Jean Marcou, Professor of Law at Sciences Po Grenoble, researcher at CERDAP2 and associate researcher at the French Institute of Anatolian Studies in Istanbul.
On January 10, 2022, the flags of the Organization of Turkic States (OET) were lowered to half-mast at the headquarters of its General Secretariat in Istanbul. The unrest that shook Kazakhstan in the first week of 2022 was severely repressed. After giving the impression, in the very first hours of the crisis, of making some concessions by dismissing the government and reversing the increase in the price of liquid natural gas (LNG) used as motor fuel (particularly in the west of the country), Kazakh President, On January 7, 2022, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered his security forces "to shoot to kill without warning", describing the demonstrators as "terrorists", "bandits" and "armed criminals" with "a clear plan" for subversion and "a high level of combat readiness".
On January 9, 2022, just as it seemed to have regained control of the situation, the Kazakh Interior Ministry announced that the riots had claimed 164 victims and that almost 8,000 people were in detention. This choice of strong-arm tactics to overcome the crisis was accompanied by an urgent appeal to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the military alliance that brings together Russia and its main allies (Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and, of course, Kazakhstan), and which sees itself as the Eastern counterpart of the Atlantic Alliance.
Nikol Pachinian, the Armenian Prime Minister, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the organization, quickly announced the dispatch of a stabilization force, perhaps regretting inwardly that he had not received such support a year ago during the second Nagorno-Karabakh war. This force, mainly made up of Russian troops, arrived on January 6 to ensure that the country was brought into line, and in his speech the following day, the Kazakh president ostensibly thanked Vladimir Putin.
Turkey takes note but...
Following the Kazakh crisis closely, Turkey gave the impression of taking note of the choices made by President Tokayev to restore order and safeguard his regime. As early as January 6, 2022, in a conversation with his Kazakh counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan assured him of his solidarity, expressing his conviction that he would overcome the ordeal, and offering him his country's "experience and technical expertise".
This cautious stance did not really change in the days that followed. However, Ankara does not seem to have fully subscribed to the Kazakh-Russian version of events. Although the English-language pro-government Daily Sabah reported the words of Ruslan Balbek, ex-Duma deputy and ex-member of the pro-Russian Crimean government, accusing the Gülen movement and Daech of being behind the riots in Kazakhstan, the mainstream Turkish media (most of them close to the government) kept a certain distance from the events, continuing to speak of "demonstrators", explaining that stability and security in the country were important for the region, or believing that the problems encountered could be resolved "through dialogue".
Reporting on the latest events in Almaty on January 11, Daily Sabah evokes the relief felt by a Kazakh teacher after the arrival of Russian troops, but also the sadness of a local photographer who, marked by the sight of corpses in the streets, says he is convinced that the restoration of order we have just witnessed will certainly be "a bad peace".
It has also been noted that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in his capacity as current Chairman of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS, which brings together Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, as well as Turkey; Hungary and Turkmenistan are observer countries), has stepped up his telephone contacts with the leaders of member countries, and prompted a videoconference of this body to be held on January 11, 2022. It is clear, however, that this intervention is not intended to compete with, or even hinder, that of the CSTO or Russia, but one senses that the Turkish president is trying to create a diplomatic space for himself, enabling him to have a say in resolving the Kazakh crisis and its aftermath.
It won't be easy, however. Since the end of the bipolar world, Turkey has opened up to the new Turkic republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, but it has also often had occasion to observe the extent to which their regimes remain post-Soviet, and their diplomacy pro-Russian. On several occasions, Moscow has reminded Ankara that the Turkish area is essentially part of its "near abroad", a Russian diplomatic concept that covers the territory of the former Soviet Union, or at any rate designates an area where Russia feels it has a right of oversight, or even intervention. In Azerbaijan in 1992-1993, Turkish support for the presidency of the nationalist Aboulfaz Eltchibei quickly turned sour. At that time, Moscow's support for Armenia led to Azerbaijan's defeat in the first Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and to the long-term establishment of Heydar Aliev's post-Soviet regime in Baku.
And yet, over the past thirty years, the situation has evolved, as Turkey has gradually forged functional links with Turkic countries. In Azerbaijan, Turkey has succeeded in establishing a close relationship with the Aliyev regime, initiating economic, energy and cultural cooperation that led to political and even military convergence, tolerated by Moscow, during the latest Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It is true that Azerbaijan is not a member of the CSTO, that the particular strategic context of the Caucasus has favoured this rapprochement and that Ilhan Aliyev, the current head of state, is not quite Heydar Aliyev... Nevertheless, even if it is less spectacular than in Azerbaijan, this Turkish rise to power in the Turkish world has been observed elsewhere.
Turkish Moments in Central Asia Central Asia
While economic cooperation and trade have fallen short of expectations, the AKP government has been able to capitalize on the linguistic and religious advantages of this new Turkic area. The countries in this area may speak different languages (Azeri, Kazakh and Kyrgyz in particular), but their syntax is comparable and their vocabulary similar.
