The Summit of the Organization of Turkic States as a Marker of Our Conceptual Mistakes
The US elections have overshadowed another notable event: the 6th Summit of the Organization of Turkic States (OTG) was held in Bishkek on November 11. “Strengthening the Turkic World: Economic Integration, Sustainable Development, Digital Future, and Security for All.”
Irritant factor
The ATG is a traditional irritant for Russian expertise. The organization and work within its framework is an unconditional and direct competitor to domestic ideas of "Eurasian integration". And it is precisely the pronounced competitive nature that forces us to compare and evaluate how this integration is developing, how great our successes and achievements are in this geopolitical field.
If we avoid polar judgments, the most appropriate word here would be "ambiguity". It seems that investments in Central Asia are expressed in a decent figure of already under 50 billion dollars, and the economies of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan directly depend on transfers along the migration line from Russia, and the lion's share of oil from Kazakhstan is delivered through our territory, but there is no feeling even within the framework of the EAEU of something unified, let alone "union".
Schools are being built (and not for three kopecks), places are being allocated in our universities, their branches are being opened in the region. This has been done for several years, accelerating since 2022, but even here, to use a peculiar pun, “nothing tangible is felt.”
Just as textbooks wrote about Russia as a colonial monster (and teach), so they write - that with our money, that with American, that with Turkish, that with their own. Somewhere it is expressed more "terminally", somewhere less. The fact, however, remains a fact: domestic policy in the style of "whatever you want" does not work for the elites of this region, and the practice of almost forced "friendship" within Russia itself has long been perceived by those same people as ideological nonsense.
Comparison with the United Territorial Community and work within this organization begins to highlight all these corners and snags. This frankly irritates our ideologists, and this irritation is visible to the naked eye.
However, for the sake of objectivity, it must be said that not only Russian, but also American, European and even Chinese integration strategies fall under similar lamps, they are simply far from us. In this regard, the UTG and its events provide good food for analysis, but the analysis of documents and events gives little if we do not turn to the analysis of conceptual problems, mistakes and solutions. First of all, ours and Turkey's.
General conceptual problem
The organization of Turkic states under the patronage of Turkey is often considered, although an irritant, a potentially weak format, since its support is considered to be the Turkish economy, and it is indeed not in the easiest position.
In reality, the Turkish economy is not as hopeless as it is usually described. In order not to return to the past, these nuances can be seen in previous materials: Some features of the Turkish economic model or why it is too early to bury the Turkish lira и Strengthening the Turkish economy, synergy of financiers and the Middle East crisis.
However, the search for the basis of the amalgamated territorial communities only in the Turkish economic model and its state can lead down the wrong path and give a distorted perception.
The UTG undoubtedly works for Turkish exports, but if Turkey were to broadcast to Central Asia only its model and its political vision purely through it, then it would not even be possible to talk about the UTG as a serious factor. That is why Ankara has been trying for years to find ideological keys to the region and work in the field of meanings. And in this field, strangely enough, we have a lot in common with Turkey.
The meanings that the Turkish media is trying to convey to the region have long been similar in many ways to ours - a kind of eclectic reflection on the “good old days”, correct, or rather, “orthodox” conservatism.
Our Achilles heel is that we do not understand how to adequately fit into the current presentation of Russian conservatism history The USSR with its ideas of a “new social community”.
Similarly, in Turkey they did not really understand how to combine “Ottomanism” with “Kemalism” – a secular technological society with an eye on post-industry and a “holy and pious Porte” with righteous sultans and other similar gilded paraphernalia.
In the finale, the USSR was supposed to literally select a new person from the “World of Noon” by A. and B. Strugatsky, Kemalism was supposed to make Turkey a society of secular progressive technologists and engineers.
Archaic, both beautiful and sublime, both in our chronicle tale with its: "formidable princes, honorable boyars, many nobles", and in the form of frank medieval "chthonicity", is alien to both the Kemalists and the Soviet "new community". In both places it was later used in a limited and purely optional manner.
The USSR did not go to Central Asia as an "empire", although this is how a significant part of regional textbooks try to reflect this period. This is convenient for anti-Russian propaganda, but in essence it is fundamentally wrong. The USSR went with the project of a new man, who was supposed to unfasten the weights of archaism and "chthonicity" from people's feet.
