How Important is Turkic Solidarity for the Turkic Peoples of the Russian Federation?

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 4 – Two groups of peoples in the Russian Federation are typically grouped by outsiders on the basis of language and culture and their presumed links to each other and foreign states, the Finno-Ugrics who now have three independent countries in the world (Estonia, Finland and Hungary) and the Turkic nations who have Turkey.

            Some of these links are real, others are assumed and many are of concern to Moscow which fears both any commonality beyond the most banal among these peoples and any links at all between them and the independent countries represent steps toward the independence of these communities and thus are a threat to the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation.

            More often than not, these commonalities and links are the work of people outside the communities themselves, by activists in the independent countries who want to expand their influence or by Russian officials who want to cut them off from these states or alternatively use them to influence these countries.   

            Ramazan Alpaut of Radio Liberty’s IdelReal portal thus has performed a particularly useful service in interviewing four people within the Tatar nation about the importance of Turkic solidarity for them and their people, a topic sufficiently sensitive that one of them spoke only on condition of anonymity (idelreal.org/a/29916748.html).

                His anonymous source says that “solidarity is always useful at all levels” but that he does not think that “’the solidarity of Turkic peoples’” really exists.  Instead, each nation is focused on its own interests with little thought of the others or even a certain coolness toward them. Turkic solidarity, for example, has done nothing for the Uyghurs in China or the Tatars in Russia. 

            Turkey puts its state relations with China and Russia above relations with Turkic peoples, something that has been true for centuries, he says.  And it is a risky thing for the Turkic peoples to act as if something else could be the case as that would be viewed in Moscow as a threat that has to be suppressed.

            Nail Nabiulla, editor of Tyurksky vzglyad [“The Turkish View’], has a different perspective.  He says that Turkic solidarity for the Tatars “is not simply useful but vitally necessary.”  The Tatars are “an inalienable part of the big Turkish family of peoples,” must recognize this, and work to develop it.

            Ayrat Fayzrakhmanov, vice president of the World Form of Tatar Youth, has a more pragmatic view, Alpaut says.  There are contacts at the highest levels among the Turkic peoples “but extremely few horizontal ties.”  And unfortunately, many Tatars look down on Uzbeks and Kyrgyz almost in the same way Muscovites do, “with great coolness.”

             Tatar relations with Bashkirs are fraught as well, and “we almost know nothing about the Kumyks, Balkars and Nogays although they are related to us.”

            And Danis Safragali, an activist from Tatarstan, says that “Turkish solidarity is important and necessary for the Tatars.” They and other Turkic peoples must do more to promote it. Unfortunately, he says, “many Turkish politicians are infected with a certain great power chauvinism” and treat other Turkic peoples like “some kind of younger brothers.”

            Moscow seeks to keep the Turkic peoples within the Russian Federation isolated from Turkey and has launched propaganda campaigns against Turkishness when relations between Moscow and Ankara are tense.  The Russian government is clearly worried about Turkish influence from abroad.

            At the same time, however, Safargali says, the Turkic peoples do themselves no favors by constantly talking about past greatness. Instead, they need to focus on economic ties and the future. Otherwise there will not be any real community of peoples among the Turks.