Pan-Turkism and The Organization of Turkic States

Despite claims of cultural and historical ties, the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) has a rather dubious ideology in its baggage.

A new association, the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), which was previously called the Cooperation Council of Turkic-speaking States, the Turkic Council (i), began to operate in Eurasia relatively recently.

It was immediately noted that the Organization of Turkic States, under the guise of cultural unity, has a hidden geopolitical agenda to dominate Central Asia and even compete with China in the region. (ii)

Of course, this is also a definite challenge for Russia, although not an open one. It is quite strange that Russia, having numerous Turkic peoples in its composition, is not represented in this organization. After all, if we are talking about cultural unity, and not the establishment of Turkey’s cultural hegemony, there is no problem that on behalf of the Turkic peoples of the Caucasus, the Volga region, the Urals and Siberia, Russia should also be in this structure. To clarify this issue, we need to start with the ideology of pan-Turkism, the foundations of which will help to understand the true goals of the Organization of Turkic states.

Initially, the idea of pan-Turkism emerged from the European vision of orientalism. Edward Said describes the term Orientalism in his work of the same name as a certain way of communicating with the East, based on the special place of the East in the experience of Western Europe. This scholar of Palestinian origin noted that “since about the end of the XVIII century, orientalism can be considered a corporate institution aimed at communicating with the East — communicating through judgments expressed about it, certain sanctioned views, its description, development and management — in short, orientalism is a Western style of domination, restructuring and the exercise of power over the East.” (iii)

Something similar began to take shape in relation to Turanism or Turkism.

Thus, the term Turan was first used by the French orientalist Barthélémy d’ Herbelot de Molainville at the end of 1697, with which he designated the territory to the east and north of the Amu Darya River. Initially, it was a geographical concept, although formulated by the West.

In the 19th century, linguistic and ethnographic elements were incorporated into this concept. The Finnish philologist and ethnologist Alexander Castrén, who studied the Uralic, Altaic and Paleo-Siberian languages, formulated a kind of linguistic and even racial unity of the Ural–Altaic peoples. (iv) And the German scientist Friedrich Max Mueller used the term Turanism as a category of peoples of Europe and Asia who did not belong to either Indo–Europeans (Indo–Germans) or Semites.  (v)

Armin Vámbéry (Hermann Bamberger) is considered the founder and popularizer of the concept of pan-Turkism. (vi) This extraordinary native of Austria–Hungary (a small town in the south of modern Slovakia), came from a poor Jewish family, but thanks to his efforts in his studies he learned several languages, which helped him in his future career. He traveled to the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and Persia. He also derived the Hungarian language from the so–called Turkic–Tatar group.

In 2005, the British National Archives declassified documents according to which Vámbéry was a secret British agent.

Interestingly, one of the Turkish ideologists of pan-Turkism was another Jew, Moses (Moiz) Cohen from Macedonia, who took the name Tekin Alp. (vii) In 1914, he released a propaganda text “What the Turks can get from this war”, where he pointed out that the unity of the Turkic peoples under the leadership of the Ottoman Empire could be achieved by destroying the “Moscow enemy”.

Another well-known and revered pan-Turkist in modern Turkey was Ziya Gökalp, a philosopher, journalist, writer and leader of the Young Turk movement. (viii) He was also the main ideologue of The Committee of Union and Progress. It is known that he became an active preacher of pan-Turkism after communicating in 1912 in Istanbul with people from the Caucasus, Kazan and Crimea. Gökalp believed that Super-man Nietzsche was a Turk. By the way, he shared responsibility for the Armenian Genocide, since he had been Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the Ottoman Empire since 1913. He also participated in the development of the military-political project “Turan Yolu” (The Way of Turan) and interpreted pan-Turkism and Turanism in a nationalist bourgeois modernist way, so his ideas were used in the reforms of Kemal Atatürk.

In his writings, Gökalp actively used the image of a red apple. In the Turkic state tradition, the red apple meant the idea of taking other peoples and states under the control of the Turks. Gökalp also formulated the concept of the “Turkish ideal“, or “mefkure“, which is still used by Turkish politicians and nationalists.

Already in modern Turkey, under the secular regime, Alparslan Türkeş, the creator of the Nationalist Movement Party and the radical nationalist movement “Grey Wolves “, became an active ideologist of pan-Turkism. He was a career soldier and participated in the 1960 coup. He was responsible for contacts with NATO and actually was the curator of the NATO Operation Gladio in Turkey, that is, the political purges of leftist elements in the country. (ix)

And if Tekin Alp spoke about the need for the collapse of the Russian Empire, then Türkeş implied the same with regard to the Soviet Union.

After the collapse of the USSR, pan-Turkists in Turkey switched to a policy of expansionism in the countries of Central Asia, because they believed that this was a good opportunity for Turkey to fill the resulting political vacuum.

