South China Morning Post By Gyorgy Busztin Feb. 7, 2022 [As Russia seeks to re-establish its Soviet-era sphere of influence and Turkey turns towards Central Asia, their opposing interests might soon collide For China, Russo-Turkish tensions would destabilise Central Asia. For South and Southeast Asia, Turkey’s neo-Ottoman drive has bigger repercussions] Current events have provided two instances of history repeating itself. The first, and indisputably more dangerous, instance is the drive by President Vladimir Putin to restore Russia to the superpower status it enjoyed in Soviet times. What is happening on Ukraine’s border is not about Russia feeling threatened but about Moscow seeking to re-establish its Soviet-era sphere of influence. What does Russia have to fear from its neighbours in Nato, a defensive alliance of countries that are preoccupied with their own concerns? To those who have followed Russian history across the centuries, this pressure campaign is neither new nor surprising. Historically, Russia has been obsessed with seeking access to warm seas. It succeeded in reaching the Black Sea at the time of Catherine the Great, clinching Crimea from its nominal suzerain, the Ottoman sultan. But this was not enough. After occupying the entire Eurasian land mass adjacent to its realm east of the Urals, swallowing up Turkish and Persian vassal states and reaching the Pacific, Russia still dreamed of ejecting the British from India, in a push to the Indian Ocean. (Thus prompting the Great Game, the British Empire’s desperate 19th-century attempt to block Russian progress south in Afghanistan). To keep Russia at arm’s length from the Mediterranean, England, France and Turkey fought the bloody Crimean war. Then came the Russian expansion into the Balkans, which pitted St. Petersburg against two great powers of the age, the Austro-Hungarian empire and Ottoman Turkey. The first of the two conflicts was temporarily defused by the Congress of Berlin, which delineated the spheres of influence of both empires. But Russia found it difficult to abide by these arrangements and stoked pan-Slav nationalism to grab more influence, leading eventually to the pistol shots in Sarajevo, and the first world war. Meanwhile, Russia’s conflict with Turkey kept brewing. It had successfully pushed the Ottomans from their Balkan dependencies by the last quarter of the 19th century. That the nations freed from Ottoman rule were soon at each other’s throats (in the first and second Balkan wars) mattered little. What mattered was Russia’s drive to end the Turkish presence in the Balkans altogether, by aiming to take hold of Istanbul, which it referred to as Constantinople. Thus emerged the antagonism that eventually pushed Turkey into the arms of Germany and Austria-Hungary in the first world war, with catastrophic consequences for the Ottoman Empire. The second development, related to the first, is Turkey’s loud support of Ukraine. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan travelled to Kyiv on February 3 to announce a deal to send its highly-regarded drones to the beleaguered nation. For good measure, he used a phrase loaded with symbolism since Ukraine’s troubles with Russia began in 2014: “Glory to Ukraine!” That Turkey, a Nato member that has cosied up to Russia in recent years – despite the anger this has aroused in its other ally, the United States – has made clear which side it is on might surprise some. But for those who remember the past, the reasons are clear. Both Russia and Turkey are embarking on relentless drives to be great again on the world stage. In the case of Russia, the driving force is what Lenin condemned as “Great Russian chauvinism”, bolstered by military might and hydrocarbon resources. For Turkey, the European Union’s refusal to admit it to what Ankara sees as a “Christian club” has motivated Erdogan to go it alone and swap a European identity for one rooted in its glorious past. This has seen it make a decisive turn towards the Turkic nations of Central Asia and a claim to kinship. All would be well if these ambitions have been playing out in opposite corners of the world. But Russia and Turkey are neighbours, and the risks of them colliding are increasing. They have opposing interests in the Caucasus. Their spheres of influence overlap and breed contradictions in Central Asia. Their differences are manifest with respect to the GUAM countries (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova), independent states threatened by Russian expansion, but which Turkey resolutely stands by. The short but bloody war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh last year brought Russo-Turkish tensions to the surface, as both backed opposing sides – a situation similar to that in Syria and Libya, and now Ukraine. For us in Asia, the Russian push for rejuvenation seems remote. Turkey’s drive, on the other hand, is taking place in our backyard. The history that binds them, however, should interest even the casual observer. The world is rife with inherited tensions that can easily be channelled to feed new conflicts. Conflicting nationalisms – Russian Orthodox neo-imperialism here, Turkish neo-Ottomanism there – fall into this category, even if the risk of tensions spilling over remain remote. For China, protracted Russo-Turkish tensions would destabilise Central Asia. For those further south, Turkey’s neo-Ottoman drive has bigger repercussions. For many South and Southeast Asian countries with Muslim populations – Malaysia foremost among them – Turkey remains a beacon and a model for how Islam can fuse with modernity. It is no secret that it is vying with the other Muslim axes – chiefly those led by Saudi Arabia, and Iran – for leadership of the Islamic world. A Muslim nation standing up to a European power will no doubt be applauded in this region, giving the political Islam which Ankara champions a fillip, and boosting the neo-Ottoman drive. The 64,000-dollar question for those watching history repeating itself is this: have the lessons of their bloody pasts been learned by Moscow and Ankara? * Dr Gyorgy Busztin is a visiting research professor at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore. A career diplomat, he served as Hungary’s Ambassador to Indonesia and Iran, among other postings