Silkroad Papers and Monographs
Youth and Digital Technology in Central Asia: A Comparative Analysis of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan
By Farrukh Irnazarov
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program
Silk Road Paper
December 2025
Click Here to Download
Executive Summary:
Central Asian youth between the ages of 15 and 29 are driving the region’s digital transformation, though opportunities are unequal across the region. This comparative study of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan draws on a 468-respondent youth survey and extensive secondary data to map five dimensions of the online landscape.
Access and Devices. Mobile internet has eclipsed all other channels: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan report 89 to 93 percent general adoption rate, while Tajikistan lags at 57 percent. Registered mobile service lines exceed population numbers in every country—reaching 159 percent in Kyrgyzstan—indicating that smartphones are the primary tool for study, work, and leisure.
Platforms and Culture. Telegram is the region’s primary newswire, while Instagram and YouTube shape identity and TikTok dominates leisure time. √ now trails social media as the main news source for Central Asian youth.
Socio-Economic Payoff. Digital skills open doors to remote work and start-ups — Kazakh ventures drew $71 million in venture capital and Uzbek ventures drew $17 million in 2024 — yet rural youth still face slow service and limited access to devices, widening the divide.
Literacy Gap. Nine in ten youths say accuracy matters, but barely half fact-check routinely, leaving them exposed to propaganda and fake news, despite growing efforts by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to provide education on the topic.
Structural Limits. Cheap mobile data masks deeper barriers: expensive fixed broadband, patchy rural coverage, and renewed censorship hamper innovation and voice.
Country Snapshots. Kazakhstan leads the region in digital infrastructure, but risks repeat shutdowns; Uzbekistan saw growth after 2016 yet still grapples with red tape; Kyrgyzstan’s once-vibrant online sphere is tightening; and Tajikistan remains the most constrained.
What Works. The priorities are clear: complete last-mile broadband infrastructure, support an open and free internet, embed media-savvy curricula into education, and streamline start-up regulation and funding—especially for young women and rural creators. Achieving these goals will turn today’s mobile-native generation into the region’s next growth engine.
The Rise of the Organization of Turkic States: Is Turkic Cooperation Filling a Geopolitical Vacuum?
By Svante E. Cornell
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program
Silk Road Paper
December 2025
Click Here to Download
Executive Summary:
In October 2025, the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) convened a pivotal summit in Gabala, Azerbaijan, demonstrating its emergence as a significant geopolitical entity on the Eurasian landscape. During the summit, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev emphasized the OTS's evolution into a key geopolitical center, while Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev referred to it as an authoritative structure uniting Turkic populations. This gathering marks a critical juncture in the organization’s development, solidifying its influence in a region that links the Mediterranean to Central Asia.
The Gabala summit showcased the OTS's commitment to enhancing collaboration on various fronts, including security, defense, economic development, transportation, digitalization, and sustainable energy. A notable development was the introduction of the "OTS plus" framework, which aims to strengthen partnerships with non-Turkic states in the vicinity. This evolution reflects a remarkable transformation for Turkic cooperation, escalating from modest aspirations to a robust international organization in a remarkably short period.
The emergence and rapid development of the OTS challenge conventional frameworks employed by Western bureaucracies to assess the geopolitics of the region. Typically categorized into rigid geographic divisions, bureaucracies covering the Middle East, Europe, and Central Asia often overlook the intricate relationships across these boundaries. Turkic cooperation ignores these geographic categorizations, as it not only resides within the context of former Soviet republics but also includes Turkey—a pivotal player straddling both Europe and the Middle East.
A key element of Turkic Cooperation is the relatively equal standing of its members. While Türkiye is obviously considerably larger than the other members, it is telling that the main drivers of Turkic cooperation for many years were Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan; and that Turkic cooperation really took off following Uzbekistan’s renewed enthusiasm for the initiative. In other words, the perception of the OTS as somehow beholden to Turkish President Erdogan is a red herring.
The ethnolinguistic character of Turkic cooperation has led many observers to remain skeptical, as it has led to the exclusion of non-Turkic states. Yet on a practical level, the OTS has displayed an openness to cooperate with countries like Georgia; more recently, the inclusion of an “OTS plus” format could create conditions for a more inclusive approach to regional states that are not majority Turkic.
