The Belt and Road Initiative and the Middle Corridor: Complementarity or Competition?

• Author: Hussain, Ejaz
• Position: ARTICLE

Introduction

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted regional and global attention since its inception in 2013. Though China has presented the BRI in essentially economic terms, it has been viewed strategically by the U.S., Japan, Australia, and India. (1) Turkey, however, has maintained a cautious policy as far as the nature and character of the BRI is concerned. Indeed, as a connector of Asia with Europe, Ankara has, on the one hand, showing interest in the Chinese initiative for rational reasons and, on the other hand, come up with its own initiative commonly known as the Middle Corridor--which, while overlapping with the BRI in infrastructural terms, carries the potential to act as a bridge among Turkey, the Southern Caucasus, Central Asia, and China. (2) Moreover, as part of its Asian foreign policy, Turkey has projected the Middle Corridor Initiative (MCI) as means as well as ends in pursuing commercial, military, and strategic objectives in a geopolitical environment that is undergoing regional realignments. (3)

For instance, the U.S. is gradually rebalancing its policy in the Middle East where the former seems to have avoided military confrontation with Russia and accorded 'tacit' approval to the Turkish military operation in Northern Syria. In Central and South Asia, the Pacific, and Northeast Asia, the U.S. is still maintaining its military presence along with enhancing defense cooperation with India, Japan, and Australia. (4) Importantly, under the Trump Administration, China had been conceptualized as a 'strategic rival' and 'economic competitor' that has to be countered in realist terms. (5) Little wonder, the so-called 'trade war' between the U.S. and China has not only impacted bilateral (trade) ties but also carried negative repercussions for regional countries such as Pakistan and India. (6)

China, on its part, has also acted rationally. Under President Xi Jinping, Beijing is pursuing a policy of regional peace and economic integration as categorically laid out in the BRI and its attendant institutional arrangements such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Silk Road Fund (SRF). Keeping in mind regional geopolitical complexity, the Communist Party of China (CPC) under the leadership of Xi Jinping seemed to have realized the American designs to encircle China militarily and strategically. (7) Though the Chinese government has officially refrained from adopting a confrontational (dis)course towards Washington in military-strategic terms, it has, nonetheless, acted in the same fashion insofar as high tariffs under the trade war are concerned. Moreover, Beijing is also pursuing cordial commercial ties with Japan, South Korea, Turkmenistan, and India in a bid to, on the one hand, disallow complete control of the regional markets to the American enterprises and, on the other, to develop economic interdependence with such key countries in a manner that does not harm the Chinese interests both commercially and strategically. (8)

Importantly, China has lately strived to enhance military, strategic and economic relations with Turkey. To this end, the BRI was projected as a win-win cooperation for the two countries that traditionally followed a very complicated foreign policy --which will be explained at length later in the article. Presently, however, both China and Turkey have vowed to consolidate the 'strategic cooperation' through mutually agreed-upon measures to ward off conventionally held misgivings especially related to counter-terrorism and ethnic separatism. Ankara, historically and nationally, has taken a different view on the Uighur Muslim minority of Xinjiang Autonomous Region whom the Chinese state desired to integrate. (9)

Thus, this study aims to explain whether the BRI has factored into Turkey's Asia policy and to what extent Ankara and Beijing are willing to cooperate under the BRI framework. To explain the latter, the study revolves around Turkey's Middle Corridor Initiative by emphasizing its commercial and connectivity role vis-a-vis the BRI. The secondary aim is to understand whether the BRI and MCI can work in tandem to realize mutual gains. Lastly, the overall objective of this research is to place the BRI and, to an extent, the MCI in Turkey's Asia policy formulation to analyze Turkey's role in Asian affairs in the foreseeable future. However, before these questions are addressed empirically, the chapter turns to provide a historical background to China-Turkey relations.

