humanitarian gestures, only moderation. Kerala’s gesture does not overstep in this regard. The more pressing question is whether Turkey’s covert support for Pakistan in the recent standoff is cause for retrospection.

But it turns out that Tharoor is badly off the mark on this question too.

Turkish Chokehold on Kurds

In the aftermath of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake in February 2023 earthquake, Charlie Hebdo hit headlines for a controversial cartoon. The caption ran: “Earthquake in Turkey: No need to send tanks”.

Most international media misunderstood the cartoon as celebrating the loss of life in Turkey and promoting anti-Muslim sentiments. Charlie Hebdo was pointing at something else.

The words were being attributed to Turks, who now did not need to use NATO-supplied arms in Kurdish regions. They only had to suppress aid and let the Kurds stay under the rubble. Charlie Hebdo was hitting out at NATO’s collusion with Turkey’s oppression of the Kurds.

The earthquake that had struck Turkey and Syria was a catastrophe of staggering scale, claiming over 53,000 lives and displacing millions. Less reported was that its epicenter was in Turkey’s southeastern Kurdish regions. In Kurd-majority villages, residents waited days for state aid, their homes reduced to rubble while Turkish authorities prioritised ethnic Turkish areas. Many Kurds never received any help.

Post-earthquake, the state blocked roads to Kurdish areas, arrested activists distributing aid, and diverted resources to government-aligned regions.

The post-Ottoman drive to forge a homogenous Turkish nation-state also brought along a denial of Kurdish ethnic and cultural identity. Following the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which ignored Kurdish aspirations for autonomy, Turkey outlawed Kurdish language, dress, and names, labelling Kurds as “mountain Turks” to erase their distinct nationhood.

The 1937-38 Dersim massacre, killing thousands, exemplified Turkish brutality against Kurds, while subsequent decades saw military crackdowns, notably during The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) insurgency from 1984, costing over 40,000 lives. Policies like village evacuations, media censorship, and arrests of Kurdish activists have brought the Kurdish cause into western limelight. Yet, their problems are largely unsolved.

Alongside this cultural erasure and military campaigns in Turkey, Syria’s Ba’athist policies stripped 120,000 Kurds of citizenship in 1962, rendering them stateless.

Just next door, Iran suppresses Kurdish autonomy demands, and even in Iraq, where the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) enjoys semi-autonomy, Baghdad’s oil disputes and military actions curb Kurdish ambitions. A 2017 referendum on Kurdish independence from Iraq saw over 90 percent of votes cast in favour of the idea.

While regional powers oppose Kurdish autonomy to protect territorial integrity, global powers, including the US, offer tactical support—such as arming Syrian Kurds against ISIS—without endorsing statehood, leaving Kurds vulnerable to geopolitical shifts. With an estimated 30 million people, Kurds remain the world’s largest stateless ethnic group.

Humanitarian Aid vs the International Gaze

It was in this context that aid from over 100 countries, including India’s Operation Dost and Kerala’s Rs 10 crore contribution, became an unintended geopolitical act. India sent NDRF teams, medical supplies, and Garuda Aerospace drones to assist rescue efforts, becoming one of the first responders. Many of the NATO countries sent personnel, money and perishables to the affected regions. Kerala’s aid, channelled through the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, added to this global pressure. By flooding Turkey with resources, these nations forced Ankara to distribute at least some aid to Kurdish regions, circumventing state chokeholds.

The intent of these kinds of aid may not have been particularly pro-Kurd. But their effect certainly was.

In contrast, Syria and Syrian Kurds received disproportionately lesser aid, thanks to the international sanctions and the fragile political landscape.

Countries simply did not want to get involved and burn their fingers. The relative lack of international humanitarian presence inside Syria’s borders made the situation worse for Kurds.

The international community’s gaze helps temper otherwise uncontrollable conflicts, and aid is one major excuse for such a gaze.

One need only look as far as Gaza today to see this. In the midst of a destructive war, Gazan civilians are caught between Israel’s war efforts and Hamas’s intransigence.

The former prefers to cut down aid with the excuse that Hamas will loot it, and Hamas actually loots it. There was even a period of blockade against humanitarian aid imposed by Israel.

If Gaza gets aid, it is in spite of both Israel’s right-wing government and Hamas. Opposition to either or both of these parties is insufficient reason to starve the Gazan population. The same logic applies to the Kurds of Turkey and elsewhere—opposition to their occupying state is no reason to stave the Kurds of aid.

Geopolitical Humanitarianism

Humanitarian aid is not always innocent either. The concept of ‘geopolitical humanitarianism’ is used to describe the strategic use of humanitarian aid to advance political objectives, such as gaining influence or pressuring adversaries. Aid to conflict zones often serves as a tool for global powers to shape regional dynamics while addressing human needs.

The Indian state is often accused of propping up the Baloch independence movement in Pakistan.

This is one movement that is more noise than result, and India has not had much returns on any supposed investments. Pakistan’s resource-rich Balochistan remains under tight control, and the movement’s global visibility is minimal. The Kurds, on the other hand, have received little investment in spite of providing maximal returns, especially by leading the international campaign against ISIS.

India could consider supporting Kurds in the long term as well. Alongside trade, humanitarian gestures is a good excuse for developing ties.

India has good relations with the KRI—the goodwill can be extended to stateless Kurds in Syria, Turkey, and Iran as well. None of these countries seem well disposed towards India, and thus Kurds become one of the few feasible allies in the region in the long term.

India’s relations with the KRI provide a foundation for broader Kurdish engagement. Since opening a consulate in Erbil in 2016, India has imported oil from the KRI, employed workers in its energy and construction sectors, and sent humanitarian aid, including medical supplies in 2025. These ties reflect India’s moderate stance, while also balancing relations with Iraq, Turkey, and Iran and advancing energy security.

The KRI’s stability, underpinned by its Peshmerga forces and oil wealth, makes it a reliable partner, unlike the fragmented Baloch movement, which faces Pakistan’s brutal crackdowns and lacks cohesive leadership.

India’s alleged support for Baloch insurgents, often exaggerated, has yielded little strategic gain. Kurds elsewhere can be as effective partners as the KRI is.

Such considerations apparently escape Shashi Tharoor. He was once fondly referred to as a “global citizen” by a Nair community leader. His opportunism—sadly characteristic of Indian liberals—in such global issues, where he prefers to take a swipe at his local rivals rather than keep an open mind about global dynamics, belies such high praise.

(Arjun Ramachandran is a research scholar at the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad. Kuriakose Mathew teaches politics and international relations at the School of Liberal Arts and Management Studies, P P Savani University, Surat. His research focuses on democratic forces in transitional polities. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)