Turkey's Comeback to Central Asia.

• Author: Balci, Bayram
• Position: COMMENTARY

Introduction

As regularly noted in academic sources and regional analyses, Turkey is situated at the crossroads of several regions that were historically dominated or targeted by Ottoman rulers. Regardless of what the leadership of post-Ottoman Turkey may have intended, the country has always been sensitive to political developments in the Middle East, the Balkans, the wider Black Sea region and the Mediterranean. Although never part of the Ottoman Empire, post-Soviet Central Asia has garnered equally strong interest among Turkish policymakers, not least because of ethnic, linguistic, and religious commonalities. Yet, Central Asia's position in Turkish foreign policy has received comparatively scant analytical attention in recent years, in part due to Turkey's deepening involvement in the Syrian civil war since 2013 and the concomitant deterioration in relations with its traditional Western allies. Nevertheless, despite foreign policy failures close to its own borders, Turkey has developed and maintained mostly positive relations with the Central Asian republics.

This commentary provides an overview of Turkish foreign policy in Central Asia and aims to shed light on Ankara's multifaceted approach to the region. Our main argument is that Turkey's Central Asia policy -although initially shaped by a romanticized and unrealistic pan-Turkic worldview- witnessed a fundamental reorientation towards more achievable policy goals from the mid-1990s. While ethnolinguistic identity never completely disappeared from Turkish policy vis-a-vis Central Asia, Turkey has largely dispensed with its pan-Turkic aspirations and has increasingly relied on a sophisticated combination of bilateral relations, multilateral institutions, economic linkages, and soft power initiatives to further its aims in the region.

The End of the Soviet Union: A Turning Point in Turkey-Central Asia Relations

The collapse of the Soviet Union signaled a new era in Turkey-Central Asia relations. (1) Now independent and compelled to formulate new foreign policies, the five former Soviet republics with majority Muslim and/or Turkic populations (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan) quickly emerged as potential partners for Turkey. Ankara was among the first to recognize their independence, but despite its eager diplomatic overtures and the ethnic and religious similarities it shared with these newly independent states, Turkey was not yet prepared to forge a strong relationship with the region. The combination of euphory and miscalculation vis-a-vis Central Asia negatively affected Turkey's initial policy toward the region.

As part of the Western Bloc and a member of NATO, Turkey received advice from Western partners in its efforts to formulate a policy toward Central Asia. (2) The dominant sentiment in the West was that the Central Asian republics were susceptible to Iranian and/or Saudi religious influence. On the other hand, Turkey-as a secular, relatively democratic, pro-Western, Muslim-majority country-could serve as a positive bridge between this new geopolitical space and the West. This idea was as widespread among high-level policymakers as it was among think tanks and diplomats, and it even received support from then U.S. president George H. W Bush in 1992. (3) In Central Asia, local authorities initially viewed Turkey as a good transition model from a centrally planned economy to a more liberal market-oriented system. Prior to adopting a critical policy toward Turkey, Uzbek President Islam Karimov was among the leaders who supported the idea of a Turkish model for Central Asia.

Despite widespread optimism for the Turkish model, however, Turkey's initial policy toward Central Asia proved untenable. To be sure, Western encouragement and Central Asian aspirations were overly optimistic and led to unrealistic initial expectations for Turkey. However, Turkey's sentimental visions of Central Asia bear the most responsibility for the ineffective policy direction. Turkish policymakers and diplomats naively thought that Turkey could cooperate with Central Asia to create -in the words of former President Suleyman Demirel-a new "Turkic World stretching from the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China." To realize this project, Turkey adopted various symbolic political measures. The first decision was to create a new bloc of countries around the idea of Turkishness and initiate Turkic summits, which gathered the leaders of Turkey and the four Turkic republics of Central Asia annually. These summits proved difficult to organize and Ankara soon realized that it was impossible to adopt political measures or unify participating countries around common principles. Moreover, Turkey was not economically powerful enough to help these countries implement meaningful liberal economic reforms.

Simultaneously, Turkeys European and American allies realized that there was no significant risk of Central Asia coming under the influence of an Iranian or Saudi model of development, due in part to the deep-rooted secularism in these societies. Western players thus toned down their promotion of the Turkish model and bolstered their own bilateral links with each individual country. For their part, Central Asian leaders knew they could open their countries to the world without Turkish assistance. Turkey likewise acknowledged that the Central Asian countries, despite cultural and religious commonalities, were very heterogeneous and had a range of different priorities in their respective state-building processes. As such, from 1996 onward, Turkey reverted to a more realistic Central Asia policy.

Turkey's New Priorities in Central Asia

Although Turkey eventually abandoned its romanticized notion of a new Turkic world, Ankara maintained ambitious objectives in Central Asia. To be sure, Turkey did not completely eschew ethnic identity as a basis for developing relations with the Turkic former Soviet republics. However, its position toward the region after 1996 has been underpinned by realistic policy instruments and long-term calculations. In political, economic, cultural, and religious spheres especially, Turkey relies on a sophisticated set of foreign policy tools vis-a-vis Central Asia.

Creating Conditions for Political Dialogue

While it no longer believes in a wide-spanning Turkic union, Turkey continues to cultivate multilateral relations with Central Asian states partially on the basis of ethnolinguistic identity. Turkey has pursued this vector primarily through Turk KeneSi (the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking States, CCTS, the Turkic Council). The Turkic Council was established in 2009 as an intergovernmental organization with the aim of promoting comprehensive cooperation among Turkic-speaking states. In particular, the organization strives to build political solidarity in the Turkic world and to promote economic and technical cooperation. Its four founding member states are Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkey. For its part, Turkmenistan showed no interest in joining the Turkic Council due to the neutrality officially enshrined in its constitution. Uzbekistan also forewent membership, but with the accession of Shavkat Mirziyoyev to the presidency in 2016, Tashkent began opting for a more open foreign policy and in April 2018 announced its intention to join the body. (4)

In tandem with this soft "pan-Turkist" integration project, which essentially treats Central Asia as a single entity, Turkey has developed a keen awareness of local regimes, populations and ethnonationalist aspirations. As such, Ankara has concurrently refocused its foreign policy on strengthening bilateral relations with each of these countries. (5)

As previously mentioned, Turkey initially aspired toward a single, integrated policy vis-a-vis Central Asia on account of the regions ethnic and religious similarities. It took some time before Ankara fully appreciated that the Soviet policy of ethnonational identity construction had been successful in the sense that Soviet authorities had managed to engineer new national identities in form, if not initially in content. Having realized the import and ultimate reification of local national identities, Turkey dispensed with its evocation of a common Turkic legacy. It also began praising the respective national identities and nation-building policies of each country.

Another...