As the war in Ukraine grinds on, Turkey is
making geopolitical inroads in places long dominated by Russia, such as Central Asia and
the South Caucasus. Increasingly,
though, Turkey is zeroing in on regions where Moscow should have firm control:
inside the Russian Federation itself.
اضافة اعلان
It is no secret that some political forces in
Turkey view certain Russian territories as part of the “Turkic World”. In
February 2022, the Turkish conservative newspaper Karar listed 10 Russian
regions, including Tatarstan, Chuvashia, and Bashkortostan as “autonomous Turkic republics”.
Three months earlier, Devlet Bahceli, leader of
the Nationalist Movement Party — the coalition partner of the governing Justice
and Development Party — presented a controversial “Turkic World” map to
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It included southern regions of Russia, such as
Kuban and Rostov, and the republics of the North Caucasus, Eastern Siberia, and
Crimea — the de jure Ukrainian territory that Moscow annexed in 2014.
But rather than protest, the Kremlin praised
the gesture. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he did not see
“anything shameful” in Bahceli’s gift to Erdogan, and suggested that Turkey was
simply “striving to maintain ties with compatriots”.
These events have opened the door for Turkey’s
new foreign policy trajectory.
Courting Turkic peoples
Bogged down in Ukraine, Russia is unable to
protect the interests of its citizens living in Turkey. A growing number of
Russians, including those who fled to the country after President Vladimir
Putin announced a military call-up in September 2022, have had difficulty obtaining Turkish
residency. Without papers, Russians are on the move again, leaving Turkey behind.
The message from Ankara is clear: Russians with Turkic roots will be prioritized above all others.
At the same time, Turkish authorities are issuing long-term residence permits to Crimean
Tatars — Turkic-speaking Muslims from an area that Ankara views as within
its sphere of influence. The message
from Ankara is clear: Russians with Turkic roots will be prioritized above all
others.
Over the years, Turkey has been developing
cultural and economic ties with Dagestan, a restive
Russian region in the North Caucasus. Turkey has also become a main partner of
Tatarstan — a subject of the Russian Federation located in the east-central
part of European Russia.
In 2021, Ankara invested $2.5 billion in Tatarstan’s economy, outpacing the
foreign investment of 79 other countries — including Russia — that year.
The funds came after Tatarstan’s president, Rustam Minnikhanov, visited Ankara,
where he met with Erdogan to discuss ways to deepen the relationship. Agreements were inked on
economic cooperation, particularly manufacturing.
Then in May last year, during an international
economic summit in the Tatarstan capital of Kazan, Turkish and Tatarstan
officials pledged to create conditions to support entrepreneurial activities.
Chechnya’s role
To some Russian analysts, Moscow views
Tatarstan as an economic gateway to the Islamic world, but in political terms,
the Kremlin prefers to lean on Chechnya and its leader Ramzan Kadyrov to
develop ties with Islamic states.
There are practical reasons for Russia’s choice
— starting with the leader’s troubled relationship with Turkey. Kadyrov has
been connected to a series of murders of Chechen dissidents living in
Turkey, as well as to claims of espionage on Turkish soil.
Moreover, in December 2021, he threatened to
erect a statue of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party leader Abdullah Ocalan
— a sworn enemy of the Turkish state — when a park named after former Chechen rebel-leader
Dzhokhar Dudayev was inaugurated in Turkey’s Kocaeli
province.
The Kremlin seems intent on preserving its economic and political ties with Turkey at all costs
That plan was eventually shelved after Putin
and Erdogan met in Sochi in August 2022. Turkey then
moved to establish closer
cooperation with the Chechen Republic on various issues, including investment
and trade.
Turkey as a preferred ally
Turkey’s meddling in Russian affairs was most
recently on display last month, when exiled leaders from Ingushetia, a Russian
republic in the North Caucasus, gathered in Istanbul to call for independence.
The exiled Ingush leaders released a statement, in which they
emphasized the necessity of “consolidating the Ingush society around the idea
of independence, as well as striving to preserve cultural and religious
identity.”
The Kremlin again turned a blind eye. Erdogan
even went on national television to boast that “all
Ankara’s requests (from Putin) concerning Tatarstan, Dagestan, and other
regions are answered.” Even as Ankara seeks to increase its presence in Russian
regions where Turkic and Muslim peoples reside, the Kremlin seems intent
on preserving its economic and political ties with
Turkey at all costs.
Turkey will undoubtedly continue using the
Kremlin’s weakened position to increase economic, political, and cultural ties
with Russia’s ethnic-based regions. In the long-term, if the Ukraine war
results in the dissolution of the Russian Federation — as some have predicted —
Tatarstan, Dagestan, Sakha, Ingushetia, and possibly even Chechnya may turn to
Turkey as its preferred ally.
Russia’s debacle in Ukraine has given Turkey
significant leverage over Moscow on many aspects of their bilateral relations.
As Turkey’s foreign policy demonstrates, Putin’s decision to go to war is
coming home to roost.
Nikola Mikovic is a political analyst in Serbia. His work focuses
mostly on the foreign policies of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, with
special attention on energy and pipeline politics. Copyright: Syndication Bureau.
Read more Opinion and Analysis
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
