Turkey will be uniting India and Pakistan around the same table during the conference set for Nov. 2, a gathering that did not happen sooner due to Pakistani reservations about the involvement of India in solving issues concerning Afghanistan. Pakistan agreed to get together with India when Turkey advised the country that an approach based on excluding India would not bring a solution. India had previously relayed its discomfort to Turkey at being uninvited to previous conferences on Afghanistan.
India and Pakistan have remained regional rivals, being countries tied by the backbone through cultural relations and many years of coexistence, but territorial disputes, such as the Kashmir issue, remain some of the problems that have yet to be resolved before relations can normalize. Turkey previously refrained from having India join efforts for an Afghan solution, since it had close ties with Islamabad, which is annoyed by developing relations between India and Afghanistan. Increasing cooperation between India and Turkey, as well as Ankara's awareness that exclusion would not help solve issues, motivated Turkey to placate Pakistan to agree with the involvement of India in the matter.
