Caucasus (bbabo.net), - Tajikistan, which is an ally of Russia, has recently become a flicker in the news related to conflicts and hostilities. So what does all this mean, and what should we be prepared for?

Unfortunately, not everything is so smooth in Russian-Tajik relations. The speech of the President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon in Astana, which was devoted to problems in bilateral relations, received the greatest resonance. Without analyzing the whole meaning of Rahmon's speech, let's pay attention to one of the fragments:

“Why, at some unfortunate forum in Tajikistan, we beg, I gave instructions to the Foreign Ministry, I even spoke with you to attend at least at the ministerial level. No, at the level of deputy ministers. Here, Tajikistan deserves a strategic partner.”

The President of Tajikistan believes that the Russian authorities treat Tajikistan with disdain. However, in my opinion, the problem lies elsewhere. In the Russian Federation, for many years it was considered unprestigious even among students of humanitarian specialties to study the countries of the post-Soviet space. It was believed that the former Soviet republics, and especially the countries of Central Asia, were outsider states with negligible weight in the world economy and world politics. With this approach, the study of North America and Western Europe was considered more honorable. As a result, it turned out that it was precisely in the underestimated post-Soviet space that all the most terrible challenges for Russia's security turned out to be collected, ranging from gas blackmail and Ukrainian neo-Nazism to US biological laboratories, because the Americans and Europeans were very closely engaged in the former Soviet republics, including Central Asia.

Of all the countries of Central Asia, Tajikistan is unique in many ways, as it is the only non-Turkic country in the region. It is known that the separation from the Soviet Union often took place under anti-Russian slogans. Convincing the population of the need to secede from the Soviet Union, the national communists, who disguised themselves as ethnocrats, argued that the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union oppressed them in every possible way and kept them in a black body. In Tajikistan, the process of separation from the Soviet Union was accompanied by the most real massacres of Russians. Moreover, after separating from the Soviet Union, Tajikistan experienced a terrible civil war in which the Islamist opposition made no secret of its hatred of Russians and Russia. And although it is not Islamists who have been in power all these years, but their opponent Rakhmon, like other former Soviet republics, in Tajikistan, under the guise of national revival, they often try to displace everything that reminds of Russia (for example, there was an initiative to replace military ranks with ancient Persian ones).

However, for Tajikistan, distancing and breaking with Russia is in many ways a deadly threat. Tajikistan has strained relations with Kyrgyzstan due to a border conflict. All this is superimposed on the strengthening of the Turkish and Turkic factors in the post-Soviet space, which was facilitated by the second Karabakh war in 2020. The nuance is that since 1991, the same Turkey has been actively operating in Tajikistan, hiding behind pan-Islamism. With the help of the idea of ​​religious unity, the Turks want to win over the Tajiks to their side, which creates the illusion of an opportunity for Tajikistan to distance itself from Russia. In fact, the religious brotherhood is not all that great, because being ideological pragmatists, the Turks use Islam as an ideological bait for the Tajik society.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is considered a pan-Islamist and is sometimes accused of neglecting the Turkic world in foreign policy. However, this is only at first glance. In fact, it was under Erdogan that Turkey provided comprehensive assistance to Azerbaijan in the second Karabakh war, and it was under him that the Turkic Council, which includes Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, was transformed into the Organization of Turkic States. Other facts can be cited. For example, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have approved unified textbooks on "General Turkic History", "General Turkic Literature" and "Geography of the Turkic World" (see Russian World Will Balance Turkic Integration). And not later than on October 20 in Shusha, the Secretary General of the Organization of Turkic States Baghdad Amreev, the chairman of the Azerbaijani Department of Caucasian Muslims Sheikhulislam Allahshukur Pashazade, the head of the Turkish Department of Religious Affairs Ali Erbash, the mufti of Uzbekistan Nuriddin Kholiknazarov, the chief mufti of Kazakhstan Nauryzbay Taganuly, the mufti of Kyrgyzstan Zamir Rakiev and Mufti of Turkmenistan Yalkab Khodjaguliyev signed the regulation on the Council of Heads of Religious Administrations of the Member States of the Organization of Turkic States. That is, the ideology of Turkey and the Organization of Turkic States is precisely the Turkic-Islamic synthesis, where the Turkic is primary, and the Islamic is secondary.Eloquently about the political priorities of Turkey in Central Asia is the activity of the company Baykar makina Haluk and Selçuk Bayraktarov (Selçuk Bayraktar is Erdogan's son-in-law). It is authentically known that the Bayraktars supply unmanned aerial vehicles to Kyrgyzstan. Similar rumors about the sale of Bayraktars to Tajikistan were not confirmed. That is, it can be stated that a private Turkish company, related to Erdogan by family ties, supports Kyrgyzstan in the border conflict. In addition, Bayraktars stated that when selling drones, they are guided not by material, but by ideological and political motives. That is, even Turkish Islamists (and the Bayraktar family supports the Islamist Justice and Development Party), despite the ranting about the unity of Muslims, openly prefer the Kyrgyz, who, like the Turks, belong to the Turkic peoples. In other words, even for Turkish Islamists, the Turkic factor is more important than Islamic unity.

