CENTRAL ASIA Greater Turkey dream grows

Summit of Turkish-speaking countries in Uzbekistan, Erdogan’s creature for the revival of the “Ottoman dream”. Ankara’s pressure on Turkmenistan, which still remains a mere observer. An integration process that has been carried out since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The war in Ukraine could give more relevance to the “Turkish” bloc.

Moscow () – A two-day summit of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) opened yesterday in Samarkand, marking the start of Uzbekistan’s presidency at the head of the bloc. The meeting was introduced by the head of the Department of Regional Relations of Tashkent, Rakhmatilla Nurimbetov, who presented the agenda of the summit. The development of trade relations, the simplification of bureaucratic processes related to transport and communication routes, customs assistance and the opening of new border corridors are being discussed. All this will be signed by the Member States in a document pompously entitled “Samarkand Declaration”.

Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey participate as founding countries in the OET summit – founded in 2009 under the name “Turkic Council”. Uzbekistan officially joined the group in 2018, and participated in the Baku meeting the following year. Hungary and Turkmenistan joined with observer status. The name change of the OET was decided a year ago at the Istanbul assembly, under the leadership of President Erdogan, who sees in this collaboration the rebirth of the “Ottoman dream” of the great Turkey.

The Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevljut Çavuşoğlu, had declared in September that Turkmenistan would participate as a full member of the OET, but without clarifying whether this formality would take place in Samarkand. However, Ashgabat sent to Samarkand the former president and head of the Senate Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and not his son, the current president Serdar. On behalf of Budapest, Prime Minister Viktor Orban participates.

The prestige of the Turkmen “father of the country”, the so-called arkadag, who handed over the leadership of the country to his son, expresses, on the one hand, the high regard of the OET, but, on the other, lowers the official rank of the Ashgabat delegation. In this sense, the Turkmen government continues to reserve the right to remain outside of full membership, defending its traditional principle of separation and reserve with respect to all international relations.

Turkmenistan emphasized this reserved dimension even recently, when it asked Turkey to cancel the visa-free entry regime between the two countries, in force for more than 15 years, also to better control the passage of citizens not related to the Berdymukhamedov regime. Until 2021, Ashgabat did not join the OTS as an observer, and in April this year Gurbanguly entered the “Council of Elders” of the Turkic Organization, the body’s governing body.

Turkey has a special interest in relations with the Turkmen, whom it considers the “closest relatives” of the neo-sultanate. Indeed, Erdogan has made several calls to Turkmenistan in recent years to push for more structured engagement. However, Ashgabat insists on the need to quell the movement of Turkmen dissidents living in Turkey, and until it achieves convincing results, it will remain on the sidelines.

The union of the Turkish-speaking countries is a process that has been going on since the end of the USSR, when on October 30, 1992 representatives of the Central Asian countries, which, in various ways, have relationship with Turkish history and cultural tradition. The initiator was the then Turkish President Turgut Ozal, and the first post-Soviet leaders from five countries participated in that meeting: Saparmurat Niyazov from Turkmenistan, Islam Karimov from Uzbekistan, Nursultan Nazarbayev from Kazakhstan, Askar Akaev from Kyrgyzstan and Abulfaz Elčibej from Azerbaijan. Tajikistan, a Central Asian country of Iranian and non-Turkish descent, does not participate.

The events of recent years, especially the Russian conflict in Ukraine, have profoundly changed the general picture not only of relations in Central Asia and Turkey, but in all post-Soviet balances. As a consequence, the role of the OET could be much more incisive, and not merely symbolic as it has been until now.