Given the current geopolitical climate, the rise of the OTS is poised to reshape power dynamics across a broad expanse of territory, prompting a reevaluation of strategic frameworks by Western governments and multilateral organizations. Understanding the implications of the OTS's evolution will be crucial for policymakers and stakeholders engaged in the region and beyond.
Armenia’s Strategic Dilemma: Geography versus History
By Laura Linderman, Alexander John Paul Lutz, and Eleanor Pugh
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program
Silk Road Paper
October 2025
Click Here to Download Armenia's Strategic Dilemma
Executive Summary:
Armenia faces significant challenges to its political stability and geopolitical security as it attempts a high-stakes strategic pivot away from its traditional Russian security patron and toward the West—a reorientation driven not by choice but by necessity, as the country finds itself militarily inferior, diplomatically isolated, and abandoned by unreliable security guarantors.
This reorientation, catalyzed by Russia’s failure to uphold its commitment to defending its Armenian ally from repeated Azerbaijani incursions into its territory, has given way to internal political turmoil and external security vulnerabilities. Most worryingly, this has created a dangerous feedback loop where the very concessions required for strategic survival generate domestic opposition that threatens to undermine the partnerships Armenia desperately needs. This piece argues that Armenia’s polarized domestic political environment—with opposition to the government of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan driven, primarily, by the trauma and insecurity of abandoning historical narratives, territorial claims, and institutional protections—both results from and impedes its geopolitical realignment, creating a vicious cycle where external security pressures exacerbate internal divisions, which, in turn, trouble the country’s moves toward a closer partnership with the West. Recently, the government’s pivot has mobilized a diverse opposition coalition, counting among its ranks clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church, disillusioned oligarchs, the exiled leadership of the Republic of Artsakh, and ordinary citizens unwilling to accept that former enemies can become partners.
Despite such opposition, Armenia has achieved tangible results from Western engagement—including defense cooperation with France, weapons partnerships with India, and security exercises and strategic partnership agreements with the United States. And, most significantly, the recently proposed “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) would give the United States exclusive development rights to a transit route straddling Armenia’s southern border—a transit route which would transform regional connectivity by linking former adversaries (that is, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey) to one another in a mutually beneficial economic arrangement. Yet, each concession required to pull off the pivot (especially those surrounding normalization with Azerbaijan and Turkey) provides ammunition for opposition mobilization and risks electoral backlash.
The 2026 elections will provide the definitive test as to whether or not Pashinyan’s government can break the feedback loop. For a small state facing existential pressures, failure to do so could result in democratic backsliding (risking alienating Western partners), subordination to hostile neighbors, or even further territorial losses. Indeed, as Armenia contends with an assertive Azerbaijan, hostility from erstwhile ally Russia, pushback from Iran over the prospect of increased American influence in the region, and its own tumultuous domestic politics, it must tread carefully if it wishes to avoid such a fate.
Of course, this moment is not just one characterized by existential danger. For Armenia, it presents an unprecedented opportunity to emerge on the world stage—to resolve its longstanding grievances with neighboring Turkey and Azerbaijan, to establish fruitful economic partnerships with countries around the world, and to finally break free of its stifling dependence on Russia and Iran. For the United States and its Euro-Atlantic allies, meanwhile, Armenia holds considerable value as a stable partner in the strategically vital South Caucasus region. Success could see a sovereign, stable, and democratic Armenia contribute significantly to broader regional stability and prosperity, perhaps even serving as a bastion against adverse influence from nearby Russia and Iran.
After Karabakh: War, Peace, and the Forging of a New Caucasus
by Svante E. Cornell and Damjan Krnjević Mišković
AFPC Press/Armin Lear, 2025
Link to Amazon and Kindle Edition
The outcome of the Second Karabakh War is a watershed event in the modern history of Eurasia. It represents the moment of conception of a new South Caucasus, the only part of the world that borders on Russia, Turkey, and Iran. Unsurprisingly, external powers like the U.S., China, the EU, India, and the GCC states are all taking greater interest in its future.
Written for scholars and designed for classroom use, AFTER KARABAKH: War, Peace, and the Forging of a New Caucasus is the go- to book for anyone trying to make sense of the geopolitics of this often misunderstood conflict. As the editors argue in their Introduction, the end of the conflict over Karabakh “will serve as a catalyst for the instauration of a much anticipated peace dividend centered on optimizing the region’s strategic connectivity potential.”
