Why is Russia suddenly worried about Turkey’s rise in Central Asia? From Erdoğan’s controversial “Turkic world” map to the growing influence of the Organization of Turkic States, this video explores how Moscow’s grip on the region is weakening after the Ukraine war. Discover how trade corridors, military drones, energy routes, and shared cultural identity are reshaping Eurasia—and why the Kremlin now sees Pan-Turkism as a serious geopolitical challenge that could redefine the post-Soviet world.
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00:00In 2021, Turkish President Erdogan received a gift from the Nationalist Movement Party,
00:05a map of the Turkic world. It covered enormous swathes of Central Asia, the Caucasus,
00:11and notably, significant portions of Southern Russian territory, as well as China and the
00:16Balkans. The implication was that this is the Turkic world, the name for the diverse ethnic
00:22groups across Eurasia, and Turkey is its natural center. Rather than public outrage,
00:27the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov simply dismissed the map's accuracy, noting that the
00:33true center of the Turkic world was actually the Altai region, which happens to sit squarely
00:39inside Russia's borders. To the Kremlin, this was a small diplomatic jab, and more akin to political
00:44posturing for Turkey's internal aspirations rather than a geopolitical move. But fast forward to today,
00:51and the mood in Moscow has changed considerably. The map is one more sign to the Kremlin,
00:56and President Vladimir Putin, that Russia's grip on Central Asia is slipping, and that Turkey
01:02is ready to fill the void. In a monograph published in 2025, titled Mythologems of Pan-Turkism and the
01:10Security of Russia and Eurasia in the 21st Century, a team of experts warns that the rise of Turkic
01:16identity across Central Asia could pose an existential threat not just to Russian influence in the region,
01:22but potentially to the territorial integrity of Russia itself. Meanwhile, the Russian International
01:27Affairs Council published an analysis in April 2026, warning of Turkey's pan-Turkish policy spreading
01:35through the region. That's a dramatic shift in tone, and it tells you that something real is
01:40happening in Central Asia that Moscow had previously spent decades trying to prevent it.
01:45To fully understand the shifting landscape, you need to understand the region itself. Central Asia contains
01:51five former Soviet republics, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
01:59Together, they hold roughly 78 million people, but more importantly, they hold vast reserves of oil,
02:05gas, and rare minerals, accounting for over 5% of the global oil and gas reserves. And they sit along
02:11the
02:11ancient Silk Road trade routes that now carried transcontinental pipelines and rail corridors
02:16that connect the west with the east via land. In fact, way back in 1904 and 1919, the British
02:24geographer Halford Mackinder maintained that whoever controlled this zone would hold the key to world
02:29power. You don't have to buy into that theory entirely to recognize that every major power on Earth
02:35has already had an interest in what happens here. During the early 20th century, the Soviet Union sat
02:41squarely as the de facto controller of most of the area, and it was a prominent world power.
02:46And today, Russia, China, the United States, the European Union, Iran, and even the aforementioned
02:52Turkey are all competing for influence over the region for 30 years. The main difference now is that
02:58Russia's influence is slowly being eroded. After the Soviet collapse in 1991, Moscow locked the region in
03:05through a web of institutions and pressure. The Commonwealth of Independent States tied many of the
03:10economies together. The collective security treaty organization, CSTO, was supposed to be the
03:17military glue. Moscow signed bilateral defense treaties with several of the five republics,
03:22stationed Russian troops along key borders in parts of the region, and controlled many of the pipeline
03:27routes through which Central Asian oil and gas reached the world. When any of these countries stepped out
03:33of line, the Kremlin didn't hesitate to squeeze the noose just a bit tighter. Moscow reportedly demanded
03:39a 20-40% stake in Kazakh deposits that were still in the exploration phase, almost completely suspended
03:46oil exports from Kazakhstan from May to August, and also pressured Turkmenistan over gas revenues.
