Türkiye is trying to arrange “Nagorno-Karabakh” in Central Asia
During the escalation of the border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan from April 29 to May 1, Turkey tried to indirectly intervene in the situation by offering Bishkek its weapons. By this, Ankara showed its ability to provide its “brotherly” assistance and at the same time paved the way for the Americans to deepen contradictions between CSTO members, as well as to improve positions in the process of negotiating the location of a new NATO base in order to accommodate the withdrawal of troops and strike aircraft from Afghanistan.
The generosity of neo-Ottoman Turkey included a willingness to provide “any military assistance required” - from MLRS and Bayraktar TB2 drones, and even to the allocation of Turkish army personnel. It is clear that Ankara is physically unable to transfer real military units other than special forces, but it is quite capable of issuing some of its weapons as a loan or even free of charge. Even such a statement itself already provided the Ottoman revanchists with certain diplomatic and propaganda preferences.
MLRS T-122 Sakarya.
This, by the way, is the first manifestation of military-political solidarity within the framework of the Organization of Turkic States created in Turkestan at the end of March on the initiative of Nursultan Nazarbayev. Turkey, using this platform, is already interfering in the internal affairs of the countries of Central Asia under the guise of fulfilling allied obligations and, using the example of the defeat of Bishkek, seems to be proposing to quickly form its own Turkic NATO or a single “Army of Turan”.
If Recep Erdogan manages to impose his “gifts” on Sadyr Japarov, then this will be a serious challenge and will work to further escalate the conflict with Tajikistan. After all, now the current Kyrgyz leadership will be actively recruited by various well-wishers from the West, as well as internal nationalist forces and groups, in order to instill the idea of the importance and necessity of revenge in the confrontation with Dushanbe. In fact, Ankara is now trying to reproduce “Nagorno-Karabakh” only in Central Asia, where the role of Armenians will be played by Tajiks.
This constitutes serious threats both to the interests of Russia and to the entire existing geopolitical structure of the region, because Kyrgyzstan is now its weakest link. It is now easy to knock out a “humiliated” country both through a possible new “color revolution” or through mass riots of patriots offended by defeat, and by dragging the current president into the camp of opponents of Moscow and Beijing.
Turkish drone TAI Anka-S.
It is not for nothing that the new president of Kyrgyzstan so actively supported the initiative to create the Organization of Turkic States.
“The multifaceted activities of the Turkic Council, its place and authority in the international arena require the formal transformation of the Council into the Organization of Turkic States, believing that this will have a positive impact on strengthening its position in the international arena and will stimulate the expansion of its scope of activities. Secondly, after the completion of the transformation of the Council into the Organization of Turkic-Speaking States, the interest of other countries will increase and the number of people wishing to join the Organization or obtain observer status will increase,” this newly-minted supporter of the “Turkic world” pointed out at the summit in Turkestan.
We must not forget that, like Nikol Pashinyan, Sadyr Japarov rose to prominence on the wave of protests and unrest and is a typical authoritarian national populist who is capable of raising slogans for the rearmament of the army with the support of the Turkish “brothers” for the sake of the political situation and playing on the mood of the crowd. ensuring unconditional victory over the Persian-speaking enemy. This could rally certain groups around the throne and give it some support in a situation where a serious internal socio-economic crisis develops.
Now Ankara and its satellites are already taking advantage of the impoverishment of the Kyrgyz people, sending humanitarian aid and food, trying to gain the sympathy of the population in favor of the newly-minted Union of Turkic-Speaking States. The problem is aggravated by the large number of residents of the Batken region of the Kyrgyz Republic who were left without housing and property as a result of fires and robberies during the border conflict, as dozens of villages were shelled and occupied by Tajik troops. Let us recall that the number of victims on the Kyrgyz side as a result of the confrontation increased to 149, and the dead to 34. Various external and internal forces are now taking advantage of these social ills.
