Turkey’s Turkic Strategy Meets Eurasian Constraints The United States continues to pursue a strategy of offloading security responsibilities to regional partners. Implicit in that strategy is the expectation that these partners construct regional security architectures capable of managing local balances of power. One such architecture is the Ankara-led Organization of Turkic States, which could evolve into a cohesive geopolitical bloc along Russia’s southern periphery. For Washington, the OTS represents a potentially valuable geopolitical platform because its member states collectively occupy the strategic space south of Russia, west of China and north of Iran, giving the bloc outsized importance in the emerging contest over Eurasian connectivity and regional influence. By strengthening political, economic and potentially security coordination among Turkic states, the OTS could help curb Russian influence in former Soviet countries, complicate China’s ambitions to monopolize trans-Eurasian trade corridors through the Belt and Road Initiative, and limit Iran’s ability to project influence into the South Caucasus and Central Asia. - Kamran Bokhari geopoliticalfutures.com/turkeys-turkic…