03:53The region was consistently a Russian point of interest, primarily because its economies remain deeply tied
03:59to Russia through trade, energy infrastructure, and remittances sent home by millions of Central
04:04Asian migrant workers employed there. And for a long time, it worked. Central Asian leaders were
04:11economically dependent on Moscow, militarily reliant on Russian security guarantees, and culturally still
04:17shaped by seven decades of Soviet rule. Russia even remained the de facto language of inter-regional
04:23communication. The Cyrillic alphabet, imposed by Stalin in the late 1930s to cut Central Asians off
04:30from their pre-Soviet literary heritage and from Turkey, was still in use across the region. In fact,
04:36the people who live in four out of the five republics, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Turkmen, shared common
04:42ancestry, religion, and linguistic ties long before the Soviet Union, with minorities scattered across the
04:48area. While these identities were not created by the Soviets, Moscow formalized and rigidly divided them
04:55into separate republics during the Soviet period, often cutting across existing cultural and demographic
05:00connections. Central Asia was essentially fragmented and then molded into what Russia wanted it to be.
05:07Fast forward to the 21st century and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Central Asian leaders watched
05:12Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, a move that Turkey, itself as a NATO member, criticized.
05:19Then the full-scale war started in 2022. The Turkic world then started considering who could be next,
05:26regardless of the outcome. Some leaders actively reaffirmed Ukraine's territorial integrity,
05:31despite trying to get as much as possible from their existing deals with Moscow. Kazakhstan's
05:36President Tokayev publicly stated he wouldn't recognize the supposedly breakaway Ukrainian territories
05:42Russia was annexing, all the while being on Russian soil. That kind of statement would have been
05:47unthinkable a decade earlier. The CSTO, the Russian equivalent of NATO, arguably lost more of its
05:53credibility. In 2023, Azerbaijan moved against Armenian positions in Nagorno-Karabakh, and Russia did
06:00nothing to defend its ally Armenia. Armenia's Prime Minister started the process of leaving the organization
06:06entirely in 2024, and as of 2026, the country has stopped financing the alliance and claiming that
06:13it belongs to it. At the time, Russia was deeply tied down in Ukraine, having committed the vast majority
06:19of its combat-ready ground forces to the war while struggling to achieve meaningful breakthroughs,
06:24severely limiting its ability to come to Armenia's aid even in theory. Against its backdrop of Russia's
06:30military retreat, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have continued transitioning away from the Cyrillic
06:36alphabet toward Latin-based scripts, while Kyrgyzstan has increasingly debated making a similar shift.
06:42The countries are renaming cities and significant geographical locations to remove Soviet-era Russian
06:48designations, and all four Turkic states have increasingly identified themselves as part of the Turkic
06:54world, which stretches from Istanbul to China through the organization of Turkic states.
07:00Which brings us to the idea of Pan-Turkism, or the political unification, or at least coordination,
07:06of the Turkic world. This actually dates to the late 19th century, when Turkic intellectuals in the
07:12Russian Empire and Ottoman thinkers looked toward their cultural roots in Central Asia. It was a powerful
07:18idea that the Soviet Union spent enormous effort suppressing, hence the fragmentation and renaming of
07:24entire nations, languages, and the imposition of foreign scripts. Even the word Turkistan,
07:30which was the traditional name for the entire region, was banned from Soviet documents and replaced
07:35with Soviet Central Asia due to carrying Pan-Turkic associations. Fast forward to the fall of the
07:41Soviet Union and Turkey's re-engagement with Central Asia begins. The then-President Turgut Ozzal recognized
07:47the independence of the Central Asian republics faster than almost anyone else, and threw Turkey into the
07:53region with reckless abandon. In the years following the Soviet collapse, Turkey established three major
07:59universities in the region. The Kazakh Turkish Ahmed Yasawi University in Turkistan, the Kyrgyz Turkish
08:06Manas University in Bishkek, and the International Turkmen Turkish University in Ashgabat. Turkey poured over
08:133.8 billion dollars in Central Asia and the Caucasus between 1992 and 2003, which is equivalent to around
08:207 billion dollars today when adjusted for inflation. Over 1,170 diplomatic delegations visited the Turkic
08:28republics in the first year of independence alone. By some accounts, Ozzal worked himself to death on
08:34diplomatic tours of the region, dying in 1993 following a circuit of all Turkic republics.