True, for a sharp geopolitical turn, Bishkek now has no free space for maneuver, since it is sandwiched between Tashkent and Dushanbe, on the one hand, and Moscow and Beijing will not allow the new Kyrgyz leadership to fall into outright adventurism. And the more rigid and centralized regime of Tajikistan does not at all represent “local Armenia”, being stronger, having military experience from the civil war of the 90s.
The position of the leadership of Uzbekistan, which was angry that previously adopted agreements on border demarcation in March of this year were disavowed by Bishkek in April, is also turning out unfavorably for the ruling elite of Kyrgyzstan. Sadyr Japarov himself had previously flown to Tashkent, where, after negotiations with Shavkat Mirziyoyev, he announced that all controversial territorial issues had now been resolved “one hundred percent.” Then the parties agreed that the dam of the Andijan reservoir would go to Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan would receive up to 1 thousand hectares of land in return.
However, this decision was not supported by local Kyrgyz from the Osh region, who began holding open-ended rallies exactly at the end of April and demanding the cancellation of the agreement. On April 25, the head of the State Committee for National Security of the republic and the head of the delegation to the border demarcation commission, Kamchibek Tashiev, arrived at such an open-ended meeting, where he stated that the leadership would terminate the agreement. “We didn’t fall from the sky. The demand of the people is the highest demand for us. You ask not to give up Kempir-Abad, which means we won’t give it up,” said the chairman of this special service.
Already in the city of Osh, Kamchibek Tashiev promised to hold regular negotiations with the Uzbek side, since out of 1378 kilometers, areas of about 200 kilometers remained undemarcated and disputes and skirmishes also periodically arise on them, which could cause an armed conflict. Therefore, in this situation, Tashkent and Dushanbe turned out to be situational allies and perhaps even coordinated their actions during the border armed conflict on April 29 - May 1.
Therefore, we need to talk not about the conflict between Turkic-speaking peoples and Persian-speaking Tajiks, but about serious contradictions between the “independent” countries of Central Asia over water and land resources in the Fergana Valley, which is now a real powder keg. Both the Turkic-speaking Uzbeks and Kyrgyz, being Sunni Muslims, can also shed each other’s blood if the situation escalates.
A real blow for Ankara and Washington, as well as a warning factor for Bishkek, was the latest statement by the Ministry of Defense of Uzbekistan, which stated that “The defense doctrine of the republic does not provide for the placement of foreign military bases in the country.” This clearly confused the cards of those who hoped to locate a NATO base in this country and thereby influence the position of the leadership of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Now Tashkent will block any military assistance from Ankara for Bishkek, even within the framework of the Organization of Turkic States, since it could ultimately turn against it.
That is, now the hotheads in Kyrgyzstan still have their hands tied, since they are isolated except for economic support from Nur-Sultan, and Turkey’s initiatives are hanging in the air. But no one can guarantee that the situation cannot change in the future, since the propaganda, political and financial pressure of the collective West on the leadership of the former Soviet Central Asian republics is intensifying, as attempts at new provocations continue on the borders and within these countries.
Turkish drone Bayraktar tb2.
Therefore, active political intervention by Moscow as a super-arbiter in the ongoing processes in Central Asia is necessary in order not to freeze conflicts, but to try to resolve them at the diplomatic and then at the socio-economic level in order to deprive Ankara and Washington of a base for creating a new “Nagorno-Karabakh”. Therefore, it is no coincidence that on May 10, on the initiative of the Russian side, a telephone conversation took place between Vladimir Putin and Sadyr Japarov.
“Vladimir Putin said that the Russian Federation is ready to provide the Kyrgyz Republic with the necessary assistance in overcoming the humanitarian consequences of the border conflict,” the press service of the Kyrgyz President’s Office said in a statement about the conversation. As a result of these negotiations, Sadyr Japarov was invited to come on a working visit to the Russian capital to discuss a whole range of economic issues and relations with neighbors in the region.
The return of Russia seriously and for a long time to Central Asia will have a beneficial effect on the situation and will become a guarantee of peace and prosperity for the peoples inhabiting it, whom the dreamers of the revival of the Ottoman Empire and “well-wishers” from overseas are now trying to push together.
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