Türkiye and Kazakhstan are speeding up the process of creating an anti-Russian “Union of Turkic States”

In November, Istanbul will host a summit of a new integration association - the “Union of Turkic States” (UTS), created at the end of March in the Kazakh city of Turkestan on March 30 of this year on the initiative of Nursultan Nazarbayev.

And for this purpose, the processes of ousting the Russian language, the Latinization of names, the transition of the Kazakh language itself to the Latin alphabet are being accelerated, and customs procedures between Turkey and Kazakhstan are being simplified.

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“To approve the attached draft agreement between the government of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the government of the Turkish Republic on the organization of information exchange and simplification of customs control procedures,” says the draft resolution of the government of Kazakhstan.

Under this draft agreement, it is planned to exchange information and simplify customs control procedures (CSCP), based on the exchange of information on goods and vehicles moved between the territories of the parties in accordance with the technical conditions for the exchange of information.

“The draft resolution was developed with the aim of exchanging information about goods and vehicles transported between the territories of the state parties, as well as reducing the time required for carrying out and creating conditions for simplifying customs control and its security,” says the explanatory note to the document.

It would seem that this is a purely technical document that simplifies the regulation of customs control between countries, but in reality the main task is to increase the volume of trade turnover by removing those procedures that are required for other countries. In fact, with this step, Nur-Sultan (Tselinograd) equates Turkey with the member states of the Customs Union and the EAEU, giving Turkish manufacturers the opportunity to import products to the Republic of Kazakhstan freely and profitably.

But the Kazakh domestic market is small in volume, taking into account the low demand of the poor and even destitute population, and these concessions are clearly not being made to saturate Kazakh counters with Turkish products and industrial goods. Local stores are already filled with many Anatolian surrogates, and therefore the intervention of goods is intended for Central Asia, and especially for Russia.

In essence, it is legitimizing what actually already existed - the ability to then transport it to the EAEU countries under the guise of “Kazakh products”, when Turkish labels on tomatoes are re-glued as made in Kazakhstan and sent to the common market. This was already actively done during the period of cooling relations between Russia and Turkey in 2015-16 after the downing of a Russian bomber by Turkish fighters, when Ankara was looking for and finding workarounds for delivering its goods through the Republic of Kazakhstan.

_{In fact, this agreement contradicts the principles of the Customs Union and the EAEU, since it creates favorable opportunities for the re-export of Turkish goods under the guise of Eurasian ones. But the most important thing is that it lays the foundations for the economic union of Kazakhstan with Turkey within the framework of the created STG. It is obvious that other former Soviet Central Asian republics, except Tajikistan, will soon sign the same agreements with Ankara.}

Kyrgyzstan is moving most quickly in this direction - with the active approval and support of Nur-Sultan, who is interested in quickly involving all countries in the region in this integration process.

The Turkic world as a replacement for the Russian one in Central Asia

And this is only one of the puzzles of the emerging economic and military-political alliance, since in parallel with this, the leadership of Kazakhstan is actively purchasing Turkish weapons, what we wrote about earlier.

_{And it is already obvious to everyone that the contours of the new association are anti-Russian in nature and are also aimed at containing China. In relation to Russia, the creation of the STG means squeezing out the Russian language and its speakers from the region and the final separation of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and then Kyrgyzstan from the common sociocultural space. In addition, there will be a transfer of routes for energy flows and extracted raw materials from Central Asia towards Azerbaijan and Turkey, bypassing the territory of the Russian Federation.}

This was already discussed during the first meeting of the energy ministers of the member states and observers of the Turkic Council on February 24 this year. According to the press release of this first meeting of energy ministers, the Secretary General of the Turkic Council and at the same time a Kazakh official, Baghdad Amreev, in his speech emphasized the strategic importance of energy cooperation for the member states.

Thus, in his final speech, he summarized with satisfaction that everyone came to a common opinion, “pointing to the proposals put forward by the ministers, such as the need for further diversification of energy routes, as well as the creation of new mechanisms under the Turkic Council for the further development of new energy projects and attracting foreign investment in this sector."

_{If we translate these reports into human language, it turns out that the ministers of the Central Asian countries agreed on the need to use the routes proposed by Turkey, and in particular, with participation in the Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (TANAP), with a length of 1,85 thousand km, with maximum throughput up to 31 billion cubic meters. This project becomes the foundation for completing the long-standing idea of ​​filling the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, through which rivers of black gold will also flow to European markets.}

It is planned to attract Western and Turkish investments in the development of new fields and in connecting Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to these routes. And even earlier, in January of this year, through the mediation of Ankara, it was possible to bring Baku and Ashgabat to the negotiating table, which signed a Memorandum of Understanding on joint exploration, development and development of hydrocarbon resources of the Dostlug field in the Caspian Sea

The first such sign was the agreement between the Azerbaijani state company SOCAR and the Swiss-Dutch company Vitol Group on the transportation of hydrocarbons starting in October of this year. SOCAR plans to transport Turkmen oil through the Caspian Sea to Baku, and then it will go through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BDT) oil pipeline. And Russia has already begun to suffer losses, since reorientation to Azerbaijan and Turkey has reduced the volume of transportation of Turkmen hydrocarbons through the port of Novorossiysk by 50%.

_{Kazakh oil will definitely flow along this route, which will only strengthen Turkey’s position in the region. All this will lead to the formation of a unified transport and energy system, tailored to the STG and designed for the hegemony of Ankara. The next summit in Istanbul should fix the provisions of the new integration Union, which will significantly undermine Russia’s influence in Central Asia.}

Many now have illusions that the construction of a nuclear power plant by Rosatom and digitalization by Sberbank will consolidate Kazakhstan in the EAEU, but it may turn out that this is just a distraction. After all, the final agreements should be signed only in the spring of next year, while the “Union of Turkic States” structures will already be created in Turkey. It is possible that the Kazakh authorities will then, citing the nationalist movement they themselves inspired, simply refuse to sign such agreements at the last moment.

And in order to cement the new Union, Erdogan has already put forward the thesis of six states and one nation. Accordingly, the ousting of the Russian language at the legislative level and the accelerated transition to the Latin alphabet with the abandonment of the Cyrillic alphabet is a natural step towards the creation of such a “Turkic nation.” By building a new “Turkic world”, Nazarbayev’s elite is taking Kazakhstan away from the Russian one.

Flags of the countries participating in the Union

Therefore, within the framework of the new scheme of integration with Turkey, Nur-Sultan’s use of Kazakh nationalism, Russophobia, pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism seems logical. We will talk about the processes of Islamization of the republics in our next articles, since this issue requires separate coverage.

_{The main goal of all these attempts is to preserve the unlimited power of local princelings, since the ruling elites in Central Asia are all afraid of political integration within the EAEU with Moscow, fearing that they will lose control over financial flows and the ability to carry out smuggling and uncontrolled theft of natural resources. wealth}

In addition, the ruling elite of Kazakhstan, unlike Ukraine, can achieve European integration only through an alliance with Turkey. And Washington gives all post-Soviet Central Asian elites who emerged from the late party nomenklatura a clear guideline and instructions to quickly merge with Ankara. In this regard, Pan-Turkism and Pan-Islamism become the main enemies in the region, and the “Union of Turkic States” becomes the main weapon of the West in the fight against Russia and China.