08:40That first push led to Russia pushing back hard. Using its economic leverage, it limited the new
08:46republics from being able to access international assistance. Turkey's own economic instability and
08:51political turbulence in the mid-1990s reduced the resources available for Central Asia. And Central
08:57Asian leaders, having just escaped one world power, were no hurry to subordinate themselves again.
09:03After the AK party, led by Erdogan, came to power in 2002 and wanted to make the country a regional
09:10power
09:10within the broader Mediterranean context, Turkey's foreign policy shifted toward the Middle East,
09:15and Central Asia dropped down the priority list. For example, in 1992, nearly all of Turkey's aid went
09:21to Central Asia. In 2005, 55% of Tika's projects were conducted in Caucasian and Central Asian countries.
09:29This was reduced to 36% in 2010. Aid to Tajikistan peaked at nearly 650 million dollars, only to drop
09:375
09:37million dollars per year. But Turkey never left entirely, and instead of direct financial aid,
09:43it created institutions that would slowly shift the Turkic country's sentiments toward the former.
09:48The Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States was established in 2009 and then became the
09:54Organization of Turkic States. The Turkish state broadcaster, TRT, launched TRT Avaz in 2009,
10:02broadcasting in Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen and Uzbek, beaming Turkish news and developments
10:08directly into Central Asian living rooms. Trade between Turkey and the region grew from
10:13838 million dollars in 2002 to 9.5 billion dollars in 2021, and nearly 4,000 Turkish companies were
10:22operating across the five countries. Then came 2020, and everything accelerated. The war in Ukraine,
10:29the CSTO's implosion in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan,
10:34all created a security vacuum on Central Asia's southern border, and China's growing economic
10:40dominance over all of Asia. All of these pushed the Central Asian states to actively seek a third
10:45option, and Turkey had been quietly positioning itself for exactly this moment. The Cooperation Council
10:52was renamed the Organization of Turkic States in 2021, indicating exactly what the country's ambitions
10:58were. In 2021, the organization adopted Turkic World Vision 2040, a roadmap explicitly modeled on
11:06European Union integration, with targets for a common market, a common alphabet, shared institutional
11:12frameworks, and deeper political and security coordination. The bloc's internal trade figures
11:17show how fast things are moving. They went from 33 billion dollars among member states in 2022,
11:24to 42 billion dollars in 2023, which is a jump of 27 percent in a single year. Turkey's bilateral
11:31trade with the region leapt to around 13 billion dollars in 2023. Kazakhstan and Turkey have agreed to
11:38push bilateral trade to 10 billion dollars by 2030, from a confirmed figure of 6.3 billion dollars in 2023.
11:45Even Azerbaijan's inclusion in this regional alignment is strategically significant. Turkey
11:51backed Azerbaijan militarily and politically throughout the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and
11:56Azerbaijan's victory cemented Turkey's reputation as a reliable security partner. Now that Azerbaijan
12:02has joined the Central Asian consultative framework, it can act as a literal geographic and political
12:08bridge between the five Central Asian states and Turkey proper. Turkmenistan is also likely considering full
12:15OTS membership, which would complete the Turkic bloc. But this is all about politics. The real
12:21reason why Russia is no longer in the running for the key influencer over Central Asia is its military,
12:27or lack thereof. But before we get to that, make sure you're subscribed to the military show.
12:32We post daily videos on recent events and major geopolitical changes across the world.
12:38Back to the military of Central Asia. Most of the armies were equipped with the Soviet Union's hardware,
12:44later backed by continued Russian support and training, all organized with Russian doctrine as
12:48the base. And for a long time, whenever one country needed military assistance,
12:53Russia would send its troops. In fact, this happened in 2022, when Russia sent peacekeeping
12:58troops to Kazakhstan amid the January unrest over fuel prices. But Russia has failed to make meaningful
13:04progress over the course of four years of war in Ukraine, leading many to doubt what the Russian
13:09army can actually achieve in the context of modern warfare. And on the other side, you have Turkey.
