Azerbaijani-Central Asian Relations Acquiring a Military Dimension, Kazakhstan Portal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 25 – Last week, defense officials from Kazakhstan met in Baku with their Azerbaijani counterparts to discuss expanding military cooperation in the coming year, the latest example of the formation of a military-political association of Central Asian countries and Azerbaijan and through them with Turkey, Kazakhstan’s Altyn-Orda portal says.

            Azerbaijan and the countries of the former Soviet Central Asian region “are increasingly building relations not only in trade, logistics and energy but also in the field of defense” and with Azerbaijan as the bridge with Turkey as well, the portal continues (altyn-orda.kz/tyurkskij-oboronnyj-poyas-tsentralnaya-aziya-i-azerbajdzhan-usilivayut-voennoe-sotrudnichestvo/).

            The reason for this is the rapid growth in a new economic space involving these countries involving the middle corridor route between Asia and Europe, a route that “cannot exist in a geopolitical vacuum.” That makes “the coordination” of defense issues “the logical next step.” And “this process is already beginning.

            Azerbaijan has taken the lead in this development; and while in the period since 1991, “the security of Central Asia was built largely around Russia” and Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan remain members of Moscow’s Collective Security Treaty organization. “But in recent years, the geopolitical situation there has changed.”

            According to Altyn-Orda, “Russia’s war against Ukraine has drastically reduced Moscow’s ability  to act as the only guarantor of security in the vast Eurasian space;” and as a result, “the states of Central Asia are pursuing an increasingly independent foreign policy, developing relations” with a variety of countries.

            In this shift, Azerbaijan and Turkey are playing a special role. Azerbaijan “geographically connects Central Asia with Turkey and Europe. It has an army with modern combat experience, actively uses Turkish and military technologies and at the same time closely cooperates with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.”

            And Turkey has the ability to “become the main military-technological partner” of an association of Azerbaijan and the Central Asian countries, given its “production of drones, armored vehicles, ammunition, communication system and military training,” resources that will allow the regio to “reduce its dependence on Russian weapons.”

            This emerging group and its moves toward becoming an alliance of its own “does not necessarily have to be a copy of NATO” and need not be directed against any particular country. But rather it can help the countries be in a position to deal with security problems as a region rather than individually, something that will give them greater independent influence.