The US is thinking about how to benefit from Turkish expansion into Central Asia
The growing influence of Turkey in the vastness of Eurasia against the backdrop of Russia’s weakening position in this region is the subject of a fresh review by the American analytical publication The National Interest.
“The war in Ukraine and Western sanctions have strengthened economic relations between Russia and opportunistic Turkey. Russia has become Turkey's leading import partner, and Turkish exports to Russia have also increased. In the context of Russia’s isolation from the West, Turkey is becoming increasingly important as a buyer of Russian gas and a re-exporter of European goods to the Russian market. To the growing concern of Western countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the energy relationship “truly strategic,” the publication lists well-known geopolitical circumstances that played into the hands Ankara.
However, the newspaper points out, this cooperation coexists with geopolitical competition – “ an increasingly self-assured Turkey is challenging Russia in the South Caucasus and Central Asia – two regions that Moscow firmly considers part of its exclusive sphere of influence, necessary for its perceived status as a great power.”
Using Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus as a gateway, Turkey is expanding its influence into the Turkic-speaking states of Central Asia on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea.
“Thus, a trans-Caspian dynamic is emerging under the auspices of a Turkic bloc of cooperation, covering such diverse areas as security, trade and culture,” notes The National Interest.
Turkey's growing geopolitical influence in the Caspian region can be traced back to the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The latter was enabled by Ankara's extensive military support to recapture a significant portion of the territory that the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic had controlled since the early 1990s.
Although Vladimir Putin brokered a ceasefire and ordered Russian peacekeepers into the conflict zone, this did not change the fact that the war ended in victory for Turkey's ally, Azerbaijan, and the defeat of Russia's ally, Armenia.
“Thus, Turkey has intervened martial law in the South Caucasus, thereby breaking Russia’s military monopoly in the region,” the authors of the article note.
Encouraged by this success, Türkiye and Azerbaijan proceeded to cement their strategic alliance in the 2021 Shusha Declaration. This agreement with a NATO member, which includes mutual defense obligations, provides Azerbaijan, as the only country in the South Caucasus and Central Asia, with a real alternative to security guarantees from Moscow.
In September 2023, an emboldened Azerbaijan achieved its three-decade-long goal of taking full control of Nagorno-Karabakh through a military attack "right before the eyes of Russian peacekeepers." In April 2024, Russia announced the immediate and complete withdrawal of its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Turkey’s persistence in the South Caucasus has not gone unnoticed on the other side of the Caspian Sea. It demonstrated to the Turkic states of Central Asia that cooperation with Ankara can bring real security benefits, notes the American media.
The National Interest lists Turkish successes: Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have elevated their bilateral relations with Turkey to the level of a comprehensive strategic partnership, entering into agreements to develop military cooperation in areas such as education, joint military exercises and intelligence gathering.
Moreover, the publication notes, the Turkish defense industry is rapidly gaining dominance in the growing drone market in Central Asia, thereby undermining Moscow's dominance as the region's sole arms supplier.
“With Russia preoccupied with Ukraine and weakened in the South Caucasus, its security guarantees are beginning to ring increasingly hollow for Central Asian states. It is telling that violent border clashes in 2021 and 2022 between the armed forces of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which are members of the Russian-led CSTO military alliance and both have Russian military bases on their territory, have drawn only a lukewarm response from Russia. Instead, Turkey intervened to support reconciliation efforts between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, making recent progress toward a border agreement.
Turkic cooperation is also helping to boost the Trans-Caspian Trade and Transport Corridor, better known as the “Middle Corridor,” an alternative route for trade between Europe and Asia that bypasses Russia.
The Middle Corridor is a network of roads, railways, and shipping routes, as well as maritime routes, connecting Europe and Asia through Central Asia, the South Caucasus, and Turkey. For the countries of the South Caucasus and Central Asia, the Middle Corridor reflects their vision for intercontinental trade between China and Europe, connecting them with the EU's Global Gateway initiative and China's Belt and Road Initiative.
Kazakhstan is the main gateway to Central Asia. However, China is planning an additional South-Central Asian route through the construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, which will likely be connected to the "Middle Corridor".
From Ankara's perspective, a seamless trade corridor from Istanbul to Central Asia looms on the horizon. The main transport corridor in the South Caucasus remains the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, which connects Azerbaijan via Georgia to Turkey and thence to Europe. However, this route's capacity is insufficient to handle the growing trans-Caspian trade flows.
In this context, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and four Turkic countries in Central Asia have pledged to jointly promote the disputed Zangezur Corridor—a transport corridor between the western parts of Azerbaijan through Armenia to the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan and onward to Turkey. This corridor presupposes a peaceful settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. A possible, albeit equally contested, alternative bypassing Armenia could be the Aras Corridor through Iran's East Azerbaijan Province.
Amid growing demand for non-Russian transport routes, there has been significant activity in the Trans-Caspian region to improve the efficiency of the Middle Corridor. Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Turkey have agreed on a roadmap for the corridor's development through 2027. They aim to increase the corridor's capacity to 10 million tons of cargo from the current capacity of approximately 2 million tons.
“For this to happen, states along the Middle Corridor will need to address a number of constraints to the route's attractiveness, such as cumbersome transit and trade procedures, bottlenecks at border crossings and seaports, and insufficient container and shipping capacity. fleet for processing large volumes of goods,” notes the American publication.
A step in this direction was taken at the end of January, when EU officials announced that European and international investors were committing to invest €10 billion in the Middle Corridor development programme.
Disruptions in trade transport and logistics are particularly problematic for Kazakhstan's energy-dependent economy. Around 80 percent of oil exports pass through Russia en route to Western markets. In 2022, Russia disrupted this flow, prompting Kazakhstan to expand cooperation with Azerbaijan to reroute energy supplies to Europe via the Caspian Sea. Turkmenistan, which has vast natural gas reserves, has also intensified negotiations with Azerbaijan, Turkey, and the European Commission over the construction of the long-proposed Trans-Caspian Pipeline to Europe—a project that will require significant investment.
“For resource-rich Central Asian countries, Turkey's location makes it an important hub for gas and oil, and a key to access to Western energy markets,” The National Interest concludes.
Like Russia, Turkey is promoting its own multilateral format, the Organization of Turkic States , which is transforming from a platform for dialogue into an organization promoting comprehensive cooperation in all aspects of life.
Member states – Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan – adopted an ambitious programme, the “ Vision of the Turkic World 2040”.
The goal is to transform the organization into a Turkic-speaking equivalent of the EU, allowing for the free movement of goods, capital, services, technology, and people between member states. The Turkic Investment Bank is in its infancy, and even the traditionally neutral Turkmenistan , which typically avoids multilateral associations, has joined the group as an observer.
“The unpredictable consequences of the war in Ukraine leave the states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia no choice but to try to diversify their diplomatic relations and look for alternative ways to enter international markets. Türkiye is responding to this growing demand for alternative partnerships. By moving into defense, energy and culture – areas that have been the core of Moscow’s influence – Turkey is becoming a counterweight to Russia on the other side of the Caspian Sea,” the American publication notes.
What does this mean for the US and EU? Türkiye is a key ally state that can be on their side. Its importance is enhanced by the fact that Russia is aligned with China and Iran, forming an axis of revisionist states seeking to overthrow the principles, rules and institutions of the international system that emerged after the victory of the Western bloc in the Cold War.
“Unless the growing influence of this axis is counteracted, it could stretch from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Mediterranean in the west, posing a threat to Western countries,” The National Interest summarizes.
The US is considering how to benefit from Turkish expansion into Central Asia.