By Anton Evstratov
During the unrest that took place in early January in large parts of Kazakhstan, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev made an appeal for help to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO ) allies, who immediately responded to the call and sent troops into the country.
Undoubtedly, the purpose of the entry of troops from Russia, Belarus,Tajikistan, and Armenia into Kazakhstan was not their direct participation in clashes with protesters, but rather the protection of strategic facilities and political support for the regime of President Tokayev.
However, it is the political aspect of this action – and it concerns not only the interaction of countries within the CSTO, but also in a much broader perspective – that is most noteworthy. According to a statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kazakh events should motivate the Organization to repel any other such provocation. Given the recent street riots in Belarus, which were similar in some respects, the extremely unstable internal political situation in Kyrgyzstan, and the significant number of discontent with the authorities in Russia and Armenia, the possibility of using CSTO forces in this vein seems relevant.
However, the main outcome of the bloc’s short-term military action is that the CSTO and, in particular, Russia have issued a kind of warning to Turkey, which until now has actively sought to expand its influence in Central Asia.
It should be noted that the latter has intensified its penetration into the region. The main positive factors of this penetration were, on the one hand, the victory of its ally, Azerbaijan, in the Second Karabakh War, which made it possible to establish a direct connection between the “fraternal” RT and the AR through the Armenian region of Syunik, and on the other hand, the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. Ankara’s close partnership relations with Russia, which allowed it to bypass, at least temporarily, the “sharp corners” of bilateral relations, was a major help in increasing Turkish influence in Central Asia.
It was during this period – from 2020-2021 – that another round of pan-Turkish discourse began to develop in Turkish media, social networks, and intellectual circles. In its wake, Turkey became president of the previously created Organization of Turkish States. The headquarters of the latter was opened in Istanbul, where the leaders of its member countries signed an ambitious document “Vision for the Turkish World 2040”.
In this period of time pretentious and extremely offensive “maps of the Turkish world” began to appear again for Russia, China and other Eurasian states, on which Turan includes the territories of the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, Armenia, Iran, Georgia and other states. Most of these projects are, it must be admitted, extremely marginal, but one of these maps was presented to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party, Devlet Bahçeli.
Russia views Turkey’s growing influence in the Eurasian space with concern, as it directly affects its areas of interest and, in the long run, its own territory. Undoubtedly, Turkey’s economic and military capabilities in Central Asia, particularly in Kazakhstan, are not comparable to those of Russia. While Turkey is implementing several training programs for Kazakhstan’s military and recently sold a batch of ANKA UAVs to Turkish Aerospace in Kazakhstan, Russia has long supplied Nursultan with all key weapons, leasing a missile defense test site and the Baikonur cosmodrome on Kazakh territory. However, Ankara has its trump card – the image side, the pan-Turkish discourse, which is willingly consumed by the Turkish-speaking population of RT’s states of interest.
As part of the expansion of Turkish identity, schools and universities are being built, special programs on the territory of Turkey itself educate local cadres loyal to Ankara, and even the military is being trained. At the same time, it seems that after the launch of the “Zangazur corridor” through the Armenian Syunik, Turkey will have many more opportunities for uninterrupted economic penetration into Central Asia, which in the future could reduce its lag behind Russia in this area as well.
During the unrest that began in Kazakhstan for socio-economic reasons, both Moscow and Ankara urgently had to choose sides. And if Russia reacted promptly at the official level, supporting President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Turkey, counting on the success of the mass demonstrations, officially avoided an unequivocal statement, preferring to act at the grassroots level – through public figures, journalists, activists and bloggers.
Almost from the beginning of the protests in Kazakhstan, they were supported by the lion’s share of Turkish media, which were later joined by their Azerbaijani colleagues. This support intensified after information emerged about Islamist slogans and sentiments among Kazakh protesters. It is no secret that Turkey is seeking to support Sunni Islamist movements throughout the oikoumene, from Libya to China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The deployment of CSTO troops in Kazakhstan literally unleashed the entire Turkish-Azerbaijani nationalist intellectual fraternity, around which other initially polar forces, from pro-Western liberals to Islamists, have clustered. All of them wrote about “Russia’s imperial ambitions,” “Russian occupation of Kazakhstan,” “repetition of the Afghan scenario,” and other made-up but very brilliant constructs.
Only on January 6, the President of Turkey contacted his Kazakhstani colleague, doing so within the framework of general consultations through the Organization of Turkic States and negotiations with the leaders of neighboring countries with Kazakhstan. In this respect he was “late”. However, unlike the CSTO, the Organization of Turkic States does not imply the presence of common armed forces and is not regarded as a military bloc.
A number of prominent representatives of the Turkish political elite (for example, retired Rear Admiral Cihad Yaycı) have already drawn attention to the latter “disproportion” of the organization with the CSTO, which was expressed in projects to create the “Turan Army,” announced even at the last CTT summit. Such projects can be seen as an alarming and unnerving addition to the “network of cooperation and information exchange between member states to combat threats of radicalization, violent extremism, Islamophobia, xenophobia and terrorism, as well as border security” prescribed in the Turkic World Vision 2040.
