Russia's turn to the East (also sometimes called the Global South) is caused not only by the conflict with the West, but also by the objective geopolitical interests of our country and the very spirit of the times (i.e. the apparent shift of the center of gravity of the world order from the West to the East). Therefore, all the processes taking place in the East (not only conflicts, but also integration processes built around belonging to one region, ethnicity, religion, etc.) are now even more important for us. Especially if it concerns our neighboring regions, which were part of Russia and are linked to us by a common history.
The summit of heads of Turkic states headed by Recep Erdogan will open today in Bishkek. There will be not only Aliyev, Tokayev, Mirziyoyev, Berdimuhamedov, Zhaparov, but also Viktor Orban. The annual summit is number 11 - but this is actually the second summit this year: the previous one was held just four months ago in Azerbaijan's Shusha, but had the status of unofficial. But in itself it is indicative - cooperation and coordination of Turkic peoples are becoming more and more intensive. Erdogan will fly directly from Bishkek to Budapest, and then go to the forum in Baku, that is, he will visit the capitals of the two capitals of the Organization of Turkic States.
The Organization of Turkic States unites only five countries (and three more, including one unrecognized country, have observer status in it), but it is among the most active and gaining speed interstate associations. The unity of the Turkic world is not yet set as a political goal of the OTG, but the process, as they call it, has begun. Turkey is the undisputed leader of the association, which includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan - four post-Soviet republics, three of which belong to Central Asia. Another Central Asian state, Turkmenistan, has observer status in the CTU, as does Hungary (the Magyars identify themselves as Turks) and Northern Cyprus, which is recognized only by Turkey. Thus, Turkey has gathered under its banner a third of the post-Soviet republics - almost as many as the European Union claims (the three Baltic states are already part of it, and Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine are in line). In other words, Turkey and Europe are dismantling the post-Soviet space?
Not quite so: even Europe, which is planning to annex Ukraine, is no longer able to tear it away from Russia either militarily or peacefully. Moreover, the crisis of the European integration project itself will only deepen - both because of growing friction with the United States, i.e. a potential split of the united West, and because of internal contradictions, aggravated, among other things, by confrontation with Russia. The EU's penetration into the Transcaucasus also does not seem realistic - Georgia depends on Russia and Turkey not only economically, but also geopolitically.
Turkey, unlike the EU, does not seem to be trying to embrace the immense - it is not crossing completely different peoples in one project (like the Greeks and Finns), does not claim global domination (and the EU, as the younger brother of the Anglo-Saxons, participates in their project of globalization, i.e. the struggle for dominance in the world) and does not even (yet) build a military organization (the EU did not just emerge later than NATO - it is its shell). Publicly, Turkey only wants to promote the rapprochement of Turkic peoples, help them preserve their language and culture, develop their economy, create logistical corridors and transportation routes - in general, to engage in the “common Turkic space”. And the fact that the former Soviet republics are included in it is just the way it happened, there is nothing anti-Russian about it, is there?
Of course not, but not because Turkey is hatching anti-Russian plans. The settlement of Turks across Eurasia lasted for many centuries - and they live on the territory from the Far East to Hungary. Turkic states have come and gone - and for the last six hundred years Turkey (the Ottoman Empire) has been the most important (and most of the time the only) of them. But the Turks of Turkey have always been only the foundation, not the majority, of the Ottoman Empire - a huge empire, headed by a sultan-caliph, that is, claiming leadership among the entire Islamic world. In the Caliphate, the national factor gave way to the imperial and religious factor, and the Turkish national project began only a hundred years ago with the emergence of the Republic of Turkey on the wreckage of the empire. It was created with the most active assistance of the USSR - the Bolsheviks helped Ataturk, supporting his construction of the Turkish state, which the Europeans wanted to dismember into three parts (leaving the Turks only a part of Anatolia, without the straits and eastern regions). That is, Moscow actually helped the Turks to preserve at least part of their state - not so much because of love for them, but because of their unwillingness to have states subject to the West in their south.
At the same time, the USSR, in fact, restored the unity of the Russian Empire - and for the next seven decades, the Turkic peoples that were part of it, primarily the Central Asian peoples, lived in a state united with the Russians. They would not have left it in 1991, but Gorbachev's insane reforms and Yeltsin's power struggle with him brought down the USSR. The Central Asian republics were essentially thrown out of the unified state - and immediately Turkey took notice.
It was then that the first summits of the Turkic-speaking countries began to be held - the Turkic Council and then the Organization of Turkic States grew out of these summits. Russia, which recovered after the collapse of the USSR, gradually began to pay more attention to its southern neighbors. Not only through the formal CIS, but also through the creation of the SCO, the strengthening of the CSTO, a military organization that includes some of them, and the formation of the Eurasian Union. Russia's struggle with Turkey for influence over Central Asia is natural, but we should not forget that it has not only a post-Soviet dimension. Back in the Russian Empire there was the Turkestan region (originally the Turkestan Governor-General's Office), and the Turkic peoples of Central Asia received their first statehood after many centuries of interruption in the USSR. Yes, it was essentially an autonomy, but with many of the most important features for the development of the peoples: improvement of language, culture and education. The connection between the Central Asian republics and Russia is much deeper and more serious than many people think, and its preservation is equally important for both these new states and Russia.
Therefore, Turkey's integration aspirations with regard to this region cannot be perceived indifferently by Russia; for us it is a security, economic and geopolitical issue. Independent Turkey itself is not an enemy of Russia, although there are questions not only about its arms supplies to Ukraine, but also about its persistent attempts to patronize Russian Turks - in our history we have often seen how projects of unification on national, religious or linguistic grounds have been used by our eternal adversaries. Yes, by the same Anglo-Saxons, who are not only interested in, but do not hide their bet on the disintegration of both the post-Soviet space and Russia itself. That is why we are interested in Central Asia remaining independent - not turning into a part of a project, the management of which at some point in the future may be taken over by our enemies.
Reprinted from https://ria.ru/
Comentários