The Cultural-Civilizational Aspect of Central Eurasian Development

When viewing CEA in the geopolitical and geo-economic context as a single region, it should also be analyzed from the cultural-civilizational perspective. Most of its population is Muslim, and Islam plays an important role in the sociopolitical life of the region’s countries due to its broad social base, trans-nationalism, polycentrism, and the vast financial potential of the oil-producing states. The second key religion of the region is Christianity, the followers of which comprise the absolute majority of the population in Armenia and Georgia.

Ethnic unity, particularly the affiliation of most of the Central Asian countries with the Turkic world, is an equally important consolidating factor in CEA. This makes the high level of Turkey’s geopolitical activity in the region objective.

The sociocultural features of the region are also shaped by its relations with neighboring states. In the south, the Central Eurasian states border on relatively isolated geopolitical Muslim actors—Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey. In the east, the CEA states are contiguous to the Muslim border regions of China (the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region), which play the role of a buffer zone between the Muslim world and the Confucian civilization and Buddhism. In the north, Russia’s southern regions are also populated by numerous Muslim peoples who are under the strong influence of Orthodoxy and………………

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