13:15Turkey's Bayraktar TB2 drone established its reputation in Libya and Syria, then proved itself
13:21decisively in the Nagorno-Karabakh War of 2020, where it devastated Armenian armor and air defenses.
13:27Ukraine itself has used it extensively since 2022, with many outlets claiming the drone
13:33to be a vital lifeline during the first few months of the war, before Ukraine developed its own
13:38drone industry. By 2023, most Central Asian states had purchased Turkish drones,
13:44though Tajikistan instead moved closer to Iranian drone technology.
13:48Kazakhstan also signed an agreement to produce Turkish Bayraktar drones under license on Kazakh soil,
13:54meaning Kazakhstan is now literally manufacturing Turkish military technology domestically.
13:59Turkey. Kyrgyzstan accelerated its drone acquisitions after facing pressure from Tajik
14:03forces backed by Russian-aligned interests, seeing in Turkey a security partner that actually delivers.
14:09Even Turkmenistan, which has maintained strict official neutrality for decades,
14:14quietly expanded its arsenal with Turkish systems. Uzbekistan made its purchases in 2023 and signed a
14:20comprehensive military cooperation agreement with Turkey in 2022 that covers intelligence sharing,
14:26joint logistics, defense industry cooperation and military education. This was expanded to a full
14:32military cooperation agreement in 2026. Turkey is also deliberately keeping relations bilateral
14:39rather than creating a formal bloc, knowing that Turkic states would likely be opposed to a direct
14:44creation of a military bloc similar to the former Soviet Union, bringing even more popularity points
14:49for future cooperation. And given what we've seen of Russia's inaction in Armenia, retreats from Syria,
14:55and the state of the CSTO as a whole, it's safe to say that some Turkic states no longer feel
15:01that
15:01Russia has their back. Kazakhstan, in particular, is the largest non-Russian member of the CSTO,
15:06and some polls have suggested that native support for the existing alliance is low.
15:11The country has also started hedging its bets against Russia by placating both Turkey with the
15:16aforementioned trade increases, and China by becoming a core part of the Belt and Road initiative to expand
15:22China's influence further west. Then there's the vital economic and resource-based component that
15:28brings into focus the region's oil and gas reserves. Russia has long controlled the pipelines through
15:34which Central Asian oil and gas reach European markets, and that control has functioned as a leash.
15:40Since the Ukraine invasion, Moscow has disrupted Kazakhstan's oil exports through Russian Black Sea port
15:46at least four times in 2022 alone, demonstrating how that leash can be yanked at will. Turkey has
15:52been actively building the infrastructure to cut that leash, culminating in the Middle Corridor,
15:58a rail-in-sea route running from China through Kazakhstan, across the Caspian Sea, through Azerbaijan
16:03and Georgia into Turkey, and then westward into Europe. The corridor, which previously had less
16:09than 1% of the traffic its Russian Northern Analog did, saw its cargo volumes jump 33% in 2022,
16:16then by 89% in 2023, and again by 70% in 2024, as shippers began rerouting away from Russia.
