In June 2026, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan described his visit to Dhaka as a first step towards raising Türkiye-Bangladesh relations to a strategic level. The two sides agreed on regular ministerial consultations, discussed trade and joint production, and signed an agreement on protecting cultural heritage.
A month later, Bangladesh’s army chief visited Türkiye to examine defence facilities and discuss training and technology exchange. Government ties are plainly moving forward. Turkish public awareness has not kept pace.
Pakistan occupies a special place in Türkiye’s view of South Asia. It is routinely called a brother country (“kardeş ülke” in Turkish), and that affection is neither artificial nor misplaced.
The problem is the silent assumption that Pakistan alone inherited the subcontinent’s historical solidarity with Türkiye. It did not.
When Muslims in British India supported the Turkish War of Independence, neither Pakistan nor Bangladesh existed. Bengalis were part of that mobilization.
Türkiye should therefore stop remembering South Asian Muslim support through Pakistan alone and build a reciprocal social relationship with Bangladesh, centred on historical memory, students and culture.
South Asian Muslims, including Bengalis, supported the national struggle. Bangladesh has preserved that connection unusually well. Its national poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam, wrote “Kamal Pasha” in 1921 in admiration of Mustafa Kemal. The poem entered the school curriculum. Roads in Dhaka and Chittagong carry Atatürk’s name; so do a park, a school, and a Turkish-language centre. Bangladesh has placed Türkiye in its poetry, classrooms, and public space.
The reverse is much harder to see. Bengali participation in the wider Indian Muslim campaign for Türkiye is rarely present in Turkish popular accounts. The aid is often remembered, retrospectively, as a story of Türkiye and Pakistan.
That reading compresses the geography of British India into the borders created in 1947 and treats the eastern Muslim population as an afterthought.
Pakistan and Bangladesh are not equally close to Türkiye in every policy field, nor must they be. But present-day diplomatic intensity should not determine who is allowed into historical memory.
There are understandable reasons for Pakistan’s greater visibility. Ankara and Islamabad have sustained conspicuous political, military, and diplomatic cooperation over decades. Pakistan also acts more visibly in regional security debates that attract Turkish attention.
Bangladesh has generally pursued a quieter international profile, and bilateral relations have experienced political friction, notably over the legacy of its 1971 independence.
These differences explain why Pakistan commands more attention. They do not justify turning a shared pre-partition history into an exclusively Pakistani inheritance.
This distinction matters now because official relations with Dhaka are becoming more ambitious.
Türkiye is expanding defense, trade, and humanitarian cooperation, while continuing substantial work connected to the Rohingya crisis.
Yet a relationship built mainly by ministries, defense firms, and relief agencies can remain socially thin.
Bangladesh risks appearing in Türkiye only as a market, a distant humanitarian setting or an adjunct to wider South Asian politics. Strategic language will not correct that imbalance by itself.
Turkish television has already shown how quickly cultural familiarity can grow in the other direction. Bangla-dubbed Turkish dramas have attracted mass audiences in Bangladesh; “Kara Sevda” reportedly captivated millions, while broadcasters developed dedicated teams of translators, scriptwriters, and voice artists.
Demand has also encouraged interest in the Turkish language. This is a major advantage, but it is still largely one-way. Bangladeshis are learning Turkish names, histories, and social codes through entertainment. Turkish audiences are learning little about Bengali life in return.
The next stage should not be another campaign that merely exports Türkiye more efficiently.
Turkish and Bangladeshi broadcasters could commission documentaries and co-productions on Kazi Nazrul Islam, Bengali support for Türkiye during the early 1920s, contemporary student life, migration, food, music, and urban change.
Turkish platforms could acquire Bangladeshi films and dramas with proper Turkish subtitles. Publishers and universities could support translations of Bengali fiction and political thought. Bangladesh’s embassy and cultural institutions also have work to do: Visibility in Türkiye cannot be produced by Ankara alone.
Bangladeshi students in Turkish universities offer the most immediate bridge. In June 2026, Bangladesh’s ambassador and Türkiye’s Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities discussed expanding scholarships, training, leadership programs, and cultural exchange.
That conversation should move beyond counting scholarship recipients. Universities could fund student-led exhibitions on shared history, school visits, translation workshops, and public discussions involving Turkish classmates.
Graduates returning to Bangladesh should be connected with Turkish alumni, businesses, and cultural organizations.
Students should be supported as participants, not treated as unpaid instruments of diplomacy.
None of this requires a grand new bureaucracy. The recently signed cultural heritage agreement provides a practical opening.
A modest joint translation fund, an annual rotating public culture forum, and university grants for collaborative projects would be enough to begin.
Turkish museums, textbooks, and commemorative programs dealing with aid from Indian Muslims should explicitly include Bengal.
One accurate paragraph in a widely used exhibition may do more for mutual recognition than another official declaration of brotherhood.
Some will argue that public closeness cannot be engineered and that Pakistan’s position reflects decades of lived relations. That is partly true. Affection cannot be ordered by a ministry.
But public memory is never entirely spontaneous and is shaped by curricula, television, translations, scholarships, and commemorations. Bangladesh’s continued remembrance of Atatürk proves the point.
Giving Bangladesh a more visible place would not diminish Pakistan. Brotherhood is not a fixed quantity that one country loses when another is recognized.
The choice, then, is not between Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is between a narrow, state-centred memory of South Asia and a more accurate one.
Ankara and Dhaka are already giving their relationship strategic content. They should now give it a social foundation, beginning with the Bengalis who supported Türkiye before either modern South Asian state existed.
Until Türkiye recognizes that inheritance publicly and reciprocates Bangladesh’s cultural attention, its language of historical brotherhood will remain incomplete.
Mehmet Enes Beşer is a researcher focusing on ASEAN. His work examines Türkiye’s relations with Southeast Asian countries, particularly in the fields of economic development, industrial cooperation, and foreign policy. He's also a member of the Editorial Board of Teori magazine.