TURKEY IN THE CAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA: THE POST-SOVIET PERIOD
Abstract
The geopolitical vacuum the Soviet Union left behind in Eurasia was filled with a new regional system brimming with new opportunities and even more regional and global threats.
On the one hand, the Soviet Union’s disappearance from the world map and Moscow’s obvious inability to replace it as the main political factor in the region gave Turkey a unique opportunity to move into the driving seat in the region. Moreover, Ankara could exploit the close cultural, ethnic, and linguistic ties going back to the past it shared with the states of the Caucasus and Central Asia.
However, on the other hand, disintegration of the common state created new dividing lines in the region best described as a mêlée of nationalities and religions, this fanned old contradictions and generated conditions for new ethnic, religious, and territorial conflicts.
This means that the three newly independent Caucasian states not only formed a buffer zone between Turkey and Russia, its old rival, but also developed into another seat of instability on its northeastern borders. Apprehensive of the unrestricted spread of radical Islam which, supported by Iran and extremist movements, could fill the post-Soviet power vacuum, Ankara and the Western capitals offered the new Caucasian and Central Asian states a Turkic model of development: a secular state in a predominantly Muslim country and market economy.
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The 10 km of common border between Turkey and Azerbaijan is found only in the enclave of Nakhchivan.
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There is no agreement over the figure of Fethullah Gülen inside Turkey and beyond it; he was persecuted by the secular military regime; detained for clandestine religious activities; and accused of the intention to change the constitutional order of the Turkic Republic and liquidate its secular regime. He was also accused of setting up an educational network outside Turkey to educate and train loyal elite to rely on if and when Turkey was transformed into an Islamic state. He is fairly popular in the West, especially in the United States where he lived in 2000 in self-imposed exile to avoid arrest on the accusation of being involved in a planned coup in Turkey. Two former CIA officers and former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Morton Abramowitz supported him at the court hearing on granting him a residence permit in the United States. Some Turkish experts think that Washington would like to see Gülen’s moderate Islamic movement developing into a “third force” in Turkey and a “powerful political movement” in the region. The secular elite of Turkey is firmly convinced, albeit without reliable evidence, that the United States and the CIA in particular support Gülen and his movement.
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