Background

The regions that comprise modern Turkey and China were connected, commercially and culturally, through the ancient Silk Road, which connected not only East and West Asia but also Asia, Europe, and Africa from the 2nd century B.C. till the 18th century. (10) Hence, the Turks traded with other nations especially the Chinese through the ancient Silk Road from the ancient, medieval to the early modern period. With the advent of the notion of nation-states post-French revolution in Europe, and later in Asia after the end of colonialism, the empire-state system such as the Ottoman morphed into the Westphalian statecraft grounded in the principles of territorial sovereignty, national integrity, and economic autonomy. (11) Therefore, the modern republic of Turkey, founded in 1923, cognized the nation-state characteristics and begun a new chapter in the determination and implementation of domestic and foreign policy.

With respect to foreign relations, the Ataturk-led Turkey pursued cordial ties with its neighbors in Europe and Asia. Indeed, it contacted the Chinese leadership, in 1934, in order to resume diplomatic relations that were ruptured on account of political transformation in both Turkey and China in the wake of World War I. (12) However, domestic politics took a revolutionary turn in China in the subsequent years and, owing to the indeterminacy of political authority in China, the latter could not establish formal relations with Istanbul which, in the post-World War II, tilted towards the U.S. and, importantly, became a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. (13) The ensuing Cold War, predicated on geopolitics ideologically, i.e., capitalism versus communism, prevented both Turkey and China from approaching each other diplomatically during the 1950s and 1960s. (14)

Nonetheless, the opportunity arose in 1971 owing to the Sino-American rapprochement, which was logistically supported by Pakistan. (15) Thus, the same year Turkey and China established diplomatic relations, though the degree of bilateral engagement remained very low during the 1970s owing largely to mutual mistrust, bureaucratic hurdles, Istanbul's pro-U.S./NATO stance, and China's introverted national policy under Mao. However, under Deng Xiaoping, China started 'opening up' towards the West particularly the U.S. whose insurance companies and banks registered remarkable interest to invest in the Shenzhen region of China. (16) Little wonder, in the 1980s, not only China's trade started growing with the U.S. and Europe, it also began to explore regional markets for exports consumption. Contextually, then, Turkey-China bilateral relations saw an upsurge diplomatically, commercially, and militarily as depicted in the following:

Since the state visit of the Deputy Chief of the Armed Forces of Turkey in 1983, Sino-Turkish military cooperation began to develop rapidly. Thereafter, Chinese Chief of General Staff Yang Dezhi visited Turkey in October 1985 and in November 1986 the Turkish Chief of General Staff Necdet Urug visited the People's Republic of China. In November 1992, China's Defense Minister, General Qin Jiwei led a military delegation to visit Turkey...[Moreover] in April 1993, Turkish Chief of General Staff General Dogan Gures, and the Minister of National Defense Nevzat Ayaz paid a visit to China and achieved a protocol. In return, Chinese Chief of General Staff Zhang Wannian paid a visit to Turkey in 1995. (17) As the above reflects, Sino-Turkish relations achieved stability though the scale remained limited, confined largely to military exchange and security cooperation for both Beijing and Istanbul found common grounds insofar as terrorism and ethnic separatism were concerned. China had for long viewed the Uighurs of Xinjiang, who are ethnically Turks with cross-cultural affinity with the Turkish people, from security lens whereby the Uighurs, by and large, were linked with ethnic separatism and incidence of terrorism in that autonomous region post 9/11. (18) Turkey, as a state and society, has traditionally seen the ethnic Muslim minority in China from a religio-civilizational perspective. (19) Such divergence of views marred the growth of statist and societal relations between the two countries and their people in the early 2000s.

However, while walking cautiously in foreign policy domain, both Beijing and Istanbul looked for areas of cooperation in a manner that could diminish mistrust and misgivings. Indeed, as a consequence of multiple reciprocal state visits of prime ministers, presidents, and military chiefs during 2001-2019, China-Turkey relations were mutually placed in the category of 'strategic cooperation' and, the most recent presidential visits from Beijing to Ankara and vice versa, have opened up new avenues for bilateral cooperation. (20) The following sections of the article elaborate it further.

The Belt and Road Initiative and Turkey

Though the advancements in communication and transportation technology post-World War II obscured the...