Türkiye–Pakistan Istanbul Summit Sets $5 Billion Trade Roadmap and Karachi SEZ for Turkish Firms

Ankara and Islamabad have courted each other before— from the 1955 Baghdad Pact/CENTO to the 1964 Regional Cooperation for Development with Iran—yet those Cold-War schemes, driven by US strategy, never translated into mass trade. Unlike those security-centric pacts, the 2026 roadmap rides two systemic currents: (1) the Global South’s pivot toward South-South commerce as Western capital tightens, and (2) Türkiye’s post-2023 search for non-EU export markets amid lira weakness. Pakistan, shut out of easy IMF money and with per-capita income barely a tenth of Türkiye’s, is offering land, sovereign guarantees and even G-to-G deals—signals of desperation as much as opportunity. Whether the $5 billion figure sticks (it has been pledged since 2013 and missed repeatedly) will hinge on Pakistan’s ability to fix power-sector losses and on Türkiye avoiding further currency crises. If the zone materialises, it could echo China’s 1980 Shenzhen experiment—small at first, catalytic later. If it fizzles, it will join a 70-year shelf of unrealised Muslim-world economic visions. Either way, it illustrates mid-21st-century realignment: medium powers knitting bilateral supply chains to hedge against great-power shocks, a pattern likely to define the next century’s trade geography more than legacy alliances.