Aslan Nerhoev
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Leaders of Turkey and Central Asian nations have met in the Mediterranean city of Antalya to discuss closer cooperation in their first such summit in six years! Why only now has Ankara take so active interest in boosting its economic and cultural cooperation with Turkic-speaking countries? The matter is not only that faced with collective and unjust pressure from the EU and other Western nations, Ankara wants to receive support from friendly countries of the Turkic world. Turkey, which is predominantly Muslim but has a secular government, tries to project itself as a model democracy for the Central Asian countries.
The 8th summit of Turkic-speaking countries’ leaders (except Turkmenistan’s and Uzbekistan’s presidents) has shown us that Ankara, inspirited by Washington, decided to concentrated its efforts on coming to the forefront in this union of Turkic nations. And then surely Turkey will try to dictate its terms for other Central Asian nations. In this connection Kazakhstan, which possesses the largest oil deposits in the Caspian Sea, shouldn’t be under the illusion that it will ever play the main role in so-called Energy Commonwealth of Turkic nations.
Although Ankara has supported Nazarbayev’s plan to systemize cooperation among parliaments, central and local administrations of Turkic-speaking countries and to form the Interparliamentaly Assembly of Turkic states, Central Asian nations should realize that Ankara is not interested in strengthening the Energy Commonwealth of Turkic nations at all, because it leads to strengthening their positions in the world. To move up in the world Turkey is executing US order to split the ranks of Central Asian nations, united in such power groups as Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Collective Security Treaty Organization and Eurasian Economic Community.
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