As Michael Doran writes in the Foreword, AFTER KARABAKH “performs a great service to students of international politics. We now have in one volume a set of comprehensive analyses of the main dimensions of the Second Karabakh War. By producing sharp, judicious, and readable accounts, the authors, who are all internationally recognized experts in their fields, have ensured that this volume will become the standard account of the conflict.”
Editors
Svante E. Cornell is Research Director of the American Foreign Policy Council’s Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and a co-founder of the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP)
Damjan Krnjević Mišković is Professor of Practice at ADA University, where he serves concurrently as Director for Policy Research, Analysis, and Publications at the Institute for Development and Diplomacy and Co-Editor of Baku Dialogues.
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Second Karabakh War and a New Caucasus: The Regional Peace Dividend Playing Out at the Card Table; Damjan Krnjević Mišković and Svante E. Cornell
The Geopolitics of the Caucasus and the Road to War; Svante E. Cornell
Perfect Timing and Statecraft: On the Onset of the Second Karabakh War; Damjan Krnjević Mišković
The Foreign and Security Policies of Armenia and Azerbaijan, 1994-2020; Robert M. Cutler
The Evolving Role of the West in the Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict; Svante E. Cornell
Sitting on Two Chairs: Russia's Pragmatic, Transactional Approach to the Karabakh Question; Nikolas K. Gvosdev
Gradually, then Suddenly: The Evolution of Tiirkiye's Role in the Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict; Michael A. Reynolds
Iran's Role in the Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict; Brenda Shaffer
Armenia's Pashinyan Conundrum: Implications of the Second Karabakh War; Onnik James Krikorian
No More War, Not Yet Peace: On the Second Karabakh War and Its Aftermath; Fariz Ismailzade
Military Lessons from the Second Karabakh War; Niklas Nilsson
The Geopolitical Causes and Consequences of the Second Karabakh War: Armenian Tragedy, Azerbaijani Vindication, and Prospects for Peace; Damjan Krnjević Mišković
The West's Inflection Point in the Caucasus: Untying the Georgian Knot
By John DiPirro and Laura Linderman
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program
Silk Road Paper
July 2025
Click Here To Download The West's Inflection Point in the Caucasus: Untying the Georgian Knot.
Executive Summary:
Since the summer of 2019, Georgia has cycled through periods of crisis and partial recovery, with the increasingly kleptocratic and authoritarian Georgian Dream (GD) government developing sophisticated methods to control public discourse and opinion. The fundamental question that Western policymakers can no longer avoid is: What is more important—a democratic Georgia or a cooperative, friendly Georgia? For years, these aspirations were aligned, but today they have diverged into mutually exclusive policy pathways, each carrying profound implications for regional stability and the credibility of Western engagement.
While many Western analysts point to Georgian Dream and its founder, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, as the primary drivers of democratic decline, this view oversimplifies the situation. A fuller understanding must also consider the opposition's failure to offer credible alternatives, the legacy of Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM) party, and inconsistent Western engagement, all contributing to instability and strategic ambiguity.
In recent discussions with regional experts, civil society leaders and opposition figures, a common critique emerged: the absence of a coherent, responsive, and consistently updated Western policy toward Georgia. Shifting Western priorities have undermined long-term strategic alignment, especially given evolving global dynamics and the growing influence of powers like Russia and China. Given global shifts—including a more transactional U.S. foreign policy under the Trump Administration and Europe's growing focus on defense infrastructure—will the West remain committed to Georgia, or has "Georgia fatigue" taken hold?
This analysis examines the history and impact of Western support for Georgia, particularly in economic development, energy cooperation, and democratic reform. While Georgians are ultimately responsible for their national trajectory, the West must reckon with its strategic missteps that have shaped Georgia's current geopolitical position. Western policymakers must recalibrate their approach for an evolving international order and clearly articulate their desired relationship with Georgia. This recalibration requires acknowledging past errors and choosing whether to remedy them or pursue a pragmatic reset in relations.
Gone but Not Forgotten: The Central Asian Union, 1990–2005
By Sanat Kushkumbayev
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program
Silk Road Paper
June 2025
Executive Summary
The post-Soviet landscape of Central Asia, characterized by an intricate web of cultural ties, shared histories, and political ambitions, presents a unique case of regional integration that has both fascinated and perplexed international observers. From 1991 to 2005, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan worked assiduously to develop regional cooperation, an effort that had to contend with conflicting national interests and external geopolitical pressures.
