The Greater Turkey dream grows

Summit of Turkish-speaking countries in Uzbekistan: Erdogan's creature for the rebirth of the "Ottoman dream". Ankara's pressure on Turkmenistan, still a mere observer. An integration process that has been going on since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The war in Ukraine could give the "Turkmen" bloc more relevance.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - A two-day summit of the Organisation of Turkmen States (OTS) opened yesterday in Samarkand, marking the start of Uzbekistan's turn as president. The meeting was presented by the head of the Department for Regional Relations in Tashkent, Rakhmatilla Nurimbetov, who outlined the agenda of the summit. Under discussion are the development of trade relations, the simplification of bureaucratic processes related to transport and communication routes, customs assistance, and the opening of new border-crossing corridors. All this will be signed by the member states in a document pompously dubbed the 'Samarkand Declaration'.

Taking part in the summit of the Ost, founded in 2009 as the 'Turkic Council', are Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey as founding countries; Uzbekistan officially joined the group in 2018, participating in the Baku meeting the following year. Hungary and Turkmenistan joined with observer status. The renaming of the Ost was decided a year ago at the Istanbul assembly, under the leadership of President Erdogan, who sees in this collaboration the rebirth of the 'Ottoman dream' of greater Turkey.

The Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevljut Çavuşoğlu, had declared in September that Turkmenistan would participate as a full member of the Oost, but without clarifying whether this formality would be finalised in Samarkand. However, from Ašgabat, the former president and head of the Senate Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov arrived in Samarkand and not his son, the incumbent president Serdar, while from Budapest, Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrived.

The prestige of the Turkmen 'father of the fatherland', the so-called Arkadag, who handed over the leadership of the country to his son, on the one hand manifests the high regard for the Ost, but on the other hand lowers the official rank of the Ašgabat delegation, which still reserves the right to remain on the sidelines of full membership, defending its traditional principle of separation and confidentiality with respect to all international relations.

Turkmenistan emphasised this closed dimension even recently, when it asked Turkey to cancel the visa-free entry regime between the two countries, which had been in place for over 15 years, also to better control the passage of citizens not aligned with the Berdymukhamedov regime.  It was only in 2021 that Ašgabat joined the OSO as an observer, and in April this year Gurbanguly joined the 'Council of Elders' of the Turkic Organisation, the structure's governing body.

Turkey is particularly keen on relations with the Turkmen, who are considered the 'closest relatives' of the neo-sultanate, and Erdogan himself has made several appeals to Turkmenistan in recent years to push for a more structured participation. Ašgabat, however, insists on stifling the movement of Turkmen dissidents living in Turkey, and until it achieves convincing results, it will continue to remain on the sidelines.

The union of Turkic-speaking countries is a process that has been going on since the end of the USSR, when on 30 October 1992 representatives of Central Asian countries that in various ways relate to Turkic history and cultural tradition were called to Ankara. The initiator was the then Turkish President Turgut Ozal, and the first post-Soviet leaders of five countries took part: SaparmuratNiyazov of Turkmenistan, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan, Askar Akaev of Kyrgyzstan and Abulfaz Elčibej of Azerbaijan. Tajikistan, a Central Asian country of Iranian, not Turkic descent, will not participate.

The events of the last few years, especially the Russian conflict in Ukraine, have profoundly changed the general framework not only of relations in Central Asia and Turkey, but in all post-Soviet balances, and the role of the OSU could become much more incisive, and not merely symbolic as it has been to date.

• central asia
• turkey
• alliance
• russia
• china
• neo-octomanism
• recep tayyip erdoğan
• economy