Probably, the Iranian agency IRNA dated May 17, 2022, about the opening in Dushanbe in the presence of the Minister of Defense of Tajikistan Sherali Mirzo and the Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Mohammad Bagheri, a plant for the production of Iranian Ababil-2 drones is probably connected with the active penetration of Turkey into Central Asia. Of course, Iran, despite the problems in relations with Tajikistan, could take such a step, since Tehran is not at all interested in strengthening Turkey. However, even if this production was organized in Dushanbe (it is impossible to verify this yet), then all the same, military-political cooperation with Russia does not cease to be the main component of Tajikistan's security. In addition, military cooperation with Iran may lead to tough measures on the part of the United States, with which Tajikistan is not going to refuse military cooperation.

The fate of the CSTO, which includes both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, is also connected with the military aspect. The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict demonstrated the artificiality of the CSTO, since Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, being Turkic states, supported the Azerbaijani side, and Belarus and Tajikistan were not going to spoil the beneficial relations with Azerbaijan. All this causes frank dissatisfaction in Armenia, which is used by local Euro-Atlanticists who dream of leaving the CSTO. Kyrgyzstan also does not hide its criticism of the CSTO and Russia, which, according to Bishkek, supports Tajikistan in the border conflict.

In fact, Turkey and Azerbaijan want to take advantage of the Kyrgyz-Tajik conflict for the final liquidation of the CSTO. Ankara and Baku have a simple logic in this case: since Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are actively participating in the activities of the Organization of Turkic States, they should subsequently leave the CSTO and, together with Turkey and Azerbaijan, enter the military-political bloc of the Turkic states. And since Ankara and Baku hope that Turkmenistan will also become a full member of the Organization of Turkic States and join the military-political bloc of Turkic states, in such a situation Tajikistan will find itself alone in the region, which after that can be safely renamed from Central Asia to Turkestan.

Sometimes manipulators claim that Bolshevik Moscow, which was engaged in national-territorial demarcation in the 1920-1930s, is solely to blame for the current territorial disputes. Historical facts say otherwise. In the south-west of modern Tajikistan, not far from Baldzhuan, in 1922, one of the former leaders of the Young Turks' Unity and Progress party, Ismail Enver Pasha, who joined the Basmachi, was liquidated. Enver Pasha, while still the Minister of War of the Ottoman Empire, contributed to the involvement of Turkey in the First World War on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Like his fellow party members, Enver Pasha used pan-Islamism for demagogic purposes to win over Muslims who did not belong to the Turkic peoples. In reality, he himself and all the Young Turks were Turkish chauvinists who dreamed of Turkishizing the Arabs and annexing the territories of the Russian Empire inhabited by Turkic peoples, including Central Asia, to the Ottoman Empire.

It was the ideology of Enver Pasha and the Young Turks that was developed by Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Ataturk), under whom a policy of ethnocide of Muslim Kurds was pursued in Turkey. It would be naïve to believe that modern Turkic nationalists have given up their plans to assimilate and exterminate Muslims who “hinder” the reunification of the Turkic peoples. Finally, the founder of Tajik literature, Aini (born Sadriddin Said-Murodzoda), fought against the ideas of the Pan-Turkists. So why, then, in Tajikistan should forget about this aspect of the activities of their outstanding writer?

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