The early years following the Soviet dissolution ushered in a moment of hope for a “Golden Age” of integration. Between 1992 and 1998, regional leaders embarked on ambitious initiatives aimed at constructing a new order that would facilitate collaboration and mutual development. However, as idealism gave way to pragmatism, the stark realities of internal and external challenges emerged.
From 1998 to 2002, the dynamics within Central Asia became increasingly contentious, with external powers asserting their influence and regional leaders jockeying for position. Despite the opportunities for collaboration, the interplay between national ambitions and external interests led to a dilution of collective efforts and a hesitation to fully commit to regional integration paths.
Still, the accomplishments of Central Asian regionalism were significant, especially coming at a time when the states of the region were focused primarily on the building of national sovereignty. In other words, they always saw the strengthening of sovereignty as entirely compatible with the development of regional cooperation.
The later phase, from 2002 to 2005, witnessed a significant decline in the momentum for regional initiatives against the backdrop of geopolitical shifts and mounting internal crises. The influence of larger powers, particularly Russia, shifted the focus of regional cooperation away from original Central Asian projects, culminating in key initiatives like the Central Asian Cooperation Organization (CACO) being subsumed into broader Eurasian frameworks.
This comprehensive analysis underscores the complexity of Central Asia's road to regional integration, highlighting the intricate balance between national aspirations and the overarching influence of external geopolitical factors. It serves as a crucial reflection for policymakers, analysts, and scholars interested in the intersection of regional dynamics and global geopolitics. In particular, as Central Asian states are once again embarked on a quest to deepen and institutionalize their regional cooperation, the lessons of the past attempts to build regional institutions will be valuable to the region’s leaders as well as external supporters of this process.
.
Is Central Asia Stable? Conflict Risks and Drivers of Instability
By Svante E. Cornell
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program
Silk Road Paper
May 2025
Executive Summary
In 2022, violence erupted in four different areas of Central Asia. These episodes of violence were very different from each other, and all were contained within days or weeks. The region has seen little violence since. Yet their occurrence during a single year raised the question whether Central Asia is actually more prone to instability than a cursory overview would suggest.
The episodes of violence in 2022 were varied: one was a conflict over territory between two states, while the other three were internal conflicts, featuring struggles over power and complex center-periphery relations.
In Kazakhstan, demonstrations erupted in January 2022 but were hijacked by forces that sought to implement a coup attempt against the government, making the violence an issue over control over the country’s government. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan both saw violence that featured an element of separatist sentiments and a struggle between center and periphery. In Tajikistan’s Pamiri-populated Gorno-Badakhshan region, the government violently sought to stomp out influential local powerbrokers. In Uzbekistan’s Karakalpakstan republic, a government bid to reduce local autonomy triggered violent protests. In the case of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, inter-state tensions over a contested border triggered the most deadly episode since tensions between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan had begun to rise in 2020.
A series of potential factors impact the risk of renewed instability in Central Asia. Internal to the region, these include the economic difficulties the region has experienced in the past decade. In addition, the remarkable resistance to reform that post-Soviet institutions in the region have shown in the past three decades has become increasingly unsustainable in the face of new communication technologies and an emerging post-Soviet generation. Among state institutions, the region’s security services can be identified as the most unreformed and retrograde power centers, and they played influential roles in most of the episodes of violence in the region.
Aggravating these risk factors are the growing disparity between states of the region and the continued malign role of Russian influence, whose array of instruments to undermine stability have only intermittently been deployed across Central Asia.
These risk factors are mitigated by the constructive efforts toward greater regional cooperation in Central Asia, which provide a window into a future where Central Asia is more integrated and able to withstand external pressure, all while internal reform efforts provide greater opportunities for economic development and accountable government.
The Caucasus on the Edge of Tomorrow
Michael Hikari Cecire and Laura Linderman
February 27, 2025
The Caucasus is today a region traversing a period of escalating instability and profound transformation. Historically characterized by its fragmentation and diversity, the Caucasus remains a patchwork of overlapping identities, allegiances, and grievances. This delicate balance is being disrupted by external and internal pressures, creating a volatile environment that could reshape the region’s geopolitical and social fabric in the years to come.