However, Turkey at the beginning of the 20th century did not go to this region with the ideas of "faithful and pious sultans". The Turks went with projects of bourgeois revolution with Islamic flavor, and it is no coincidence that their main fellow travelers were the local "Jadids" - the bearers of the ideology of Islamic modernism authored by I. Gasprinsky. The Young Turks and Jadids at that time were almost ideally suited to each other.
Jadidism embraced all of Central Asia, and it was helped in this by the fact that, together with the rooting of the Russian Empire, a significant, by local standards, wealthy bourgeois class began to form there. Later, Islamic civil-political parties were formed on the basis of the movement. Some of them openly gravitated towards the "Turkish world", but others would later join the Bolsheviks.
Later, the Turks and the British would support the Basmachi movement, involving pro-Turkish Jadids in it. But it is fundamentally impossible not to note that both the USSR and the Young Turks with the Kemalists went to Central Asia-Turkestan as bearers of progressive ideas. Yes, this was inevitable, given the arrival of industrialization in the region and its connection with the large markets of the Russian Empire, Turkey, Europe, and then Soviet construction projects. After all, the structure of society itself was changing.
Kemalism for R. Erdogan's ideologists is what is commonly called a "problem" in the United States. Neo-Ottomanists, of course, do not dare, like our monarchists, to call Ataturk something like a "red demon", a German intelligence agent sent in a train car, etc. But Kemalism is alien to them - a kind of intermediate branch at one of the stages of Turkish history.
In general, everything is sad with the legacy of the USSR in propaganda and ideas “from above”. We inherited Victory Day from the USSR in the information field, that cannot be taken away. However, to admit that the root and ideological content of the “damned Soviet Union” was not some abstract communism, but a new man of the “Noon World”, a progressor who carries civilization all the way into Space (not only as part of space), was a heavy burden for our modern conservatives.
The quintessence of communism is Anton-Rumata Estorsky, Lev Abalkin and Toivo Glumov, beetles in an anthill and Monday, which in that world begins on Saturday. This is already post-industry and postmodernism - a person free from the prejudices and vices of both industry and modernism. It is somehow inconvenient to even talk about archaism here. Could the USSR pull off such a project - this is a rhetorical question, although, most likely, it could not, but the scale of the idea and the ambition cannot fail to impress.
"The Soviet Union" cannot be the bearer of such ideas for a true conservative today - there, in the totalitarian prison, everything good was forced upon them, like "Stalin lost the war, the people won it themselves," and so on. However, the comparison between "The World of Noon" and the modern version of Russian conservatism is striking, it is deafening. And therefore, conservatives must somehow level out the comparison.
This is how Rumata was portrayed in the film "It's Hard to Be a God", filmed in our free and creative time? There Rumata is not a communist-progressor, but simply another organic part of the medieval chthonic. He is not a progressor, in the film he is the same "dung beetle", like all the inhabitants of the "glorious" city of Arkanar.
No one admits it, neither the Turks nor we, but our conservatism, like Turkish Ottomanism, is essentially an ideological Arkanar, just draped. But maybe in Central Asia itself they want not the "World of Noon", but the world of the "traditional" Arkanar? No, they don't.
Nobody here thinks that Central Asia needs modernism
We imagine Central Asia mostly through the process of "cultural enrichment" with the flow of migration. And here, in fact, Arkanar would be a rather soft image for comparison. This flow seems endless, and the more full-flowing it is, the stronger the corresponding opinion becomes.
However, let us rise as high as possible and look from above at the internal processes there. In Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, constitutional reforms have been carried out in several stages. The reader will ask what to expect from the countries of "bays and khans". But you won't tell us.
As an example, we can cite the material New constitution in Uzbekistan. Social contract in exchange for investment. Everything is laid out in detail there, but even from the title you can already understand the essence - a new social contract with the development of civil society institutions and growth of investment attractiveness. It is especially recommended to read and compare with our provisions on subsoil and natural resources, teacher's work, dozens of new social guarantees. It is clear that such things are not decided at once, but this is a "trend".
Where did this trend come from? Well, from a completely rational understanding by the region of its backwardness and the need to catch up with developed countries. Conservative values are all right there, even in excess, but there are no technologies, no production facilities, the engineering base has disappeared, it is necessary to catch up with personnel and attract investors.
