- Kacper Ochman
Pan-turkism in Central Asia.
For centuries, the boundless steppes of Central Asia were the core territories of the most powerful states on the Eurasian supercontinent, as they crucially provided a commercial link between Europe and East Asia in the form of the ancient Silk Road. However, the age of geographical discovery and the dominance of maritime powers led to a drastic decline in the region's importance. This is now changing, and one of those players looking to the Central Asian region with hope and ambition is Turkey. Using Pan-Turkic ideas, does Ankara have a chance to dominate this forgotten region of the world?
Dominated by the Ocean
Growing ambitions, assertiveness, or even arrogance. In recent years, this is how Turkish foreign policy has often been described. There is no doubt that Turkey, under Erdogan's leadership, wants to play an increasingly important role in the region and the world. This policy of growing Turkish aspirations hasn’t come from just anywhere. Ankara is drawing on the many historical resources of its predecessors, including the Ottoman Empire, and building on its historical and cultural foundations. It wants to develop its influence in seemingly unobvious places, such as the Central Asian region.
Central Asia is a region often overlooked when discussing international affairs. Due to the lack of direct access to the world oceans by each of the five countries that make up Central Asia, they cannot freely use the cheapest form of trade. This has contributed to the gradual decline of the area's prominence over the past few hundred years as maritime trade came to dominate the world.
Before the era of Age of Exploration, the vast steppes of Central Asia were the core of the political centres that dominated the Eurasian continent and sowed fear among neighbouring states. For example, the modern borders of the Central Asian states were the center of the mighty Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan. Still, the region was penetrated from the West by, among others, Turkish peoples. The Old Turkic Kaganate in 600 AD and the Seljuk Sultanate in 1092 controlled large swathes of the Central Asian steppes. As a result, this centuries-long presence of Turkic peoples in Central Asia contributed to a cultural and linguistic expansion with Turkish languages extending far beyond the borders of the modern Turkish Republic and spilling over into Central Asian territories, even reaching the Siberian tundra.
Ankara sees this legacy as a resource that must not be wasted. Cultural and linguistic proximity means that the idea of a pan-Turkic world resonates strongly in the minds of Turkish decision-makers and pushes the Turks to rebuild their position in Central Asia.
Pan-Turkism and the Restoration of Turkish influence
This concept, Pan-Turkism, is a doctrine that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century proclaiming the ethnic unity of the Turkish peoples and the need for their cultural and political integration from the Bosporus Strait to the Altai Mountains. In essence, it is a nationalist and highly controversial movement, as it is linked to the Armenian genocide of the early 20th century. Nonetheless, it has seen periodical increases in popularity one of which we are observing now.
Let us go back three decades. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of new states, Central Asia became one of Ankara's key foreign policy directions. From the beginning, Turkish policy towards the region was based on pan-Turkic ideas. However, this was not an easy task in an area that had been indoctrinated for decades in Soviet-Russian viewpoints. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the five Central Asian countries remained de facto satellite states of Moscow, but Turkey took a number of initiatives to break this local hegemony. For example, it was the first country to recognise the five newly independent Central Asian republics and went on to sign more than 140 political, cultural, economic and military agreements with them. Between 1992 and 1996, almost 90 per cent of all development aid to Central Asia came from Turkey which become the foundation for the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking States in 2009. The organisation brings Turkey together with Azerbaijan and the 3 Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Turkmenistan holds an observer role, as does partially recognised Northern Cyprus and, perhaps most interestingly, Hungary. As of 2021, the initiative is called the Organisation of Turkic States.
However, Moscow's dominant role and Turkey's weak position meant that back then, Ankara's vision was not sufficiently attractive to the states in the region. This was determined by a lack of sufficient financial investment, a low trade volume, and little infrastructure development. Although there were sectors where Ankara's involvement was significant, such as telecommunications and textiles, the level of Turkish presence was negligible. Pan-Turkic ideas also were rejected. For the Central Asian states, the aim was to build their own identity on intra-national tendencies. In this situation, Ankara abandoned such a policy towards the region and switched to a more pragmatic track. This was primarily characterised by the strengthening of bilateral relations with individual post-Soviet Central Asian states.
The Turks were not at all discouraged and continued to focus on critical areas such as trade, construction, and investment, as well as security and energy.
A strong emphasis was placed on soft power in the form of cultural and linguistic activities. Within the Organisation of Turkic States, a 'Joint Alphabet Commission' has been set up to accelerate the transition of Turkish states to the Latin alphabet. Religion also plays a vital role. The organisation brings together the heads of religious institutions of member states four times a year to discuss Islamic issues in Turkic countries.
