In November 2022, the leaders of the Organization of Turkic States met in Uzbekistan.
As the war in Ukraine fuels a sense that Russia's long-standing influence in Central Asia is
finally coming to an end, and with growing concerns about China's role in the region,
could we now be seeing the emergence of an important new geopolitical bloc?
Hello and welcome. If you're new to the channel, my name is James Ker-Lindsay and
here I take an informed look at international relations, conflict, security and statehood.
While we tend to think of international relations in terms of sovereign states
pursuing their own individual agendas, the growth of international organisations since
1945 has shown that states often choose to come together for one reason or another.
In some cases, this could be because they share a particular political,
economic, or security outlook.
At other times, it may be centred on building stronger regional cooperation.
Sometimes it may be focused on religious affinity, or some sort of historical relationship.
However, there have also been examples where
groups of states that share particular ethno-national links come together.
One of the most interesting emerging examples on the international stage
is the growing efforts by the Turkic states to build closer cooperation.
But what exactly lies behind this group? And is this something that we should really be watching?
Spanning an arc stretching from Europe to China,
the Turkic states are widely understood to include six specific countries:
Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.
On top of this, there are also Turkic communities in a number of countries, including Russia,
China, Iran, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Georgia, Greece, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Cyprus.
Taken together, the six countries span 4.7 million square kilometres, or 1.8 million square miles.
As a single state, this would make it the seventh largest country in the world.
Their combined population is 162 million; of which over half live in Turkey.
This would make it the world's ninth most populous states.
Economically, their total GDP stands at almost 1.2 trillion dollars.
Combined, this would make it the 15th largest economy in the world.
The countries are linked predominantly by language.
Closely related, they form a single language family - albeit divided into several branches.
There are also close religious ties.
The large majority of Turkic peoples adhere to Sunni Islam, although many are in fact secular.
The exception is Azerbaijan, which is predominantly Shia.
In addition, there are also Christian Turkic communities in Russia and Moldova.
The Turkic peoples are generally thought to trace their roots to
the Altai mountains around present-day Russia, China, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia.
In the 6th Century, they pushed westwards conquering much of Central Asia.
This Turkic Empire - centred on the famous Silk Road - would lay the foundations for a cultural,
trading and intellectual interaction between the East and West that would last for several
hundred years, when the area eventually fell under Mongol and then Chinese rule.
Meanwhile, the Turkic expansion continued beyond and their original heartlands.
Having converted to Islam in the 8th century,
in the 11th century the Seljuk Turkic tribe pushed into the Middle East.
Quickly taking effective control of much of the Islamic world, from there they then
moved northwest into the Anatolian Peninsula - the heartland of the Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium.
However, the key turning point came at the very end of the 13th century when a small Turkish tribe
that had established itself close to the Aegean Sea began to dramatically expand its territories.
Overrunning the Byzantine capital in 1453, for the next 350 years the Ottoman Turks
would control large parts of Southeast Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
Effectively separated for over a thousand years, during the 19th century the eastern
and western Turkic peoples faced a joint challenge from the growth of Imperial Russia.
Having brought Central Asia and the Caucasus under its control,
it posed an increasing threat to the Ottoman Empire.
However, the First World War changed everything. And in doing
so laid the foundations for today's Turkic States.
Over in east, the fall of the Russian Tsarist regime, and the emergence of the Soviet Union,
led to the creation of the Soviet Socialist republics in the 1920s
and 30s that formed the basis of today's Central Asian republics and Azerbaijan.
Meanwhile, over in the west, the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire led to the emergence of the European facing Republic of Turkey.
Taking a profoundly different route from the increasingly Russified Caucasus and Central Asia,
the estrangement between the two parts of the Turkic world became
particularly entrenched during the Cold War.
Having joined NATO, for the next four decades Turkey would have almost no
relations with the Turkic peoples of Central Asia.
All this, however, would change in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Alongside the other republics of the USSR, the five predominantly Turkic
republics became sovereign independent states, joining the United Nations on 2 March 1992.
From the start, Turkey tried to extend its influence over the new states.
As well as being the first country to recognise them,
in October 1992 it convened a summit in Ankara.
But while this was followed up by other initiatives, such as the establishment of
the International Organization of Turkic Culture,
Turkey's attempts to create and lead a new bloc came to very little.
Despite having won their independence, the republics remained closely tethered
to Moscow - economically, politically and socially.
As well as joining the Commonwealth of Independent States, substantial Russian
communities remained in the republics; especially in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Moreover, Russian remained the regional common language.
As a result, Turkey's focus soon drifted.
Having failed to make headway in Central Asia, it returned to its primary concern:
its long-standing attempt to join the European Union.