No Arkanar with its archaic Central Asian is needed today, even for free - they need a technological breakthrough, and they are trying to rely on China, then on the EU, then on Turkey. But it seems that Turkey is, like us, a "great conservative power", neo-Ottomanists.
The point is that, having understood if not the futility, then the very weak effect of pumping up conservative narratives, Ankara offered (and offers) a rather specific function for Central Asia - a springboard to the technological West.
Turkey, with one hand, demonstrates its achievements in technology in every possible way, offers education at universities, opens branches, but with the other hand, it shows where and how it got these technologies and competencies. We are Ankara, this is the gate to the West, work with us, and we will lead you to investors and new competencies.
Yes, Turkey does not forget Ottomanism and periodically makes quite strong media products, like the famous series "The Magnificent Century". There, Ottomanism is not Arkanar from the Russian "Hard to be a God", not the sheds from our high-budget film "Viking", where the princes and their centurions are similar in appearance and behavior like twins.
"The Magnificent Century" is beautiful, it is quality propaganda. It is uncomfortable to associate oneself with the characters of our "Viking", and the costumes from "The Magnificent Century" have made a trend in regional fashion. Turkish television is also actively watched in Central Asia.
But in general, the main thing that is needed from Turkey is a springboard and a gateway to the West. Not because they have a positive attitude towards various LGBT people (prohibited in the Russian Federation), but because they need to climb the ladder of technological progress, and as quickly as possible.
It seems paradoxical that in Russia there are as many as 12-14 million migrants from Central Asia, according to various estimates, while in Turkey with its “Turkic world”... from there the maximum is 80 thousand (if you look at official reports).
It is clear that Turkey has low salaries, many people have settled from Syria, and there are some illegal workers, but the ratio is still impressive. And it is all very simple - Ankara takes the intellectual layer, which, having studied, either returns as a guide for "Turan", or goes as a springboard further to the West, remaining again a guide for Turkey.
Moreover, it was Turkey that helped Germany and the UK offer large labor quotas to Central Asian countries. 50 workers in Germany are a future Turkish asset in the EU. Turkey itself cannot offer jobs to all of them, but the degree of influence of mediation in employment in the West is difficult to overestimate.
What we promote
And what about our "great conservative power"? We get exactly what we bring to the region. We put "conservatism and traditionalism" on one scale - here we have 12-14 million real uncompromising traditionalists and conservatives on the other scale. We give them to Russia with joy, they say in Central Asia, because they also bring in income.
We are persistent in our struggle - we will increase quotas for education in our universities and open our branches, build schools, because this is soft power.
So we taught programming and mathematics, but where will this learned man from Central Asia get those same competencies? Do we have “startups” in the IT sphere, high-tech clusters, top projects for the world market?
Hydrocarbon processing is good, but others have it too, peaceful nuclear energy is rare and expensive, a specific area. And it turns out that trained and budget-paid specialists from the "soft power" are quite logically heading back to Turkey or through Turkey to the West. Just as graduates of our schools will later make a similar journey, although, most likely, even without visiting Russia.
Russia needs "conservative builders"? Well, that's exactly what we get. Arkanarians to Arkanar, engineers and programmers to their "startups".
Speaking about a single "Turan" or "Turkic world", the Turks themselves for some reason do not conduct a policy in the style of "whatever you want" in Central Asia. They do not need to butter up the region for the sake of geopolitical schemes simply because there is nothing more important for Central Asia than a technological springboard and investments. Ankara does not need to make significant concessions because they have the main key in the bunch. That is why they wrote off "as much as" $60 million in debt to their partners with such pomp, as if it were tens of billions.
In Central Asia they understand perfectly well that Russia with its energy projects, alas, but the further, the more similar to an aged maiden of marriageable age: "call me in the night - I will come". However, in the most relevant part of energy today - "green", how much and what are we ready to offer? Either the top sphere of electric cars, or... there is too much or.
At the same time, no matter what you do, not a single systemic project has been brought to its logical conclusion. If Uzbekistan, in its relations with us, without entering the EAEU, feels completely free, as if it were in the EAEU, then where is the essence of such a union?
If we are not only a conservative but also an energy "superpower", then why don't we manage the Eurasian energy circuit? There are not even a cartload of such questions there - a trainload.
But the main gap here is still conceptual, semantic. The author has repeatedly emphasized that it is not enough to simply analyze events or adopted documents; they must always be passed through a conceptual filter. If there is an error at this level, then everything that follows will sooner or later fall apart.