Arabs, Turks and Persians: Geopolitics and Ideology in the Greater Middle East
by Svante E. Cornell
AFPC Press/Armin Lear, 2025
Link to Amazon and Kindle Edition
Link to Table of Contents and Introduction
Link to Chapter 7, "Iran's Arc of Domination"
Link to Chapter 12, "The Failure of Islamism in Turkey Reshuffles the Region"
For decades, the Greater Middle East has been a leading challenge to American foreign policy. This vast region - ranging from North Africa in the west to Afghanistan in the east, and from the borders of Central Asia down to the Horn of Africa in the south - has been a cauldron of turmoil that has affected not just American interests, but generated threats to the American homeland.
The multitude of challenges in this region has led to some confusion. What should be the focus of U.S. policy in the Greater Middle East?
This book explores this state of affairs and its implications by delving deeper into how the current geopolitics of the Greater Middle East came to be. A first few chapters look back to the history of the region and the historic rivalries among Turks, Arabs and Persians up to the end of the Cold War. The book then examines the main current power centers of the region - Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It then turns to the geopolitical competition among them in recent years, starting with Iran's efforts to build an "Arc of Domination" across the region.
The book covers the advance of Islamists following the Arab Upheavals, the civil war among the Sunnis from 2013 to 2018, America's pendulum swings with regard to Iran policy, and the reshuffle of the region following Turkey's turn in a more nationalist direction. Finally, the book ends with an attempt to draw out implications for America's approach to the geopolitics of the Greater Middle East.
SVANTE E. CORNELL is Research Director of the American Foreign Policy Council's Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington D.C., and a co-founder of the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm, Sweden. Cornell was educated at the Middle East Technical University and Uppsala University. He formerly served as Associate Professor at Uppsala University and at Johns Hopkins-University-SAIS, and is also a Policy Advisor with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences.
Greater Central Asia as a Component of U.S. Global Strategy
By S. Frederick Starr
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program
Silk Road Paper
October 2024
Introduction
What should be the United States’ strategy towards Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the region of Greater Central Asia (GCA) as a whole? Should it even have one? Unlike most other world regions, these lands did not figure in US policy until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Though the new Baltic states entered Washington’s field of vision in that year, in those cases the Department of State could recall and build upon America’s relations with independent Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania during the inter-war decades. For the US Government after 1991, GCA was defined less as sovereign states than as a group of “former Soviet republics” that continued to be perceived mainly through a Russian lens, if at all.
Over the first generation after 1991 US policy focused on developing electoral systems, market economies, anti-narcotics programs, individual and minority rights, gender equality, and civil society institutions to support them. Congress itself defined these priorities and charged the Department of State to monitor progress in each area and to issue detailed country-by-country annual reports on progress or regression. The development of programs in each area and the compilation of data for the reports effectively preempted many other areas of potential US concern. Indeed, it led to the neglect of such significant issues as intra-regional relations, the place of these countries in global geopolitics, security in all its dimensions, and, above all, their relevance to America’s core interests. On none of these issues did Congress demand annual written reports.
This is not to say that Washington completely neglected security issues in GCA. To its credit, it worked with the new governments to suppress the narcotics trade. However, instead of addressing other US-GCA core security issues directly, it outsourced them to NATO and its Partnership for Peace Program (PfP). During the pre-9/11 years, PfP programs in the Caucasus and Central Asia produced substantial results, including officer training at the U.S. Army’s program in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, and the Centrasbat, a combined battalion drawn from four Central Asian armies. But all these declined after 9/11 as America focused its attention on Afghanistan.
Today this picture has dramatically changed, and the changes all arise from developments outside the former Soviet states. First came America’s precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which brought important consequences. As the U.S. withdrew, new forces—above all China but also Russia and the Gulf States—moved in. Also, America’s pullout undercut the region’s champions of moderate Islam and reimposed a harsh Islamist regime in their midst. And, finally, because Central Asians have always considered Afghanistan as an essential part of their region and not just an inconvenient neighbor, they judged the abrupt U.S. pullout as a body blow to the region as a whole. Now the scene was dominated not by the U.S. but by China and Russia competing with each other. Both powers presented themselves as the new bulwarks of GCA security, and reduced the U.S. to a subordinate role.
While all this was going on, the expansion of China’s navy and of both Chinese and European commercial shipping called into question the overriding importance of transcontinental railroad lines and hence of GCA countries. Taken together, these developments marginalized the concerns and assumptions upon which earlier US strategy towards GCA had been based. With Afghanistan no longer a top priority, American officials refocused their attention on Beijing, Moscow, Ukraine, Israel, and Iran, in the process, increasing the psychological distance between Washington and the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus.
