Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Shehbaz Sharif
On December 2, 2025, Pakistan and Türkiye signed five Memorandums of Understanding and Deeds of Assignment covering oil and gas exploration, with plans to expand cooperation into mining and power-sector equity. The agreements were inked during a high-profile visit by Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar, who held meetings not only with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and key economic ministers, but also with Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir—an unmistakable signal that security, not just commerce, underpins the deal. The package included offshore and onshore concessions in the Indus Basin and Balochistan-adjacent blocks, alongside commitments to joint trading companies and Turkish participation in Pakistan’s power-sector privatisation.
This signing spree is hardly novel. Similar MoU clusters were rolled out in 2022 with great fanfare, accompanied by ambitious promises to quintuple bilateral trade. Three years later, trade has barely crept from $1.1 billion to $1.4 billion. The December 2 agreements thus function less as an economic breakthrough and more as a political reaffirmation—energy as symbolism, not substance.
But symbolism can be dangerous when geography and insurgency intersect.
Pakistan’s hydrocarbon and mineral wealth is overwhelmingly concentrated in Balochistan and its offshore waters—precisely the regions where separatist insurgency is most entrenched. For decades, Baloch armed groups have framed foreign resource projects as extractive colonial ventures that siphon wealth, import outsiders, and leave locals dispossessed. China learned this lesson the hard way after CPEC turned Balochistan into a frontline. Now, Türkiye—and potentially the United States—are walking into the same crosshairs.
The warnings have been explicit. In April 2025, the Baloch National Movement declared all foreign resource agreements signed in Islamabad “null and void.” On August 26, the Baloch Liberation Front renewed its appeal for international support in what it termed a national war of liberation, explicitly condemning fresh U.S. mining initiatives. The message was unambiguous: foreign investors are not neutral economic actors; they are legitimate targets.
The record supports the threat. Since the launch of CPEC, Balochistan has absorbed sustained violence against foreign-linked projects. Between 2020 and 2024, at least 62 people were killed in attacks on CPEC workers. Since 2007, attacks targeting Chinese nationals alone have killed 87 people, most of them in Balochistan. Even when personnel are not targeted, infrastructure is. Gas pipelines, oil tankers, and installations have been attacked at least 273 times since 2000—not to maximise casualties, but to choke revenue streams and disrupt the state’s extractive economy.
The lull in 2025 should not be mistaken for de-escalation. It reflects tactical restraint, not strategic retreat.
By expanding the roster of foreign stakeholders in Balochistan, Islamabad is not diluting risk—it is multiplying it. Turkish energy firms, U.S. mining interests, Chinese state companies: each new flag planted deepens the insurgent narrative of occupation and plunder. Competition among foreign players may enrich federal balance sheets, but it also accelerates resentment on the ground, where decades of underdevelopment, political exclusion, and militarisation remain unresolved.
Crucially, these agreements once again bypass Baloch consent. Decisions about Balochistan’s resources are taken in Islamabad, negotiated with foreign capitals, and protected by the military—reinforcing the very grievance architecture that sustains insurgency. Energy security for the centre is pursued at the cost of perpetual insecurity for the periphery.
From Islamabad, the Pakistan-Türkiye energy partnership looks like diversification and strategic depth. From Balochistan, it looks like another chapter in a long history of dispossession enforced by force. The sound of signatures in federal offices echoes very differently in insurgent terrain.
What is being fast-tracked is not stability or development, but exposure—of foreign nationals, infrastructure, and the province itself to another cycle of violence. Unless resource extraction is fundamentally re-anchored in local ownership, political reconciliation, and genuine autonomy, every new deal will carry the same fatal flaw.
For Balochistan, the energy rush is not a roadmap to prosperity. It is, once again, a fast-track to tragedy.