In a publication by Milliyet newspaper editor Sami Kohen in September 1992 on this topic, it is mentioned that the nationalist writer Cengiz Candar actually equates pan-Turkism and neo-Ottomanism. He writes that “Turkey is facing a historical mission and needs to develop an imperial vision. This has nothing to do with expansionism or adventurism. It means free movement of people, ideas and goods…” And Taha Akyol argued that “Türkiye is now the center of inspiration for all the Turkic peoples and Türkiye has now an opportunity and mission to establish a new relationship that would lead to the creation of a Turkish Community or a Turkish Commonwealth.” (x)

But, significantly, it was not without the West’s participation either. Although the Ottoman Empire itself became a victim of Western orientalism, in the 1990s it was with the help of the United States that Turkish politicians and businessmen mastered the space of Eurasia.

The article by Sami Kohen says that the joint Turkish–American business group visited all the Turkic republics, where the development of projects in the field of telecommunications and light industry was discussed. And that American companies seeking to invest in these countries see bright prospects in establishing partnerships with Turkish firms.

The article by Sami Kohen says that the joint Turkish–American business group visited all the Turkic republics, where the development of projects in the field of telecommunications and light industry was discussed. And that American companies seeking to invest in these countries see bright prospects in establishing partnerships with Turkish firms.

Among the practical actions that took place in the post-Soviet countries, it was said about the admission of ten thousand students from Central Asian countries, the launch of the Eurasia (“Avrasya,”) satellite TV channel on The Turkish Radio and Television network (TRT) for the countries of the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia, the opening of Turkish Airlines (THY) flights to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, as well as the active involvement of Turkish business in Kazakhstan (at that time, a contract was signed for 11.7 USD billion in the oil industry).

These actions continued in the following years. One can also mention the concept of “Strategic Depth“ by Ahmet Davutoglu, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs, leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party from 2014 to 2016 and served as Prime Minister during the same period. Although this doctrine was not limited to pan–Turkism and also included the ideas of neo–Ottomanism (that is, domination over the historical territories of the Ottoman Empire from the states of the Middle East and North Africa to the Balkans and the North Caucasus).

Thus, even if the current ideologists of the Organization of Turkic States do not openly declare their interests in Central Asia and beyond, where the Turkic peoples live, they subconsciously imply the baggage of pan–Turkism that they inherited from the ideologists of previous eras, both the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic of the Cold War era.

And just as the Russians have the idea of Moscow as the Third Rome in their minds, so the Turkish nationalists retain their attitudes of domination over other Turkic peoples. And if they live in such a multiethnic country as Russia, it cannot be excluded that some methods of involving them in their orbit will be worked out, including the ideas of pan–Turkism and pan–Islamism. And through these ideas, radical teachings that are considered extremist can also penetrate.

However, the Turks are deeply mistaken in considering Russia as a kind of periphery for the realization of their interests. Not only because of the military and political power of the country. After all, the homeland of the Turkic peoples (which is accepted in Turkey itself) is the mythical Ergenekon valley in the Russia’s Altai. According to this logic, it is Russia that is the cradle of the Turkic world, and Turkey, with its historical mixing of various peoples in the Ottoman melting pot, can hardly boast of the purity of Turkic genes. In this context, Russia‘s active position towards the Organization of the Turkic States and the Turkic world as a whole can be a good geopolitical trump card. It is important to use it wisely, but constantly and actively, to remind both the West with their orientalism and Turkey, of Russia’s role and status. In addition, it can also be an argument for the preservation of historical cultural heritage, along with the memory of all the feats performed by both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, through their numerous peoples and individual heroes.

Pan-Turkism and The Organization of Turkic States

(i) https://news.am/rus/news/730922.html

(ii) https://katehon.com/ru/article/organizaciya-tyurkskih-gosudarstv-istoriya-struktura-vyzovy

(iii) https://www.icl-international.ru/caucasusatlant/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Эдвард-Саид.-Ориентализм.pdf

(iv) https://nebrk.ru/allnews/id/33

(v)  https://religious-life.ru/2018/12/f-max-muller/

(vi) https://homsk.com/begemot/arminiy-vamberi-agent-ee-velichestva

(vii) http://www.kavkazoved.info/news/2015/09/11/panislamizm-v-srednej-azii-pered-pervoj-mirovoj-vojnoj.html

(viii) https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/turetskiy-ideal-v-filosofii-zii-gyokalpa

(ix) https://katehon.com/ru/article/rassekrechennye-fayly-raskryvayut-rol-velikobritanii-v-terroristicheskoy-operacii-nato-pod

(x) https://www.wrmea.org/1992-august-september/contacts-with-central-asian-states-a-foundation-for-pan-turkism.html