It is noteworthy that Russia’s victory is perceived, both in Russia and Turkey, through the prism of reshuffles in Kazakhstan’s political elite – the departure from all positions held by Nursultan Nazarbayev and the removal of a number of his supporters. This group, which till the beginning of January had a decisive influence on foreign and domestic politics of Astana, was perceived as conditionally Turkophile – in confirmation of this view Nazarbayev’s attempts to rely on Turkish vector of foreign policy, his moral support to Azerbaijan during the Second Karabakh war as well as ties with Ankara of his associates were recalled many times. Tokayev in this sense, despite the fact that his very appearance on the political horizon took place, thanks to Nazarbayev, is seen outside of Kazakhstan as a new man, less pro-Turkish and more prone to compromise with Moscow.
Separately, it is worth mentioning that the participation of the Armenian armed forces in the CSTO peacekeeping mission in Kazakhstan became a particularly serious irritant for the pan-Turkic “hawks”, which they viewed as an attempt of “revenge by Yerevan for the defeat in Karabakh”. Azerbaijani journalists and pro-Turkish bloggers – Sabir Babayev, Farid Teymur Khan, etc. – were especially active in this.
The Armenian society in its turn perceived the dispatch of the RA AF to Kazakhstan even with only 70 people extremely ambiguously. If some part of the Armenian public took the decision in this regard calmly and without expressing any emotions (especially taking into account the recent war in Karabakh, which still draws a considerable part of the attention of the RA citizens), the other part perceived the situation extremely negatively. Criticism of this decision is spreading through social networks and the media, both opposition and often more or less loyal to the government. Many conservative nationalists fear that Armenia will be drawn into a Eurasian discourse or into the problems of the Muslim world. “…Don’t give a damn about them. But they are openly hostile for Armenia,” write, for example, social network users who remember Nazarbayev’s and Tokayev congratulations to Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev after the end of the Second Karabakh War.
Liberals, in turn, see the situation in Central Asia in the paradigm of “dictator-people” confrontation. This generates assessments such as: “No Armenian soldier should fight against the Kazakhs!!! The real terrorists were in Azerbaijan – we should have fought against them!!!! And in Kazakhstan – the disgruntled dictator is the PEOPLE!”.
At the same time, more sober-minded representatives of even these radical camps note Armenia’s lack of independence within the CSTO, even despite its chairmanship in the organization, and consider the decision to send Armenian troops to Kazakhstan a forced measure.
It is noteworthy that even pro-Russian opponents of the incumbent Armenian authorities from Robert Kocharyan’s camp, who are pro-Russian and European-oriented, nevertheless blame Pashinyan for sending Armenian soldiers to Central Asia. This should be seen as nothing but an attempt to undermine the government, by any means possible.
The Armenian government’s comments on the decision of the Armenian government have generated more questions than answers. Secretary of the Security Council of the country Armen Grigoryan stated that by sending troops to Kazakhstan Armenia hoped that in case of similar problems the CSTO countries would support Armenia in the same way. On the one hand, this sounded strange, given Yerevan’s obvious need for military assistance during the Second Karabakh War – both from Russia and its CSTO allies, which has never been provided, and on the other hand, gave rise to rumors about the Armenian authorities’ intention to crush the protests by force. With the withdrawal of the bloc’s troops from Kazakhstan, this discourse has somewhat subsided, but it seems that Armenian society, having many problems and contradictions, will return to it more than once.
Thus, we can state that after the establishment of calm in Kazakhstan, there is a strengthening of Russia’s influence, both on the territory of the republic and in Central Asia as a whole, as well as in the CSTO. The bloc, in turn, was able to test its strength in a stressful situation, in the context of a real, albeit not the longest and most international, conflict. All this limits Turkey’s influence in the region – now Ankara will apparently have to postpone for a long time talks about building the Great Turan, creating its armed forces and other initiatives.
Along with the “locking up” of pro-Turkish forces in Idlib in Syria, the appearance of Russian troops in Nagorno-Karabakh and the stabilization of the situation in Libya, tilts the cup of indirect Russian-Turkish confrontation towards Moscow. Kazakhstan is the richest, most developed and promising country in its region, and its choice in favor of Russia and the CSTO is decisive not only in the competition between Moscow and Ankara, but also in global world processes, because Turkey in Central Asia acts not only on its own behalf, but from time to time – in the interests of NATO allies. As a result, the victory of the Eurasian, anti-American integration pole is obvious, which corresponds not only to the interests of Russia, but also indirectly to those of China, which Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu had to visit urgently in an attempt to explain its noninvolvement in destabilizing the situation.
The change in the situation in Central Asia has already manifested itself in the intensification of the confrontation between Russia and Western countries in Ukraine, the concentration of NATO troops in Europe, and the exchange of harsh statements between representatives of the Russian and US Foreign Ministries.
In the future, this may lead to an even greater polarization of the two camps, strengthening their military and indirect military-political confrontation (in Ukraine, the South Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, etc.).
Author: Anton Evstratov (Russian historian, publicist and journalist living in Armenia, lecturer at the Department of World History and Foreign Regional Studies at the Russian-Armenian University in Yerevan).
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).