All of which, of course, led to the establishment of significant educational cooperation. As Bayram Balci has shown, the Turkish schools of the Gülen movement were very successful in this part of the world, to the extent that the Turkish government did not always manage to get them back under control (particularly in Kazakhstan), when it launched a relentless crackdown on the neo-confraternity after the 2016 coup attempt. From the 1990s onwards, thousands of students from the new republics also began to flock to Turkey, as widespread satellite broadcasting enabled these countries to discover the programs of Turkish TV channels.
On the religious front, although its first adventures in Azerbaijan were not very conclusive (this country having been marked by Duodeciman Shiism and above all by 70 years of Soviet secularization), Turkey has seen the opening up of a space in Central Asia where the Hanafi Sunnism it practices is the dominant religion. In September 2018, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan inaugurated the largest mosque in Central Asia, built in Bishkek (the capital of Kyrgyzstan) by the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs(Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı). This restored cultural closeness has generated an increasingly important political relationship, reflected in particular by the density, not to say "routinization", of high-level official visits by Turkish leaders and officials from other Turkic countries.
As early as 2009, these multiple links led to the creation of a Turkic Council, which recently evolved (following a proposal by former Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev) into the "Organization of Turkic States - OET", at the organization's 8th summit in Istanbul in November 2021. The latter adopted the strategic text "Vision of the Turkic-speaking World 2040" drawn up by Nursultan Nazarbayev, congratulated Azerbaijan on its military success in Nagorno-Karabakh, and declared its support for the reconstruction of this region and the initiative currently underway to establish diplomatic relations between Ankara and Yerevan.
The return of Russian order
The unrest that shook Kazakhstan at the beginning of 2022 thus took place in the context of the development of the Turkic area. In many respects, Kazakhstan has emerged as one of the most active countries in this process, not only through its role in the advent of the Turkic States Organization, but also through its own strategic initiatives. Traditionally considered an ally of Moscow since the end of the former USSR, it had shown a clear desire for emancipation over the past year.
Indeed, while the Kazakh regime had given the impression of wanting to strengthen its ties with Moscow, by signing a cybersecurity agreement in December 2021 excluding any cooperation with NATO, it had previously surprised by purchasing or testing Turkish military equipment (notably Anka drones and Arma 8×8 armored vehicles), and by renewing or concluding military cooperation agreements with the United States and Italy. Significantly, in its January 5-6, 2022 edition, the newspaper Le Monde published an article by Emmanuel Grynszpan, entitled "Le virage stratégique du Kazakhstan vers la Turquie" ("Kazakhstan's strategic shift towards Turkey"). Recalling current developments, the article argued that Kazakhstan, particularly through its Turkish policy, was seeking to loosen the Russian and Chinese stranglehold on the Eurasian space in order to achieve a more autonomous position.
Recent unrest has certainly called this strategy into question. The Kazakh president, who declared last March that the aim "was to make the Turkish world one of the most important economic, cultural and humanitarian regions of the 21st century", was forced to rehabilitate the paradigm of the collective security treaty in a hurry, by requesting the support of Russian troops to restore order. As calm returned on January 11, Kassym-Jomart Tokaïev announced the rapid withdrawal of these forces, as if to belie the warning of the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, that "when the Russians come in, it's very difficult to get them to leave".
In addition, the Kazakh leader has appointed a new government and has even taken the liberty of criticizing his predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbayev, denouncing the emergence of a privileged class in the country. These initiatives, however, appear to be cosmetic concessions designed to ensure that nothing changes. Ultimately, the prevailing impression is that Vladimir Putin's Russia has taken advantage of these events to bring a vassal that was becoming a little too turbulent back under its wing, just as it did a year ago when it used the Armenian setbacks during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to bring Yerevan back into line.
Does this return of Russian order to Central Asia sound the death knell for Kazakhstan's Turkish embellishment in 2021? In reality, it's likely that Russia will want to give the impression that it will continue to tolerate the CSTO countries' continued relations with Turkey and their involvement in the TAB. As soon as the organization was set up in November 2021, Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman and trained historian-orientalist, was skeptical about the central role Turkey claimed to play in it, believing that the heart of the Turkic world lay not in Anatolia, but in Russia's Altai region.
He did say, however, that he understood this revival of identity. After all, isn't it a way of convincing people that, despite their close ties with Russia, the Central Asian republics are truly independent? However, after the Kazakh crisis, they will have to cultivate their Turkish addiction with more moderation, avoiding politically or militarily sensitive sectors, which can be irritating subjects.
For its part, Turkey has learned to manage its fickle relationship with Russia, moving closer to it where necessary to gain room for maneuver within NATO, while remaining a country that is not part of the same military alliance. Moscow appreciates this ambiguous Turkish "grand écart", which weakens the Western bloc, provided it does not become a stone in its own garden, in particular a Turkish lever that could serve Western interests in its "near abroad". These are undoubtedly the first strategic lessons to be drawn from the bloody riots in Kazakhstan at the start of 2022.