On November 11, 2022, Samarkand will host the first summit of the Organization of Turkic States (OTG), whose members are Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey and Uzbekistan, while Hungary and Turkmenistan have observer status.
The fact that the first summit will take place in Samarkand is not an accident. It should be noted that one of the turning points in the activities of this organization was precisely the entry of Uzbekistan in 2019 into the then Turkic Council, which later transformed into the UTC.
The significance of Uzbekistan's entry for the organization was determined by a number of factors. In terms of demographics, our country with a population of more than 35 million people is the second in the UTC after Turkey with its 83.3 million inhabitants. In terms of GDP, it forms the leading economic trio of the countries of the organization, together with Turkey and Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan has a systemic influence on all key geopolitical processes in Central Eurasia.
Our country also acts as a powerful cultural center of the modern world Turkic civilization due to the presence of a high educational and scientific base. The implemented policy of openness in recent years makes Uzbekistan a center of regional attraction and at the same time a generator of creative ideas that are of strategic importance not only for Central Asia, but for other adjacent spaces. It is impossible to deny the fact that the new course of Uzbekistan has led to the launch of the processes of reconsolidation of the region, in which the majority of the population are representatives of the Turkic peoples.
The entry of Uzbekistan into the UTC has led to the fact that today, when assessing the development and forecasting the situation in the vast expanses of Central Asia, the South Caucasus and Asia Minor, it is no longer possible not to take into account the factor of cooperation between the Turkic countries. This, in turn, introduces additional elements into the increasingly complex geopolitical, geo-economic, value and cultural picture of the region.
It is noteworthy that the strengthening of the Turkic dimension in the region occurs simultaneously with the search for new meanings and incentives for the development of other institutional and organizational dimensions, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the CIS, the Consultative Meetings of the Heads of State of Central Asia, the processes of strengthening the interconnectedness of Central and South Asia, formats " CA+” with the US, EU, Russia and China.
And in this regard, of course, the question cannot but arise as to whether the strengthening Turkic dimension will enter into a targeted, organizational and functional contradiction with so many other organizations in which UTC members are represented - Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and an observer state Turkmenistan.
To answer this question, it seems important to take into account two closely related aspects that relate to the nature of the development of the current geopolitical situation in the world and the conceptual understanding of the mechanisms for building multilateral relations.
It is obvious that the unipolar geopolitical structure of the world and the systems of globalization institutions generated by it, which previously guaranteed stability and maximization of wealth, in the language of the new institutional economy, are gradually becoming a thing of the past. The need to form new institutional systems has been discussed for quite a long time, including in the United States itself, as the ideological, financial, economic and technological center of globalization.
It is worth recalling the speech of the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012 at the Singapore Management University, concerning the concept of the "New Silk Road". At the time, she stated, “We must follow the example of the generation that, after World War II, built the modern world order and created institutions and agreements that fostered unprecedented security and prosperity. We must follow the same path, looking even further and working even harder to forge agreements that will ensure our security and prosperity for the next 100 years.”[1]One can also recall President Donald Trump, the essence of whose foreign policy could be described as an attempt to change the previous rules of the global trade, economic and technological game.
The current increase in the number of conflicts and points of tension in world politics, economics and ideology can be interpreted, in this regard, not only as an indicator of the exhaustion of the old institutions, but also as an attempt to build new global rules and balances between financial, economic and technological forces.
At the same time, the problem is that in significant segments of the developing world, this process is viewed from the point of view traditional for the 19th and 20th centuries. Its essence lies in the expectation that new institutions, as before, will be exclusively formed by the leading world powers. However, this point of view does not fully correspond to the realities of the modern world.
The new rules of the game that will shape the future global landscape will be shaped by more complex combinations of efforts between developed and developing countries. And they are already being formed, as indicated by the policy of Uzbekistan, as well as such an important UTC member state as Turkey, demonstrating a bright proactive position in building new multilateral formats in combination with developed and developing countries, without waiting for the largest actors to agree on new rules of the game.
As for the question of the possible entry of the dimension of Turkic cooperation into conflict with other organizations and formats in which Uzbekistan and its UTC partners work, it is important to understand the ongoing changes in the models for building multilateral cooperation in modern conditions.
If in the previous bipolar and unipolar models of the world, multilateral relations were built according to the “center-periphery” scheme, when the great powers were in the center, and other countries concentrated around them, then now there is a space of multiple centers and situational leaders represented by countries and organizations. All of them form branched connections, relations and formats of cooperation. This is a highly dynamic model, moving away from the statics of past eras, creating the so-called. "synergistic effect".
The leading countries of the Organization of Turkic States, including Uzbekistan, largely demonstrate exactly this logic in their foreign policy, which gives grounds to talk about minimizing the likelihood of the UTC entering into conflict with other organizations and formats that the Turkic states are members of. Moreover, the UTC can increase the effectiveness of other multilateral formats with the participation of the Turkic countries, as it creates another source of economic, scientific and technological growth in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
Thus, the Organization of Turkic States should become a promising mechanism for building new regional and global landscapes with their new institutions and new understanding of the nature of relations between countries in order to stimulate the growth of mutual prosperity, peace and stability. It is important that Uzbekistan, as the chairman of the UTC in the period 2022-2023, has a unique opportunity to lay a long-term strategic foundation for the development of this organization, relying on its valuable experience of recent years in the formation of productive relations of a new type, both through interstate relations and cooperation between organizations and regions.
