Uzbekistan as a Gateway for Turkey's Return to Central Asia.

• Author: Yalinkilicli, Esref
• Position: COMMENTARY - Essay

Since the fall of the former Soviet Union (USSR), Eurasia has emerged once again as the "geographical pivot of history" in calculations of the 21 (st) century's great game of geopolitics,' which is played by Russia, China and the U.S., as well as by some other regional powers like Turkey, Iran, India, Japan and South Korea. Grand theorists and strategists from Mackinder to Mahan and from Brzezinski to Dugin have all designated Eurasia as the "heartland" of the "world island" given the importance of its geopolitical landmass and geo-economic potentials. In their common understanding of politics, "whoever rules the heartland, would also rule over the world." (1)

As for Turkey, the geographical term of "Eurasia" has frequently referred to post-Soviet Turkic republics (of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan) with the promotion of the well-known ideology of Pan-Turkism (and/or Turanism) among Turkish intellectual circles and policymakers. (2) The revival of a neo-Pan-Turkism under the auspices of the then president Turgut Ozal steadily increased Turkish public awareness regarding common historical, linguistic, cultural and religious affinities with the peoples and states in post-Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus. Therefore, Turkey's relations with Central Asia have been since then discussed and explained with the affinities of Turkic roots and cultural interactions in the wake of the fall of communism.

However, the excessive usage of the rhetoric of Pan-Turkism has created some questions of rationality in Turkish foreign policy, which usually underestimated interior dynamics of the regional polity as well as its lack of effective instruments. (3) Even though Ankara's pragmatic policies seemed to have shown some successes in promoting the "Turkish model," (4) they were nevertheless not sufficient to overcome conventional Russian reserves in the region because of their ephemeral character at that time. Such idealism swerved Ankara into cul de sacs of the basin where the militant realism of international relations has been shaping regional and international politics. Consequently, Turkey's relations have gone awry with some of the regional actors, first and foremost with Uzbekistan, (5) the region's most populous country and geopolitically one of the most important countries.

In this context, this commentary will briefly deal with the significance of Uzbekistan for Turkish foreign policy that until now has failed to settle an intended partnership with Tashkent. It generally assumes that Uzbekistan is one of the key actors, besides Kazakhstan, which can help Turkey to reintegrate with the region in the next decade. In this way, this analysis suggests that Ankara should accelerate bilateral relations with Tashkent in the new era in which mutual understanding and regional cooperation would be essentially beneficial for both Turkey and Uzbekistan. In doing so, I will attempt to answer the question as to which areas of cooperation can be focused on, in order to resuscitate a long-neglected partnership with Uzbekistan, a country that is still trying to overcome hardships of the power transition in its domestic and foreign policies under a new leadership.

Turkey and Uzbekistan: What Went Wrong?

In the mood of the aforementioned pan-Turkish euphoria during the dissolution of the USSR, Turkey was the first country to recognize the independence of Uzbekistan on December 16, 1991. By the very beginning, bilateral relations were set fraternally and confidence-building measures acquired through the signing of the Treaty of Eternal Friendship and Cooperation on May 8, 1996. Yet, the Turkish-Uzbek relations -contrary to expectations- have tumultuously undergone a crisis in the course of time mostly due to misunderstandings and mismanagements in mutual relations.

The first serious crisis erupted during the early 1990s when Uzbekistan's post-Soviet leader Islam Karimov's political opponents took refuge in Turkey together with other Uzbek dissidents. (6) The founder of the Erk (Power) Party, Muhammed Salih, who ran a presidential bid against Karimov in 1991, and the chairman of Birlik (Unity) Party, Abdurrahim Polat, were welcomed by the Turkish leadership when they were forced to flee from Uzbekistan in 1993. As Karimov asked President Ozal to extradite these people, the Turkish government only decided to expel them from Turkey but refused Tashkent over their extradition. Upon the incident, the Karimov regime immediately called nearly 2,000 Uzbek students, studying in Turkey, back to Uzbekistan. Following this first diplomatic shock, Karimov took Uzbekistan away from any symbolic ideals of pan-Turkism as he failed to join the Summits of the Turkic Speaking Countries mostly because of the nationalist, if not the expansionist, agenda of those meetings. (7)

Ever since, Karimov chose to maintain Stalin's Soviet nationalities policy regarding the fabrication of a titular Uzbek identity during his more than a quarter-century of patrimonial regime. (8) Contrary to the Soviet times, he appealed to the Uzbek history and language rather than communism when he was trying to reinvent glorious past traditions of the age of Tamerlane and his successor Uzbek Khanates. (9) Besides that, a politically neutered Islam would either bring back spirituality, which had been destroyed under the Soviet communism, among the Uzbek people, or serve as a tool for the creation of a secular ideology through a state-constructed religion. (10)

In this regard, Turkey's laicist system might have been a model for the young Uzbek republic that was striving for the construction of this secular identity through education. But in reality, Turkey's influence was brought to Uzbekistan by the socalled 'Turkish schools' soon after the establishment of formal relations with Tashkent. Founded under the guidance of Fetullah Gulen, who is now a US.-based reclusive preacher and businessman believed, by the Turkish state and people, to be the mastermind of the July 15, 2016 coup attempt in Turkey. (1)

These schools were said to have been spreading the 'Turkish interpretation of Islam' in Central Asia. (12) Since Gulen schools had ostensibly undertaken the mission of the 're-Is-lamization of the post-communist Central Asia at the very beginning, those schools could endanger Kari-mov's blueprint modernization project which aimed at forging the new Uzbek identity as well as state cadres in line with the regime's secular policies.

On the other hand, Uzbekistan's own radicalization problem based in the Fergana Valley had already created some challenges as members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and other insurgent groups increased their radical presence through violence and terror in and around Tashkent in 1999. In this chaotic atmosphere, Karimov ordered the closure of all Gulen-affiliated schools and institutions in September 2000, as he tightened his grip on power by securitizing the country's radicalism and insurgency problems.

These schools were frequently promoted by the Turkish leadership from Turgut Ozal to Suleyman Demirel and Bxilent Ecevit throughout the 1990s in order to spread Turkey's soft power influences in the region. (13) The banning of the schools might be said to have divided the Turkish public and in the subsequent years substantially augmented the already-existing diplomatic rift between Ankara and Tashkent.

Therewithal, a third incident completely strained the relationship in May 2005 when a group of armed gunmen stormed a jail in the Uzbek city of Andijan, located in the restive Fergana region. As Uzbek security forces brutally suppressed the incident and killed several hundred people, (14) the issue provoked an international outcry. Then Turkey backed a UN resolution that addressed the Karimov regime's human rights record and supported some restrictive measures against Uzbekistan adopted by the Council of the European Union.

Turkey's move caused outrage on the Uzbek side, which accused Ankara of supporting radical groups in Uzbekistan. Afterwards, Karimov refused Turkey's former President Abdullah Gill's initiatives to repair the ties and declined to join the newly-established Turkic Council in 2009. (15) Since then, the parties have decreased the level of diplomatic relations and their top leaders, Erdogan and Karimov, only met on the sideline of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia.

Time to Mend Decadent Relations between Ankara and Tashkent

The geopolitical outlook of the region in general and Uzbekistan in particular, indicated that Ankara should restore its relations with Tashkent as soon as possible. On the other hand, the restoration of ties with Turkey will also help Uzbekistan to break its long-lasting isolationism which it inherited from the legacy of a post-Soviet transition under Islam Karimov. Today, Uzbekistan's...