And apart from a close relationship with nearby Azerbaijan, with which it shares a border,
Turkey and the Turkic republics failed to build strong ties throughout the 1990s.
However, this slowly began to change at the turn of the Millennium.
In 2002, Turkey ushered in a new era when the Justice and Development Party,
led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came to power.
While it's initially focused on the country's EU membership,
by the end of the decade Erdogan was starting to look to broader horizons.
Seeing himself as some sort of leader who would extend Turkey's influence over the
Balkans and the Middle East, Erdogan also began to see Turkey as a major international
actor building influence far further afield, including the Turkic states of Central Asia.
The first indications of this new relationship came in October 2009, when Turkey and three
other Turkic states - Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan - formed a new organization:
the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking States, more generally known as the Turkic Council.
In 2011 the group held its first summit in Almaty, in Kazakhstan.
Promising to open new economic, political, trading,
and cultural links between the countries, in the years that followed it expanded.
Hungary and Turkmenistan became observers in 2014 and 2021,
and Uzbekistan became the group's fifth full member in 2019.
But for all the hopes of closer cooperation, the Council achieved little of note.
Indeed, it came to be seen as merely a discussion forum.
That said, there were some other steps to build ties.
One of the most interesting, and rather amusing, came in 2013.
Fed up with its persistently bad performance at the Eurovision Song Contest, Turkey
established its own rather unoriginally named music competition, Turkvision.
However, after years of relatively little activity, things have started to change.
The first real indications of this came in late 2021 when the Council
decided to change its name to the Organization of Turkic States.
Clearly designed to give the group a higher profile and new impetus, this has since been
cemented at the Organization's most recent summit, which took place in Uzbekistan in November 2022.
There the leaders agreed on a package of new measures designed to strengthen
the groups activities, including the creation of a Turkic Investment Fund.
Controversially, it also admitted the otherwise internationally unrecognised Turkish Republic
of Northern Cyprus as an observer - a decision that's led to widespread international criticism.
But while the drive for greater cooperation amongst the Turkic states seems to have
been driven by a genuine wish for more integration, the situation has also been shaped
by wider geopolitical factors; most notably Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.
Since the start of the war, there's been a growing sense that Moscow's long-standing
influence over the region is starting to decline - and surprisingly quickly.
For example, observers have noted how Kazakhstan,
despite being a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization,
the CSTO, has steadfastly avoided signalling any support for Moscow's actions in Ukraine
and seems to be looking to distance itself from Russia more generally.
Likewise, similar trends have also been seen with Uzbekistan.
Meanwhile, they have been latent tensions growing between Russia and Azerbaijan.
This came after Moscow stopped Baku from driving out Armenian forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and put
in place a Russian peacekeeping force; a move that cemented Russia's presence in the region.
But there's also another factor: China.
While many of the countries have established close ties with Beijing,
they are nevertheless nervous about China's growing strength
and influence over the region through its Flagship Belt and Road initiative.
Aiming to establish trading links stretching across Asia and Africa and into Europe,
Central Asia is a key part of this.
Clearly, therefore, there are good reasons for the
Turkic countries to work together far more closely.
And there also seems to be a growing awareness of the potential value of
their strong ethnocultural ties - even though there's a long history of separation between
the Turkic communities in the East and the Turkish people in the west.
But does all this mean we will see the Turkic states work together more closely?
And should we think of it as a new geopolitical bloc in the making?
Certainly, there are those who do want to see something far more significant emerge.
For example, some leading voices within the Organization of Turkic States have even gone as
far as to suggest that it could become a political community modelled on the European Union.
But whether this will in fact translate into a
firm grouping along the lines of the EU is obviously hard to say at this stage.
In truth, a lot will depend on the impetus for integration .
Will the group articulate a vision for where it wants to go?
Tied to this, there's the question of leadership. Who will oversee such an effort?
The obvious candidate is Turkey - and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in particular.
Having moved further from Europe, locked in an increasingly strained
love-hate relationship with Russia, and with a growing eye on his legacy,
Erdogan may want to cement his influence as the leader of the Turkic world.
And Turkey, as a country, may also feel that it has a natural right to lead such a group.
Aside from being the most populous country in the Organization, it's also the wealthiest.
But, of course, the question is whether the other leaders would
want to see Turkey take such an obviously dominant role.
In this sense, there are key questions that need to be answered.
Nevertheless, one can't help but feel that the growing ties between
the Turkic states are now underpinned by a much more tangible sense of purpose.
For all these reasons, it would certainly seem to be an important situation worth watching.
We may well be seeing the emergence of a new geopolitical grouping.
And if you're interested in Turkey or Central
Asia here are some other videos you might also want to watch.
Thanks and see you in the next video.