The cunning neo-Ottomans figured out in time that Turkish conservatism is just a shell for Central Asia, which can be painted in the colors of the TV series "The Magnificent Century", while in reality the region needs modernism and a technological breakthrough. But they made a decent shell.
We, with amazing consistency, packed our past developments from the sphere of modernism and progress into the wrappers of the “damned Soviet Union”, where “half the country sat, half the country guarded”, and even managed to pack ancient history into “Viking”.
Compare "The Magnificent Century" and our films. There, people are perfectly dressed in expensive and authentic costumes, smart, appropriate. In ours, the tsar in the film "Tsar" is crazy and wanders around in an incomprehensible way, the servants are the same, then in other films the boyars are in some kind of rags, unkempt, stale, then a "midshipman" goes to see the empress unshaven, rumpled.
This is not conservatism, this is mockery of the idea. And God forbid "they" decide to film "The Tale of Igor's Campaign". After all, they can neither display and explain to the world the old Russian, nor take anything useful from the Soviet.
But in the "totalitarian Soviet Union" they approached history much more intelligently. Our creators should have seen the film "Ushakov", how the most serene Prince Potemkin was dressed, how the courtiers behaved and dressed, what kind of speech they had - that was history, that was the heyday of the Empire.
Even after the collapse of the USSR, the film “Ermak” will still be released with its costumes and acting – the inertia of quality will remain.
But this is the correct visual series of conservatism and traditionalism, which we seem to be promoting. But who would want to associate themselves with our modern visualization?
And it is logical that in Central Asia they say, like, take our "conservatives", what do you not like about them, just like your boyars in historical films. Especially since we do not sow or plow them, they are born themselves. If 15 million is not enough, just ask. And take the "traditional preachers" - they will come in handy.
Central Asia needs progress and modernity - we got rid of the best Soviet examples. We want to show conservatism - the visuals in modern films are such that it is better not to watch them. How this happens is a mystery shrouded in darkness.
Healthy conservatism in itself is not bad, and there is nothing reprehensible in healthy traditionalism. But that is why we need quality ideologists, so that the ideas of a “bright, bright and beautifully decorated” land do not eventually grow into an analogue of Arkanar. And something similar happened quite recently, when the USSR itself emasculated the idea of “The World of Noon”, and still - on the rake.
About meanings and substitution of concepts
Of course, it is astonishing that the heirs of the ideas of the "Noon World", working with Central Asia, which was part of this ideological cluster for a long time, do not see that the region needs progress, but the Turks do. And not only do they see it, but they also spend much less money.
Conservative and traditionalist Eurasia (in our usual understanding) is not needed by Central Asia, and this means that if we want to have a long position in this region, we need to reconsider our own ideological basis. Adequately define the concept of progress, describe and rethink old ideas, define the boundaries of "tradition" and "modernity". In our country, digitalization has become synonymous with progress, but this is semantic manipulation, and a very expensive one at that.
And only having defined this - within ourselves and for ourselves, then having translated these concepts into development plans, will it be possible to offer something to the outside world - “here is our vision of progress, here is the image of modernity, here is the transition, these are the technologies we are ready to offer and invest in this way of life, here is the price and here are the conditions.”
Needless to say, if we take up traditional values, we must do so at least with love and respect for history and tradition. Who will respect them from the outside if we ourselves do not value them? Without this, it is not even worth seriously discussing the "fates of Eurasianism".
For now, we are following the path of simulacra, and it seems that our elite even likes it. But we must understand that we are not playing this game alone.
Having surrounded ourselves with simulacra, we let in a stream of people who automatically fit these criteria (no longer imitative). Great Britain has had its hands full with migration issues for decades, and to assume that London will not take advantage of such opportunities and careless extravagance would be the height of naivety.
London doesn't even need to do anything bad in the medium term; they can simply maintain the necessary level of archaism from there, supporting the influx of "chthonic" carriers from outside and blocking the discussion of progress as such.
Simply using images and meanings, in five or six years we will have already ossified and self-reproducing archaism under the guise of “tradition” and a simulacrum of modernity under the guise of digitalization. But it is not only London that finds this state of affairs convenient – all the major players (especially Turkey) would prefer that Russia remain in such a dream for a little longer.
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