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Dr Alexander Murinson

Is the Cup Half-full or Half-Empty?

che ancient Silk Road
che height of silk exports
and other trans-continental
trade was reached during
the cang Dynasty( 618-907
C.E.).
che first Great Game
che classic Great Game period is
generally regarded as running
approximately from the Russo-
Persian creaty of 1813 to the
Anglo-Russian Convention of
1907.
 Pan-curanism
Pan-curkism and pan-curanism.

Pan-curkism was a movement to unify the

eastern (Central Asia and Caucasus) and the
western (Anatolian) curks. Following
Russian expansionism in the Balkans under
the banner of pan-Slavism in the later half
of the nineteenth century, pan-curanism
arose as a romantic idea to unify curkic,
Mongol and Finnish-Ugorian peoples.
It later served for a short time as a basis for
the curkishʹHungarian collaboration
during the first two decades of the
twentieth century to stem the Russian
threat.
che curkic World in the 21st Century?
In the early 1990s, Prime-
Ministers curgut Ozal and
Suleyman Demirel called
for the creation of a
Commonwealth of curkic
states ͞from the Balkans
and to the Wall of China.͟
 che New Great Game
Post-Soviet Political Boundaries in Central Asia

che rivalry for the spheres of

influence in Central Asia was
reignated by the security vacuum
created by the collapse of the Soviet
Empire. curkey joined this
competition as a regional
Power.
 Geopolitics of Pipelines
cRACECA Pipeline Network
In the early 1990s, curkey sought U.S.
support for a pipeline project that would
provide an outlet for Caspian oil, later
known as the Baku-cbilisi-Ceyhan project
(BcC). Fiona Hill observes, "Since the early
1990s, the twin goals of curkey's foreign
policy in the [Caspian] region have been to
secure new energy supplies, and to establish
itself as the transit country for energy flows
from the Caspian to consumer markets in
Europe."
China joins the Great Game
China ͚s economic boom and
growing energy needs made
Central Asia a logical place to
seek control over the lion͛ share
of the region͛s petrochemical
and other primary resources
Conflicts in the Caucasus
With the construction of pipelines
running from Azerbaijan through
Armenia to curkey impossible so
long as the Azeri-Armenian
dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh
remains unresolved, pipelines
through Georgia are absolutely
essential for Caspian Basin
natural gas to reach Europe
without running through Russia
or Iran. che Caucasus war of
August 2008 exposed the fault-
lines of the geopolitical
competition between the West
and Russia over energy and trade
routes in the Caucasus and
Central Asia. curkey chose to
take an equidistant approach and
sought to patch up its relations
with Moscow .
Is the Cup half-full?
che Parliamentary Assembly (PA) of the curkic
Speaking States established a Secretariat in
November 2008. chis is the first permanent
coordinating body for regional states
headquartered in Istanbul.