MOSCOW: Turkey's vision, which stretches from Anatolia to Xinjiang in northwestern China, has been given new life by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"Central Asia today is compared to the 1990s, when there was a fierce struggle for dominance in the region with rich resources. According to Eurasia expert Isik Cuscu Bonenfant, "Russia's shadow over the region, with the desire of Central Asian The states have helped to further foster relations between Turkey and the Central Asian states on politics and defence, to balance Russia and China.

Turkey may be in a position of opportunity, but the geopolitical mines are litter in the region.

Also Read: Sweden permits the export of weapons to Turkey

Firstly, Turkey is now a party to the conflicts in Central Asia and a de facto participant in the wars in the Caucasus, where Turkey has an interest in friendly relations with Azerbaijan and its arch enemy Armenia. This is due to Turkey's successful development of a battle-tested assassin drone.

The use of Turkish Bayraktar TB2 combat drones has been criticized by Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine in their respective wars against Russia and Tajikistan on their shared border.

Before the most recent fighting, Kyrgyzstan tried in vain to halt or at least delay the sale of Turkish drones to Tajikistan.

Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Jeanbek Kulubev told parliament in April that the Turkish government responded to the Kyrgyz's request, saying "it was business." But there is no agreement between Turkey and Tajikistan yet.

Even though he was only 320 kilometers from the battlefield when he attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in September, Mr. Erdogan, like his Chinese and Russian counterparts, made no concerted effort to end the border conflict. did not do.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the conflicts represented the most serious military conflict in Central Asia.

Turkey's ties with ethnic Turks in Crimea and plans to build a drone manufacturing facility there make Ukraine an even more dangerous minefield for Turkey than drone sales alone.

Mr Erdogan urged Russia in August to "return" Crimea to its "rightful owners". In 2014, Russia annexed the peninsula.

"These are our descendants at the same time, the people who are living there," Mr. Erdogan said in reference to the Crimean Tatars. If you go ahead with it and spare us you will be giving relief to the Crimean Tatars and Ukraine as well.

Also Read: 'Anti-hijab' movement reaches Turkey, famous singer cuts her hair on stage

Putin's announcement of mobilization complicates matters, with a coalition of dozens of Caucasian civil society organizations in Turkey assisting Russians who are trying to escape to Turkey to avoid military service. 4 million Turkish citizens of Caucasian descent live in Turkey.

In the past, the Caucasian community has helped Circassians fleeing the Syrian Civil War in 2011 as well as refugees from Russian intervention in the Georgian regions of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Chechnya.

In response to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's appeal to Russia's ethnic groups to oppose the Kremlin's military call-up, support for Russians elected not to fight in Ukraine increased.

Mr Putin's supporters have noted the support in the North Caucasus amid anti-war protests in the predominantly Muslim Russian republic of Dagestan.

A member of the Russian parliament named Bini Sultan Khamzayev claimed that ethnic Turkic kumuks, who have been waging jihad against Russia since the reign of Tsar Peter the Great, were opposing Mr. Putin's mobilization. The largest ethnic Turkic group in the North Caucasus is the Kumyks.

Attributing Turkey to anti-mobilization and anti-Putin sentiment in the Caucasus is not just a convenient scapegoat. Because Mr. Putin sees the Caucasus as Russia's soft belly, the unrest is a result.

One of the reasons Mr Putin intervened militarily in Syria to ensure the survival of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was to prevent Islamic sentiment in the Syrian civil war from spreading to Muslim regions of Russia.

Geopolitical analyst Robert D. Kaplan warned that if Kremlin rule faltered as a result of conflict-related factors in Ukraine, Russia could "become a low-calorie version of the former Yugoslavia, which had lost its historical regions in the Caucasus, Siberia, and Russia." unable to control, and East Asia."

The Uyghur exiles are another Ottoman group that complicates Turkey's concept of an Ottoman world, in addition to ethnic Caucasian support for the plight of Crimean Tartars and anti-Ukraine war sentiment.

There has been an increase in the amount of protests by the exiles against the brutal repression of the Ottoman minorities by China in Xinjiang.

Due to Turkey's longstanding support for its ethnic cousins ​​and the fact that Turkey is home to the world's largest Uyghur exile community, Uyghur activity is a particularly sensitive topic for China and Turkey. China does not appreciate any criticism from abroad. Recently, Turkey has undertaken to impose

By setting up a casual three-way meeting between Mr. Erdogan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on the sidelines of a European summit in Prague, Turkey scored diplomatic points this week.

It was Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Pashinyan's first encounter. Since the 1990s, Turkey has had no diplomatic or business relations with Armenia. Turkey supported Azerbaijan in the 2020 Caucasus war against Armenia, which resulted in renewed hostilities in September.

Despite their disagreements regarding the 1.5 million people Armenia claims were killed in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire, the forerunner of modern Turkey, the two nations have been working to repair their relationship since early this year. To maintain diplomatic synchronicity with Azerbaijan, its main ally in the Caucasus, Turkey must be cautious in its approach to Armenia.

Also Read: Muslim houses demolished, govt adopting Israeli-like policies: Muslim Law Board

Even though it stands to gain from the race to operationalize a different trans-Eurasian transport corridor from China to Europe that would avoid Russia by passing through independent former Soviet republics, Turkey's positioning of itself as the protector of Turkic and Muslim interests may not be enough to match Chinese progress on the ground in Central Asia.

Despite engaging in active trade with Central Asian countries, scholar Raffaelo Pantucci stated in a recent webinar that Turkey "has not had the kind of economic firepower to push into the region in the same way as China." Turkey hopes that putting a strong emphasis on cultural ties will make up for its weak economy.

The World Nomadic Games, an event devoted to sports of the Turkic ethnic group, were held in Turkey last week for the first time in a nation other than a Central Asian nation. Mr. Erdogan, whose son, Bilal, is the president of the World Ethnosports Confederation, inaugurated the competitions.

Hosting large-scale sporting events is an essential component of soft power... It emphasises intangible heritage that should be preserved, according to sports economist Sabahattin Devecioglu.