16:24The World Bank projects that with the right logistics improvements, freight through the corridor could
16:29triple to 11 million tons by 2030. The European Union, the Asian Development Bank, and multiple
16:35bilateral partners have all committed to developing the project. Turkey sits at the western end of
16:41this corridor, which gives it enormous geographic leverage. On natural gas, Turkey is also pursuing
16:46the Trans-Caspian Pipeline, which would carry Turkmen gas under the Caspian Sea to connect with the
16:52Southern Gas Corridor and deliver it to European markets through Turkey. This project has been in
16:57inactive development since 1997, and has been blocked every time by Russia and Iran, both of whom stand to
17:03lose if Turkmen gas reaches Europe without passing through their territory. But in 2024, Turkey and
17:10Turkmenistan signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Natural Gas Transfers, the first concrete step
17:15toward making this pipeline a reality. Turkmenistan, which has the world's fourth largest proven natural
17:21gas reserves, and has been almost entirely dependent on China as a buyer, has strong incentives to
17:26diversify. If the Trans-Caspian Pipeline ever gets built, it would be the most significant
17:31single blow to Russian energy leverage over both Central Asia and Europe in decades. And the key
17:37part of all of this that has Russia worried is that the premise of pan-Turkism has been built on
17:42similar ground to pan-Slavism, nearly the exact concept that Russia used to justify the invasion
17:48of Ukraine. While the Turkic countries have been under Soviet influence, they're culturally closer to
17:53Turkey, and it'd be absolutely hypocritical to try to deny that link while spouting the same
17:58connection between Russia and Ukraine. Some Russian analysts have been taken to
18:02framing pan-Turkism as a NATO conspiracy, claiming it as an orchestrated Western operation designed to
18:09undermine Russia from the south. More specifically, this framing is tied to Turkey's NATO membership,
18:14and its decision to invoke the Montreux Convention during the war in Ukraine, restricting the movement
18:19of additional warships through the Turkish straits, and further complicating Russia's position in the Black
18:24Sea. None of this means Turkey is simply taking over where Russia left off. Turkey doesn't show a
18:30border with any of the five Central Asian states. Russia and China do, and geography has certain
18:35advantages in trade, infrastructure, and military reach that diplomacy and drone sales can't fully
18:41offset. China's trade with the region is an astounding $89.3 billion, the European Union trades in
18:48$74.65 billion, and Russia itself still trades in approximately $40 billion. Turkey's own geopolitical
18:56tightrope complicates things further. Erdogan has maintained an active relationship with Putin
19:01throughout the Ukraine war, as Turkey refused to join Western sanctions on Russia. Instead of
19:06outright preventing Russia from acting in the Black Sea, it brokered the Black Sea Grain initiative. It
19:12continues to buy Russian gas and maintain economic ties that constrain how openly confrontational Ankara
19:17can be in Moscow's backyard. At the same time, Turkey's NATO membership means that it ultimately
19:23must abide by the alliance's request for collective defense. In the end, the Central Asian states,
19:28for their part, aren't really choosing Turkey over Russia and China. Instead, they're adding Turkey
19:33to a balancing act that they've been running for decades. The same Kazakh president, who reaffirms
19:38Ukrainian territorial integrity, will attend Putin's Victory Day parade in Moscow. What is genuinely new
19:45is the direction of travel. The Latin alphabets, the renamed cities, the common history textbooks,
19:50the drone purchases, and the trade corridors being built around rather than through Russia,
19:55are all slowly accumulating into infrastructure that allows these countries to gradually reduce
20:00their dependence on Russia. The organization of Turkic states is not the European Union or BRICS,
20:06but it's a functioning institution with real trade flows, real military cooperation,
20:10and a long-term integration roadmap that's actually being implemented. Turkey is also something that
20:16Russia can't really be, an economic partner that has an actual cultural tie to the region
20:21through a shared history and language, all the while being the second largest army in NATO,
20:26and considered to be in the top ten for 2026. The deepest irony is that Putin launched his invasion
20:32of Ukraine, at least in part, to reassert Russian dominance over the post-Soviet space,
20:37and prevent the further erosion of Moscow's sphere of influence. Instead, the war has done more to
20:42accelerate Central Asia's drift away from Russia than any other single event in 30 years. It handed
20:48Turkey an opening that Ankara has moved quickly and effectively to fill. And when combined with China
20:53becoming a greater regional player, Russia's grip on Central Asia is slipping fast. But beyond geopolitical
21:00goals, Turkey itself has made strides in its own military and has big war plans.
21:05Make sure to check out this video to learn more and click the subscribe button to get the latest news
21:10on geopolitics and warfare from the military show.
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