Atambayev's Turkish affair needs
domestic peace By Fozil Mashrab
TASHKENT - When newly elected Kyrgyz
President Almazbek Atambayev traveled to Turkey
for his first official bilateral visit from
January 12 to 15, many Kyrgyz watchers were
looking for clues on Kyrgyzstan's future foreign
policy course in the next six years - the duration
of the single term allowed for a Kyrgyz President.
Others immediately criticized former prime
minister Atambayev, who took over as president on
December 1, for making his first blunder by not
traveling to Russia, which Atambayev has often in
the past called Kyrgyzstan's "main strategic
partner".
Since the first foreign visit of
any newly elected president carries with it great
symbolic meaning, should we also expect the
resurgence of Turkey's influence in Central Asia
in general and in Kyrgyzstan in particular in the
near future, in a rerun of the heady
early 1990s? Then,
Turkey unsuccessfully attempted to position itself
as a "big brother" for newly independent Turkic
countries of Central Asia, only to abandon such
ambitions when it became clear that Turkey was
trying to punch above its weight given the
limitations of its economic strength.
Turkey's foremost priority and
preoccupation for the past 40 years or so has been
integration into the European Union, so Ankara's
periodic surges of interest in other regions,
including Central Asia, have waxed and waned based
on the progress or lack of thereof in its talks
with the EU.
This time, the new-found love
between Kyrgyzstan and Turkey seems to suggest
that it is not Turkey that is trying to reengage
its Central Asian cousin more strongly; rather,
President Atambayev is attempting to diversify
Kyrgyzstan's foreign policy away from superpowers
such as Russia, the United States and China and
thus lessen his country's heavy dependence on
them. Cultivating the so-called second-tier
countries like Turkey may look a better bet, as
they emerge as strong economies with increasing
technological and investment potential.
In
the past, the main foreign policy strategy of
former Kyrgyz presidents has been to play one
superpower against the other in order to gain
maximum benefit for Kyrgyzstan and its ruling
regimes. Such political brinkmanship and attempts
to juggle superpower interests have been
detrimental for Kyrgyzstan. They have led to two
forced regime changes in a decade, each time as
the balance was perceived to be tilting too much
towards one superpower at the cost of the other.
It is widely believed that US threw its
weight behind the so-called bloodless "Tulip
Revolution" in May 2005, when president Askar
Akaev was ousted - he then found asylum in Russia.
The bloody overthrow of Kurmanbek Bakiev in April
2010 was the result of a combination of economic
sanctions and political pressure from the Kremlin.
In the aftermath of the violent regime
change in 2010, former president Bakiev's
all-powerful son, Maxim Bakiev, who was the
central figure in his father's regime, found safe
haven in London, while Kurmanbek himself is
believed to have fled to Belarus.
Superpowers like Russia, US and China have
looked at Kyrgyzstan with a view of furthering
their own strategic and geopolitical aims. As
such, the US has not really been interested in
investing much into the Kyrgyz economy, largely
limiting itself to securing its strategic and
geopolitical interests related to continued access
to the Manas airbase near Bishkek; Russian
investments and economic assistance came with
political and economic domination.
Politically, China has sought the Kyrgyz
government's support for its repression of ethnic
Uyghurs in its restive western Xinjiang province,
and economically it has been interested in
marketing its products in Kyrgyzstan and using the
country Kyrgyzstan to penetrate the markets
elsewhere in the region.
The week before
traveling to Turkey, President Atambayev played
host to Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister, who was
in Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek, as part of a
bilateral exercise to commemorate the 20th
anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic
relations between the two countries.
Atambayev and Prime Minister Omurbek
Babanov spared no effort in trying to convince
their Japanese guests that Kyrgyzstan was safe for
foreign investments in various sectors, including,
first and foremost, mining.
Therefore,
Kyrgyz government's recent attempts at courting
Japan, Turkey and other second-tier countries are
meant to diversify Kyrgyzstan's foreign partners
and aim at attracting much-needed foreign
investments into the economy, which was severely
damaged by the violent regime change and bloody
ethnic clashes in 2010.
A similar foreign
policy strategy has benefited neighboring
Uzbekistan, whose best friends in terms of
economic and investment cooperation and transfer
of technologies are South Korea, Germany, India,
Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Turkey, Oman
and some other countries which have been courted
and cultivated by Uzbek government over many
years.
Uzbekistan has a number of inherent
advantages over Kyrgyzstan, such as vast natural
gas reserves, a rich mineral base, a larger
market, relatively better infrastructure and
internal transportation system - and most
importantly political stability, which is the
bedrock for attracting foreign direct investment.
