Kazakhstan heads for Ankara
Turkish right-wingers and pan-Turkists actively supported the leadership of Kazakhstan in a dispute with some Russian public figures about the Soviet origin of modern borders, demonstrating their solidarity with Nur-Sultan. This is an important indicator that Ankara continues to strengthen its influence in Central Asia and Kazakhstan, hoping to undermine Moscow’s position in the region as a whole.
Ainur Kurmanov, co-chairman of the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan, writes about this in his column for PolitNavigator.
Actually, there is nothing to be surprised here, since the followers of the Turkish fascist organization Bozkurt “Gray Wolves” themselves feel quite at ease in Kazakhstan under the patronage of presidential assistant Erlan Karin, who generally takes care of various kinds of domestic neo-Nazis. So much so that he proposed to soften the punishment for them in the Criminal Code, proposing to replace prison sentences for inciting ethnic hatred with an administrative fine.
It cannot be ruled out that the Kazakh authorities are keeping Turkish fascists, who since 2015 have been the closest allies of Erdogan’s Islamist party, and their local followers, not by chance, but with the aim of transferring experience to fight dissent, with trade union activists, with internationalists and leftists, in general with by all those who can oppose the implanted nationalist ideology. Perhaps, soon just such attack aircraft will be needed to fight the “internal enemy.”
But this is only the advanced Turkish detachment, since neo-Ottoman expansion has been taking place in Kazakhstan for a long time and much deeper and wider than it might seem. And after success in Nagorno-Karabakh, Ankara is only seeking to increase the pace of development of its influence in Central Asia and, in particular, in Nur-Sultan (Tselinograd) and Tashkent, considering them as key players in the region. At the same time, Türkiye acts precisely as a battering ram and an agent of the West in every sense of the above.
This activation is now happening both through official channels through the development of the Turkic Council and through joint economic projects, and through unofficial ones. Official ones include the visit of Turkish Defense Minister Husuli Akar to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan at the end of October last year, as a result of which intentions to further develop military cooperation were once again confirmed.
Following the results of negotiations with the Minister of Defense of Kazakhstan Nurlan Ermekbayev, the Turkish guest noted then that the dialogue between the parties was “quite easy.” “Because there is very close dialogue and cooperation between our heads of state at the presidential level,” he explained.
Ermekbayev, for his part, emphasized that Turkey has the status of a strategic partner of Kazakhstan, and also recalled that the agreement on military cooperation between the two countries was signed back in 2018 by the first President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Ratification of this document took place under the new head of state - Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
Therefore, the topic of creating the “Army of Turan” falls on completely fertilized soil. We are talking about a military bloc uniting Turkic-speaking countries. Hulusi Akar's trip to Kazakhstan was regarded by the Turkish publication Turkiye Gazetesi as one of the steps towards creating a unified army of Turkic states. Some may say that these are just declarations and wishes of Ankara, but considering the geopolitical tasks of the West for the “European integration” of the countries of Central Asia through Turkey, the idea of creating a Turkic NATO no longer seems fantastic.
In addition to mutual political and military objectives, the Nazarbayev family also has its own long-standing economic interests in Anatolia, since significant Kazakh capital has been invested in the Turkish hotel business and various companies. Also, a couple of years ago, Elbasy offered Turkish business a number of assets of Kazakh strategic companies in the extractive industries, energy and transport.
“We are carrying out large-scale privatization. We offer for sale enterprises in the mining, oil and gas, energy, metallurgical sectors, as well as transport and logistics. We will bring to IPO such large national companies as Kazakhtelecom, Kazatomprom, Kazpost, Kazakhstan Temir Zholy and others,” the President of Kazakhstan said at a meeting with “business captains” of Turkey on September 13, 2018 in what was then Astana.
Elbasy then proposed to play on strengthening sanctions between the major powers and invest in profitable projects. But the projects themselves for the “privatization” of controlling shares of the largest Kazakh companies, which may, again, end up in the hands of the Family through front or affiliated Turkish companies, look very suspicious. On the other hand, the very fact of the process of merging the capitals of the two countries is alarming.