Furthermore, Turkish television channels have been available in the region for several decades. At the same time, Turkish scholarship programmes have enabled thousands of Central Asians to study in Turkey. Another success story in the field of education is the schools established with Turkish funds which are very popular due to their high level of education.
Turkey's trade turnover with the region has also increased significantly over the past few years. In 2021, Uzbek-Turkish trade was around $3.4 billion, compared to $2.4 billion in 2019, before the pandemic choked the global economy. Kazakh-Turkish trade was almost $3.9 billion in 2019 and shot to $4.1 billion in 2021. Both countries promise to raise this figure to $10 billion. Kyrgyz-Turkish trade almost doubled to $836 million between 2019 and 2021. Turkmenistan imported goods worth $786 million, compared to $181 million in 2005. Despite the upward trend, when compared to Russia, China or the European Union, these are still modest figures.
Nonetheless in recent years, an unsettled international situation opened up the possibility of further strengthening Turkey’s presence in the region. The most significant upheaval is always caused by war, and this recently has been a constant feature of the near abroad for both Turkey and Central Asia. Since the Second Karabakh War and Russia's renewed aggression against Ukraine, the Central Asian states have felt the need to strengthen militarily. Ankara was prepared for this. The most glaring example of military cooperation with the region is the now-famous drone policy. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have already ordered the first units of the new generation of Bayraktar TB3 drones, while Turkmenistan presented its TB2 models at a military parade in September 2021. Tajikistan also has TB2s in its arsenal. This cooperation goes beyond mere procurement as Turkish ANKA drones will be manufactured in Kazakhstan.
Ankara's entry into the Central Asian arms market is a significant development given Russia's longstanding dominance in the military sphere, Turkey's NATO membership, and the long intra-regional rivalries fuelled by arms purchases. Militarily ousting Russia in the short term is impossible as Moscow still has a significant advantage here. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan continue to be members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization or CSTO, while Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan maintain close bilateral military relations with Russia. Thus, fundamental changes are not expected any time soon, but Ankara continues to build, piece by piece, the foundations of its position.
Increasing Geopolitical Importance
Turkey’s favour and influence in Central Asia are essential for another reason: geography. Just as the region remained excluded in the wake of the dominance of the maritime powers before the Age of Exploration, it was the area through which passed arguably the world's most crucial overland trade link, the Silk Road connecting China to Europe. In the second decade of the 21st century, given the still dominant role of the United States in world waters, Beijing decided to revive this historical project. The region's relevance to the land route of this project is evidenced by the fact that Chinese leader Xi Jinping first announced the Belt and Road initiative in 2013 in Kazakhstan, the largest country of Central Asia.
The Middle Corridor, as the route through Central Asia to Turkey is called, plays a key role in Ankara's vision. The project is aimed to cross the South Caucasus by rail, the Caspian Sea by water, and head to China via Central Asia by more rail. In this context, Beijing supports Turkey's actions, while Russia observes Ankara's Eurasian turn with concern. Although Turkish-Russian relations remain good, as Turkey helps Russia to circumvent wartime sanctions, Ankara and Moscow's geopolitical aspirations in the long term remain incompatible. At present, given Russia’s multitude of problems, Moscow seems to tacitly accept Turkey's growing influence in its former backyard.
On the other hand, Central Asia, which is economically unstable, in urgent need of financial assistance, and access to world markets, is looking more and more favourably towards a capitalist economic system. In this context, Turkey is considered an important economic partner that can provide access to markets and integrate the region into international economic institutions. One of the most significant decisions of the recent summit of the Organisation of Turkic States was the establishment of the Turkish Investment Fund, which aims to accelerate the economic growth of member states by providing financing to small and medium-sized enterprises.
Equally important are Turkey's ambitions to become a hub for Central Asia in exporting its rich oil and gas resources to the West. The region has excellent upstream potential and can strengthen its position in the coming decades. In which Ankara also wants to play its part. Hydrocarbons are already flowing westwards using Turkish territory via the existing Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipelines. The former supplied 224 million barrels of oil to world markets last year, equivalent to around 30% of the European Union's total annual oil imports from the Russian Federation. However, the oil pipeline still has about 30% spare capacity. In contrast, the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline, otherwise known as the South Caucasus pipeline, can pump up to 24 bcm of gas a year and is operating at full capacity. What's more, this one could be linked in the future to the planned Trans-Caspian pipeline which would run along the bottom of the Caspian Sea and connect Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan. All these projects present great potential in diversifying European energy sources once hydrocarbon imports from the Russian Federation are entirely abandoned. In this context, the agreement of the Central Asian states, Azerbaijan, and Turkey – thus de facto all members of the Organisation of Turkic States – presents a significant challenge for Moscow.
