Plans of the new Turkish Sultan for Central Asia

Turkey, which in the last few decades unsuccessfully tried to become part of the European community, under its current leader Recep Erdogan, who is also referred to as the new Turkish Sultan, has taken an active course for independent development and expansion of its influence within the borders of the former Ottoman Empire.

Erdogan laid the foundation of modern Turkish foreign policy on the ideology of neo-Ottomanism, the essence of which is to strengthen the political, economic and social influence of Turkey in the countries that were formerly part of the Ottoman Empire.

To date, the plans for the implementation of the concept for the restoration of the Ottoman Empire include two major areas.

The first direction is to expand Turkey’s influence in the Middle East and North Africa. In this direction, Ankara resorts to the way of solving its imperial tasks with the help of military force. The active military actions of Turkey in Syria, Iraq and Libya are a clear proof of this.

The second direction is to expand Turkey’s influence in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. In the South Caucasus, Turkey’s mainstay is Azerbaijan, where Ankara has achieved complete dominance both in political, economic and military terms, thereby de facto depriving Baku of sovereignty.

In Central Asia, Ankara is implementing a policy to strengthen its influence by integrating the Turkic-speaking states of the region into a common political union, which has been called the “Turkic Council”. In this direction, the Turkish leadership makes the main bet on Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which are the largest states in the region and have a fairly large resource base.

If in the last decade Ankara was limited to its ideological presence in these countries, which was expressed in the religious and educational spheres, now it is increasingly trying to introduce economic, political and military tools to strengthen its influence.

So, at the end of 2020, Ankara began active work with Nur-Sultan and Tashkent in the direction of military-technical cooperation. In particular, agreements were reached on the training of officers for the armies of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in Turkish military educational institutions. In addition, Turkey is negotiating the supply of its attack drones for the needs of the Kazakh army.

In recent months, the Turkish leadership has concluded several dozen agreements with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in various spheres of the economy, in particular in the energy sector. The volume of Turkish investments in key sectors of the economy of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan is also significantly increasing.

At first glance, cooperation with Turkey looks quite profitable for the Central Asian republics. However, if you study in detail the basics of the Turkish ideology of neo-Ottomanism and analyze the experience of other countries that have closely cooperated with Turkey, you come to not very pleasant conclusions. The most obvious example here is Azerbaijan, which de facto completely lost its political sovereignty and completely handed over the management of the state to Ankara. Such a fate probably awaits both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which risk playing too much and, like Azerbaijan, miss the moment when their sovereignty will come under the full control of Turkey.