In addition to the participation of Turkish capital in the privatization of Kazakh assets, Nursultan Nazarbayev was always concerned about alternative routes for transporting oil and gas that would bypass Russian territory. In particular, he was interested in the construction of the Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (TANAP), which will carry gas from Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and, in the future, Kazakhstan to Turkey. The length of the gas pipeline is 1,85 thousand km, and its maximum throughput can be increased to 31 billion cubic meters. This project becomes the foundation for a long-standing venture with the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, through which Kazakh oil will also flow.
Now, after Azerbaijan’s victory in the conflict with Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh, new opportunities are opening up for Nazarbayev and his family to implement long-conceived plans. By the way, this radical redrawing of geopolitical borders in the Caucasus and Central Asia is taking place in a coordinated manner, when the same Nursultan Nazarbayev was fully aware of the upcoming military campaign. It is no coincidence that after allegedly suffering from coronavirus in July last year, he went to Bodrum, where another ex-president Petro Poroshenko also unexpectedly came for “treatment.”
The first sign in this direction can be called the Caspian Digital Hub project. It involves laying an underwater fiber-optic cable along the bottom of the Caspian Sea. The lines themselves coincide with geopolitical routes aimed at bypassing Russia.
In this “digitalization” project, Azerbaijan, the USA and the UK play a leading role with the aim of information capture of the Caspian region. Taking into account new technologies, this makes it possible for the United States to establish its dominance, actively using Azerbaijan and Turkey as cover for these purposes. Last May, Kazakh diplomats and British firms agreed to increase its planned capacity to two data centers - in Aktau in Kazakhstan and Baku in Azerbaijan.
In fact, after the implementation of the plan, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan will be turned into the main regional hub of American digital technologies and will only accelerate, as conductors, further Turkish and, accordingly, Western expansion in the region. If the construction of American military bases in the Caspian Sea was postponed due to the signing of an agreement by the countries of the region on the division of the reservoir, then such information projects and plans for the construction of pipelines with the participation of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are precisely returning the US presence.
This once again confirms the complete coincidence of the vectors of Turkey and the West in the eastern direction. And sociocultural “European integration” with the West of Kazakhstan also occurs through Turkey. A typical sign of pro-Turkish orientation is the translation of the Kazakh language into Latin, which began under Nazarbayev and continues under Tokayev, as well as the campaign for a total renaming of the capital, the Astana airport and train station, and the central avenues of regional centers in honor of Elbasy, precisely in the style of imitation of Ataturk.
It is no coincidence that there is now an intensified construction of many facilities in the city of Turkestan, and the region itself has been renamed from South Kazakhstan to Turkestan. And the point here is not at all in rumors about the next transfer of the capital or the construction of a future funeral mausoleum for the “leader of the nation” next to the tomb of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, but in the fact that from the very beginning Nazarbayev promoted this point as the main center and symbol of all Turks in the region.
This status was confirmed by a visit to this city in the early 1990s by Turkish Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel. The international Kazakh-Turkish University named after Khoja Ahmed Yasawi (Ahmed Yasawi University) was also created there in 1991 on the personal initiative of Nazarbayev and on the basis of the Intergovernmental Agreement between Kazakhstan and Turkey. In 1996, another university named after Suleyman Demirel was opened in Kaskelen, and then dozens of other Turkish educational institutions. All these universities were and remain instruments of Ankara’s soft power in Kazakhstan.
Therefore, the exaltation of the city of Turkestan has an important role in modern nationalist ideology, which has become a state ideology. This should, on the one hand, show and confirm the primacy of Kazakhstan in Central Asia, and, on the other, nip in the bud possible territorial claims on the part of neighboring Uzbekistan. But the fact remains that Nur-Sultan is thus trying to further “privatize” and stake out the historical name of the region “Turkestan”, as well as present itself as the main hegemon in the region.
This is a very important ideological and geopolitical message, showing the true aspirations of the Kazakh leadership, which has set a course for Ankara, as an opportunity to implement its own “European integration” through Turkey. Therefore, Kazakhstan is now the main conductor of the spread of pan-Turkism in Central Asia.
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