The threat from Afghanistan makes the "Army of the Great Turan" quite real

One of the most resonant topics of recent days has been rumors about the possibility of creating a united army of Turkey and Azerbaijan. This was allegedly stated by the head of the Turkish Parliament, and this immediately caused a sharply negative reaction in Russia, where the "Sultan" Erdogan, in some way, was even compared to Adolf Hitler because of his revanchist policy... But soon a refutation followed from Baku, explaining the misunderstanding by an unfortunate mistake of the Azerbaijani translator. However, the sediment, as they say, remained. So what was it really: translation difficulties or deliberate informational stuffing? And if the latter is true, who was this message addressed to?

The fact that Turkey is pursuing an openly revanchist policy aimed at revising the results of not even the Second World War, but the First World War, is not said only by the lazy. And indeed it is. Turkish troops are now stationed in the occupied territories of northern Syria, at the invitation of the PNS Faiz Saraj, they are in Libya. The Turkish navy demonstrates in every possible way its readiness to resolve the issue with the Greek islands by force. The problem of the unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which only exacerbated after the discovery of rich hydrocarbon reserves on the shelf of this island, should not be done anywhere. But this, alas, is not all.



A serious reason for the headache of the Russian leadership is that Turkey has climbed into the zone of our national interests. This is Ankara's active military assistance to Baku, thanks to which Azerbaijan was able to defeat the Armenian army in Nagorno-Karabakh in just a month and a half. It is no longer a secret that Turkish generals helped to plan the operation, and Turkish officers controlled the Bayraktar strike UAVs, whose role was decisive for defeating the enemy, which did not have a strong modern air defense system. Now the "Sultan" has entered Ukraine, where it will supply the already mentioned "Bayraktars" and corvettes to restore the combat capability of the Naval Forces of Ukraine. In return, the Turks will take away from Kiev the power plants produced by the Zaporozhye Motor Sich enterprise, which they need to create their own heavy attack helicopter. Yes, by the way, the entire current South-East of Ukraine (Novorossia) was once part of the Ottoman Empire, and became a region of the Russian Empire as a result of a successful war for us, and the Crimean Khanate was a vassal of the Great Port. Ankara's expansionist activity in the Transcaucasus and the Black Sea region is fraught with Russia, and cannot but cause concern, but in a sense, the Turks with their revanchism can even be understood (but not forgiven).

However, the "Sultan" can neither be forgiven nor understood for the fact that he climbed where the Ottomans never set foot. We are talking about his project "Great Turan". This is a kind of supranational pan-Turkist association, which, according to President Erdogan's idea, should unite all the Turkic-speaking countries of Central Asia, including the former Soviet republics. Moreover, in Turkey nowadays they boldly draw maps in which all the Turkic-speaking regions of Russia are included in the zone of influence of Turkey, and this is about half of our country. We cannot accept this. The "incorrect translation" of the words of the Turkish parliamentarian about the united army of Turkey and Azerbaijan caused an extremely harsh reaction in Moscow. Alexander Sherin, deputy chairman of the State Duma's defense committee, even drew certain parallels with the Third Reich:


At the same time, opinions are expressed in the spirit that the danger posed to Russia from Turkey is too exaggerated. Say, well, who in their mind would agree to surrender their sovereignty, at least partially, to an ambitious "sultan"? Why does President Aliyev need this? Why does Rahmon need? Why Mirziyoyev? Why does Berdymukhamedov need, who in his Turkmenistan is in the position of almost a demigod? It would seem that there is no need. But everything is more complicated than it seems at first glance.

Yes, for the sake of a beautiful, but abstract pan-Turkist idea, no one willingly will surrender their sovereignty. However, it should be borne in mind that policy is almost always determined by the economy... All this hypothetical "Great Turan" lies exactly along the Middle Corridor of the "New Silk Road", and at its end there should be Turkey, claiming the status of "Beijing's window on the Mediterranean". Nobody hides that Ankara intends to crush this promising trade route from Asia to Europe, becoming its key element and at the same time the main "moderator". In other words, an objective basis appears for mutually beneficial economic cooperation in the Central Asian region under the auspices of Turkey. Let us recall that Russia once gathered around the trade route "from the Varangians to the Greeks." By the way, about Russia: for us, this Middle Corridor represents real competition as a transit country, therefore, for “Great Turan” its own united army, a kind of Central Asian analogue of the NATO bloc, becomes relevant. Naturally, it will be directed against Russia.

However, now there is one more promising option for Ankara. Yes, not all the former Soviet republics, some of which are part of the CSTO, will be ready to openly go "into contradiction" with Moscow. But the sharply aggravated situation in neighboring Afghanistan opened up a new window of opportunity for the "Sultan". The Turkish military, the only one of all foreign invaders, refused to leave Kabul, where they are holding the capital's airport. We discussed in detail the possible reasons for this earlier. So, the possibility of expansion from Afghanistan of radical Islamism in the person of the Taliban, ISIS and other groups banned in Russia is a perfectly acceptable reason to create a defensive alliance of Turkic-speaking countries led by Turkey, which in Kabul is ready to shed blood for them. "For myself and for Sasha." By the way, a lot of the Turkic-speaking population lives in Afghanistan itself.

What can force President Rahmon or Berdymukhamedov to surrender part of their sovereignty to Ankara by agreeing to create a unified army led by Turkish generals? Yes, only the threat of losing all power in general as a result of the invasion of gangs of radical militants. At the same time, the former Soviet republics, formally and Moscow, will not offend much, since the defensive alliance will be directed not against Russia, but against the Islamists from Afghanistan. In this vein, the "incorrect translation" of the words of the Turkish speaker about the united army of Turkey and Azerbaijan can be addressed not only to Yerevan or the Kremlin, but also to distant countries of Central Asia.