Therefore, even if Uzbekistan's humble
success is used as a yardstick, Kyrgyzstan will
still have a tall order to follow since successful
implementation of such a strategy will require
many years, if not decades, of patient and
persistent work and maintenance of political
stability and continuity of reforms in Kyrgyzstan.
A single six-year term is not really enough to see
through such a long-term strategy.
To
translate the political goodwill and warm
inter-personal relations between the two leaders,
President Atambayev and Turkish President Abdullah
Gull have agreed that both sides will work towards
increasing bilateral trade turnover between the
two countries to US$1 billion by 2015 from $300
million in 2011. It is an ambitious plan given the
size of the Kyrgyz economy and small total volume
of its foreign trade, which reached $4 billion
last year.
The Turkish president also
promised to help Kyrgyzstan to attract Turkish
investments to the amount of $450 million in the
next few years - provided the Kyrgyz authorities
create favorable conditions for foreign investors.
Foreign investors' confidence in Kyrgyz
economy has been shaken recently not only because
of the political instability in the country but
also as a result of the weak government protection
of foreign investments. Some businesses
established with the participation of foreign
direct investment during the rule of Kurmanbek
Bakiev fell prey to the Kyrgyz authorities'
"nationalization campaign" carried out in the
aftermath of his violent overthrow.
This
campaign targeted all businesses considered to
have enjoyed too cozy a relationship with the
former regime or which were illegally seized by
the Bakiev clan and cronies. The new Kyrgyz
authorities have refused to acknowledge that it
was not possible to establish and run a successful
business in Kyrgyzstan during the time of Bakiev
without entering some kind of deal with Maxim
Bakiev or some other high-profile representatives
of the regime.
Some critics of the Kyrgyz
government have accused the new authorities of
"flagrant disrespect for private property and
asset grabbing", which was actually just history
repeating itself - since former president Bakiev
and his team used the same tactic in taking over
various businesses and property after the
overthrow of the former Askar Akaev in 2005.
If President Atambayev's pronouncements
made in Turkey are any indication of what might be
in store for foreign investors, then we can expect
that the biggest and most lucrative foreign
investment in the country - the Canadian-owned
Kumtor gold mine, which contributes around 60% of
Kyrgyzstan's exports - might become the next
target for Kyrgyz authorities in the near future.
While addressing the Turkish Parliament,
Atambayev said that in the last 10 years gold
worth of $10 billion was extracted from the Kumtor
mine while Kyrgyz state coffers received only 3%
of that money. Such coded accusations usually
precede some real arm-twisting at a later stage.
As Turkey engages Kyrgyzstan more strongly
both economically and politically, its immediate
responsibility will be to apply strong but
well-meaning brotherly pressure on Kyrgyz leaders
to bring about genuine reconciliation among the
ethnic majority Kyrgyz and Kyrgyzstan's largest
ethnic minority Uzbeks. Both are Turkic speaking
Muslim people.
So far, Turkish leaders
have conveniently chosen not to raise this issue
in their bilateral talks; or if it was discussed
during the recent bilateral summit, that was not
publicized.
If Turkey continues to remain
an indifferent bystander and look the other way
when it comes to the repression and systematic
violence against ethnic Uzbeks by the Kyrgyz state
in the southern provinces of Osh and Jalalabad,
such a policy will be short-sighted and ultimately
untenable.
So far, Turkey has only
sponsored one conference on the 2010 ethnic
clashes in the southern part of Kyrgyzstan, which
was held in the Kyrgyz Issik-Kul lake resort in
their immediate aftermath. That is definitely too
little for a country that considers itself as the
champion of the unity and brotherhood of Turkic
peoples.
Turkey will not be able to
replace Russia as Kyrgyzstan's "main strategic
partner" any time in the future, and Turkey does
not seem to entertain any such plans. But if
Turkey does indeed start to invest in the Kyrgyz
economy and assist Kyrgyzstan in capacity building
and military training with the prospect of
establishing a complete visa-free regime between
the two countries in the future, as was announced
during the bilateral meetings, then Kyrgyzstan
will definitely be able to lessen its dependence
on Russia or any other superpower.
For
that to happen, President Atambayev will be
expected to ensure political stability, and a
transparent and predictable environment for
foreign investment in the country.
Fozil Mashrab is a pseudonym
used by an independent analyst based in Tashkent,
Uzbekistan.
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