Representatives of the Organisation of Turkic States claim that the platform has no plans to challenge the hegemony of China and Russia in Central Asia. Still, the fact is that the integration of the Turkic states poses a threat to both. It may be postponed, but Ankara is becoming an important development factor for the region. Despite assurances from Turkish officials about the altruistic goals of the Organisation of Turkic States, the views of leading politicians in the Turkish world reveal that Ankara seeks to project a joint cultural and historical alliance between member states.
Fight for Central Asia
What does all this mean for Central Asia? First and foremost: more opportunities. After years of being in the exclusive orbit of Moscow, European and Chinese influences have steadily become more noticeable in the region. After a long absence, Turkey is also trying to remind others of its past reaches. More competition is good news for the region. Previously doomed to Moscow, the region's leaders are now getting alternative options from Beijing and Ankara, as well as Brussels and Washington. From this perspective, the Central Asian countries, especially Kazakhstan, need a strong Turkey. For years, Turkey did not have the economic and political weight to be an alternative player in the region. This has begun to change with joint funding, arms exports and, perhaps most importantly, trade links connecting Central Asia to China and Turkey and onwards to the rest of the world. The cultural and linguistic legacy has its weight, but without hard arguments, Ankara had nothing to look for in Central Asia. Ultimately, it is concrete offers on the table - geopolitics and economics - that count.
And it is on the economic factor that the future of the Organisation of Turkic States will depend most. Everyone is keen to strengthen the transit potential, the export of hydrocarbons, and the creation of new transcontinental corridors from China to Europe, which will have to pass through the territories of the Central Asian countries. If based on new trade routes, Turkey will help the Central Asian countries to develop on good terms, Ankara's position in the area will inevitably increase.
However, nothing happens overnight. Moscow's position remains dominant and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Russia showed its prowess during the Kazakh crisis in early January 2022, when the CSTO efficiently deployed a peacekeeping mission at the request of Kazakh President Tokayev. The Organisation of Turkic States limited itself to a symbolic expression of solidarity towards Astana.
Moreover, the development of the Turkish role in Central Asia will surely be influenced by the further course and outcome of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. This could accelerate in the event of a further Russian collapse or slow the Turks' drive into the region if the war ends well for Moscow. In contrast, while we can put the economic potential of Russia and Turkey in the same category, China plays in a completely different league. If by a decision in Beijing, the Chinese decide to more strongly penetrate the region, the Turks will not have the opportunity to stand up to this initiative. Although Turkey expresses a willingness to improve its network of transport routes, this space is still dominated by China. Additionally, to Ankara's detriment, some of the current (and planned) transport routes pass through Iran, Turkey's local rival. Ankara's major economic problems, which currently severely limit the ability of Turks to invest in Central Asia, are another very significant problem.
After several centuries of geographical exclusion, are better times ahead for the countries of Central Asia? Turkey's involvement is one symptom that there may indeed be a positive trend for the region. In addition, the willingness of the Chinese to improve the region's connectivity and Europe's search for alternative sources of energy favour the hitherto undiscovered potential of Central Asia. Will Pan-Turkic ideas become a driver for the growth of this potential? A common historical and linguistic heritage certainly helps the Turks to understand the region and gain soft power influence, but in the end, as always, hard arguments in the form of investment, trade agreements, and military cooperation will count the most.
Sources (apart from authors’ insights):
https://www.tika.gov.tr/en/page/history_of_tika-8526
Marlene Laruelle & Sebastien Peyrouse, Globalizing Central Asia: Geopolitics and Challenges of Economic Development (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2013)
https://www.mfa.gov.tr/turk-konseyi-en.en.mfa
https://kierunekkaukaz.pl/2022/05/07/wojna-na-ukrainie-szansa-turcji-na-zwiekszenie-obecnosci-w-azji-centralnej/
https://www.eurasian-research.org/publication/trade-between-turkey-and-central-asia/
https://www.globaldefensecorp.com/2021/02/08/kazakhstan-will-be-the-first-foreign-buyer-of-bayraktar-tb3-drones/ https://kierunekkaukaz.pl/2022/05/16/kazachstan-bedzie-produkowac-tureckie-drony-bojowe-anka/ https://kierunekkaukaz.pl/2022/05/10/znaczenie-nowej-umowy-wojskowej-miedzy-tadzykistanem-i-turcja/
