With Pakistan hosting the 2027 SCO Summit and Türkiye seeking entry, discuss the challenges India faces in the organisation and suggest a strategy.

In September 2026, an MEA Joint Secretary attended the SCO National Coordinators' meeting in Islamabad. It was the first official Indian visit to Pakistan since Operation Sindoor [1]. Pakistan now chairs the SCO and will host its August 2027 Summit, and Türkiye wants to join. India therefore has to stay engaged without weakening its position on terrorism.

Challenges for India

• Host's prestige: Pakistan is seen leading the region's meetings for a whole year. The Summit also forces India to choose how it attends: through the PM, a minister, a lower-level delegate, or virtually [1].
• Terror–talks optics: an Indian official sat in Islamabad only days after Jaishankar and Shehbaz Sharif traded charges at the UNGA [1]. Within a month India moved from a Chargé d'affaires to a Joint Secretary, which can look like softening [1].
• Diluted texts: SCO decisions need consensus. In 2025, the leaving out of the Pahalgam attack from an SCO document was questioned in the Rajya Sabha [2].
• Türkiye's entry bid: Erdoğan raised Kashmir at the UNGA, and India rejected the remark on 29 September 2026 [1]. If Türkiye joins, it could add another voice sympathetic to Pakistan inside the grouping.

Suggested Strategy

• Presence over boycott: a boycott would not stop the meetings. Other members would simply draft the 2027 texts without India.
• Conditional attendance level: India should link how senior its delegation is to firm language against cross-border terrorism in the Summit text. It can build on the 2023 SCO joint statement on Countering Radicalisation [3] and its earlier call to "fix accountability" on those who support terrorism [4].
• Strictly multilateral engagement: any high-level visit should cover SCO business only. Kashmir stays bilateral, and no bilateral agenda should be taken up.
• Put India's case on record: India should use Defence Ministers' meetings and SCO-RATS to argue that terror epicentres are "no longer immune" [6]. The Tianjin Declaration of 2025 shows that SCO texts can reflect India's stand against terrorism [5].
• Quiet leverage on expansion: India should use the consensus rule to tie its support for Türkiye's entry to respect for India's core positions. An open veto should be avoided because China and Pakistan could use it against India.

Pakistan's chairship will end, but India's interests in the SCO will remain. By engaging on its own terms, India can shape the 2027 agenda instead of leaving it to others. This fits the principled, peace-oriented foreign policy set out in Article 51 of the Constitution.