Turkey stakes a Central Asian
claim By Federico Bordonaro
The Turkish Foreign Ministry outlined
Ankara's ambitious Central Asian strategy in an
interesting comment in the EU Observer on May 3.
The administration of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan thinks Europe should consult Turkey on
Central Asia as the latter becomes increasingly
important for Euro-Atlantic energy security. Hence
Turkey is redrawing its diplomatic strategy in the
region with a clear goal in mind: being the
indispensable nation for Western interests in
Central Asia.
Turkey is not new to
ambitious foreign-policy goals in Central
Asia. Right after the Soviet
collapse, Ankara envisaged itself playing a
greater role in the region (China's Xinjiang
included) by exploiting common ethnic, linguistic,
cultural and religious ties with the former Soviet
countries Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and
Kyrgyzstan, as well as non-Turkic Tajikistan.
Both power-prestige motivations and
economic interests, such as opening up new markets
for Turkish goods and developing Central Asia's
huge energy potentials, prompted Ankara to
announce a new "Turkic policy". Such a vision was
reminiscent of Pan-Turkism as it encompassed
Ankara's geopolitical ambitions from
Bosnia-Herzegovia to Xinjiang through the South
Caucasus.
While Washington seemed to look
at it favorably, as Turkey's interests were
opposed to those of Russia and Iran in Central
Asia, Moscow and Tehran were obviously less than
thrilled by the perspective of a modern rendition
of the Ottoman Empire.
However, Ankara's
plans of the 1990s never came close to
realization, both for political and for economic
reasons. Central Asia's newly independent states
were not eager to substitute Russian domination
with Turkish hegemony, but instead tried to launch
a balanced foreign policy that would guarantee
independence while boosting oil and gas exports.
Kazakhstan largely succeeded, while Turkmenistan
opted for a kind of neutralism aimed at securing
the late Saparmurat Niyazov's autocratic rule.
Also, Ankara could not exercise any
overwhelming influence in the new states, although
it could play the cultural card, since it didn't
have the necessary economic strength for a more
conquering policy. Turkey, thus, downgraded its
ambitions throughout the 1990s and concentrated
more and more on its EU-accession bid.
During the same period, China's
spectacular economic growth boosted Beijing's
political influence globally, particularly in
Central Asia, while President Vladimir Putin's
restructuring of Russia's power base since 2000
quickly put Moscow in a position to influence the
game strongly. After September 11, 2001, Central
Asian states have been increasingly courted by all
great powers, but instead of choosing a rigid
solution, they have consistently tried to build
complex webs of security and economic ties with
Washington, the EU, Russia, China, Turkey, India
and Iran.
At any rate, Turkey found a new
track for channeling its Central Asian ambitions
after September 2001. The US needed its Turkish
ally for both political-ideological and economic
reasons. Ankara provided the Central Asian states
- and Afghanistan - a model of a secular Muslim
democracy that the US could use in the struggle
against jihadism. At the same time, Turkey became
a geopolitical pivot in the energy game after the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline was completed
in 2005.
The successful implementation of
the BTC paved the way for new projects aimed at
transporting Central Asian oil and (especially)
natural gas toward Europe through Turkey, making
the latter a vital energy hub.
Paradoxically, Ankara rose to this role
precisely when more and more EU members started to
express hostility to its accession bid. Europe's
cumbersome functioning, its enlargement fatigue
after the 2004 expansion, and European public
opinion's growing opposition to the integration of
a large Muslim state has made the EU-Turkey
dialogue increasingly difficult in the past three
years.
However, Europe's emergent energy
dependence on Russian natural gas prompted
Brussels to forge an enhanced European
Neighborhood Policy (ENP plus) that gives the
utmost importance to security and energy ties with
Trans-Caucasian and Central Asian states.
As a result, Turkey can now play a new
card. Since competition in Central Asia is
becoming continuously augmented, Turkey may be
crucial to enhancing Europe's chances to vie
successfully with China and Russia.
But
because Europe is closing its doors to Ankara, the
latter isn't acting within the framework of ENP.
Instead, it is trying to augment its own influence
in the region in such a way that Europe's strategy
will need to play the Turkish card.
Can
Turkey help open up Turkmenistan? The holder
of huge natural-gas reserves, Turkmenistan has a
huge stake in the Central Asian energy game.
Immediately after Niyazov's sudden death last
December, big powers tried to influence the
political game in the quasi-isolated former Soviet
nation. While Gazprom - thus Russia - seems to
have the upper hand, Western powers haven't given
up their hope that Niyazov's successor, Gurbunguly
Berdymukhammedov, will try to start a cautious
opening of Turkmenistan's energy market.
Ankara's approach in Turkmenistan is that
of strengthening its alliance with Ashgabat by
insisting on common cultural, ethnic and religious
roots. Young Turkmens are increasingly attracted
by Turkey, and Erdogan's visit to the country last
February aimed at expanding business connections
between the two countries.
While the
German-led ENP appears on the right track in
Kazakhstan, Russian influence in Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan seems strong enough to frustrate
European desires of reorienting those nations'
foreign policy in a more pro-Western sense.
Turkish aid may then prove necessary for Europe.
Ankara's role will be essential if EU
powers and the US are to contain Russia's
hegemonic attempts in the Eurasian energy game.
With Turkmenistan adopting a multi-directional
energy policy - as Kazakhstan does - the
Euro-Atlantic goal of building the Trans-Caspian
and the Nabucco pipelines to convoy Caspian
resources toward Central and Western Europe would
be decisively helped.
This
notwithstanding, European decision-makers appear
increasingly divided over Turkey's EU-accession
bid. For instance, Nicolas Sarkozy, the new French
president-elect, has repeatedly claimed that
Turkey belongs to Asia and that Europe should
build a strategic partnership with Ankara without
integrating it.
Generally speaking,
political parties within European nations have
different perceptions of Turkey, but
realistically, every EU rotating presidency tries
to pass the buck to the next one when it comes to
making a final decision.
Turkey's
diplomatic offensive in Central Asia would be a
stabilizing factor if Ankara and the EU acted
within a single framework. However, that is not
the case, and Turkish moves in the region merely
risk adding to the area's instability and to heat
up the already intense geopolitical competition.
Because of Europe's unwillingness to set
up a clear and definitive calendar for Turkey's EU
accession, it is highly likely that Ankara will be
tempted to act more autonomously in the Central
Asian stage. However, Turkey's political and
economic crises will likely pose serious obstacles
to its foreign policy.
In the end,
political equilibria in Central Asia - especially
in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan - are fragile, and
the presence of various outside players can have
destabilizing effects on the short and medium
terms.
Federico Bordonaro is
senior analyst with the Power and Interest News
Report (www.pinr.com).
(Copyright 2007
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