Turkish Curriculum’s Renaming Of Central Asia To Turkistan Is Turkiye’s Latest Soft Power Flex

Russia should brace itself for the turbocharging of Turkish-led comprehensive integration processes along its southern front and the serious implications that this could have for its security.

The Turkish Education Minister announced in late November that his country’s curriculum will replace Central Asia with Turkistan as part of its pan-Turkic unity plans. This coincides with the five Central Asian Republics inviting Azerbaijan to join their annual Consultative Meeting of Heads of State and then rebranding as the “Community of Central Asia” (CCA), which follows early August’s unveiling of the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP). All of this bodes ill for Russian interests.

It was earlier explained how “The West Is Posing New Challenges To Russia Along Its Entire Southern Periphery” by having Turkiye serve as the proverbial tip of the spear for injecting Western influence into the South Caucasus-Central Asia via TRIPP. Moreover, “The US’ Central Asian Minerals Deals Could Put More Pressure On Russia & Afghanistan”, thus tightening the Turkish-led encirclement of Russia. Russia now has to contend with the CCA possibly shifting its members’ self-identity (and loyalty) to Turkistan.

Tajikistan is the exception since it’s the only non-Turkic member and also doesn’t participate in the Turkish-led “Organization of Turkic States” (OTS) unlike the others (the rest are members while Turkmenistan is an observer). In any case, the latest challenge that’s now arising along Russia’s southern front is the transformation of their post-Soviet identities as Central Asian Republics (or Azerbaijan’s simply as Azerbaijan) into Turkiye’s proposed Turkistan one, which is what Central Asia used to be called.

Nevertheless, while this “return to history” aligns with the multipolar trend of civilizationalism whereby civilization-states (e.g. those like Turkiye that left lasting socio-cultural legacies on others throughout the centuries) restore their “spheres of influences”, this example thereof has serious implications for Russia. The OTS began as a socio-cultural organization that’s now taking on economic and even security functions, and the newly formed CCA with Azerbaijan essentially functions as a sub-group therein.

With TRIPP as the catalyst, this combination of factors is therefore expected to turbocharge Turkish-led comprehensive integration processes across this vast geographic space stretching from Anatolia to the South Caucasus and into Eurasia’s Central Asian heartland, thus challenging Russia’s influence there. The possibly impending and perhaps ultimately inevitable intensification of security cooperation between Russia’s traditional Central Asian partners and NATO member Turkiye could spark a security dilemma.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with socio-cultural integration and expressions of shared civilizational pride since Russia encourages precisely this within what it calls the “Russian World”, parts of which overlap with the OTS’ de facto CCA sub-group. The risk though is that the erosion of Russian influence among the latter facilitated by the gradual transformation of their self-identities from separate post-Soviet Central Asian Republics to part of Turkistan can embolden bad actors to attempt a power play.

This could lead to corrupt Turkic-identifying elites replacing Russia’s longstanding and mutually beneficial economic influence in Central Asia with Turkiye’s in parallel with trying to bring their armed forces to NATO standards just like Azerbaijan recently succeeded in doing with its own. The more that these elites and their people self-identify as part of Turkish-led Turkistan as opposed to their respective post-Soviet nation-states, which is what Turkiye’s latest move aims to assist with, the more likely this will become.