It did not help that no U.S. president had ever visited Central Asia or the Caucasus. This left the initiative on most issues to the GCA leaders themselves. Thus, it was Kazakhstan and not the State Department that proposed to the U.S. government to establish the C5+1 meetings. It was also thanks to pressure from regional leaders that the White House arranged for a first-ever (but brief) meeting between Central Asian presidents and the President of the United States, which took place in September 2023 on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. By comparison, over the previous year Messrs. Putin and Xi Jinping had both met with the regional presidents half a dozen times. Hoping against hope, the Central Asian leaders hailed the C5+1 meeting as a fresh start in their relations with Washington. Washington has done little to validate this
Türkiye’s Return to Central Asia and the Caucasus
By Svante E. Cornell, ed.
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program
Silk Road Paper
July 2024
Introduction
When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, a sense over euphoria swept over a Türkiye that had just seen its application to join the European Community rejected. The emergence of five Turkic-majority states in the Caucasus and Central Asia provided an alternative possibility to European integration: Türkiye could look east and seek to build a new confederation of Turkic states.
The idea was vigorously embraced but soon appeared stillborn for a number of reasons. For one, the Turkic nations of the former USSR had just gotten rid of one overlord and were not in the market for another. The sometimes haughty tone of Turkish officials toward them did not help either. Besides, Türkiye was beset by internal problems – a rising PKK insurgency in the southeast, a troubled economy with runaway inflation, and a surge of Islamist politics that frightened the secular leaders of Central Asia and Azerbaijan.
For two decades thereafter, Central Asia and the Caucasus did not figure prominently in Turkish foreign policy. Economic realities forced Türkiye to look again toward the EU in the 2000s. After consolidating power, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his AKP government turned south – jumping headfirst into the frayed politics of the Middle East, a region that would keep Türkiye preoccupied for over a decade. But a combination of internal and external shocks in the 2010s led to a domestic realignment in a nationalist direction, which also led to a renewed interest in the Turkic states of Central Asia and the Caucasus.
As this volume will detail, Türkiye has been actively pursuing its influence in the region bilaterally but also multilaterally, through the upgrading of Turkic cooperation with the creation of the Organization of Turkic States.
It is worth pausing for a minute on the ethnolinguistic aspect of Türkiye’s approach to the region. While Türkiye continues to maintain bilateral relations with non-Turkic states like Georgia and Tajikistan, there is a clear emphasis on ethnic and linguistic ties in Türkiye’s approach. In this sense, Türkiye differs markedly from Russian and Chinese approaches in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Because neither Russia nor China can appeal to common identity markers, these powers have focused mainly on economic and security issues as they have devised their regional mechanisms, such as the Eurasian Economic Union or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Whatever the faults of these instruments – and there are many – they are at least inclusive, in that they do not differentiate between regional states on the basis of identity. Türkiye’s approach, by contrast, stresses common identity markers and makes them central to its bid for influence in the region. Indeed, increasingly the language used both during OTS meetings and in bilateral meetings of Turkish and regional leaders stressed “brotherhood” of fellow Turkic peoples. This is in one sense an asset that other regional powers cannot compete with. On the other hand, emphasizing the ethnolinguistic commonality between Türkiye and Turkic peoples risks alienating the non-Turkic peoples of the region and feeding the existing sentiments in Georgia and Tajikistan – not even to speak of Armenia – countries whose own nationalist narratives have been motivated in part by enmity against Turks, past or present.
That being said, Türkiye’s renewed involvement with Central Asia and the Caucasus is one of the most significant developments in the region in the past several years. It complements the rise in regional cooperation in Central Asia, as well as between Central Asia and Azerbaijan. And importantly, at a time when relations between the West and Russia are at an all-time low and Western relations with China are deteriorating, Türkiye’s growing influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus provides much-needed opportunities for regional leaders to expand their international relations. In the foreign policy strategy adopted by regional leaders, balance is key. Their continued sovereignty and independence depends on establishing relations with other powers that help counterbalance their relations with Russia and China. Since the U.S. and EU have thus far been unwilling to provide enough of a regional presence to generate such a balancing force, Türkiye’s involvement is a welcome opportunity for regional states to build ties with outside powers that are not shy to get involved in security and military affairs.
