Ankara and Tehran in Russia's 'Near abroad'

• Autor(a) principal: Brardo Duarte, Paulo Afonso
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista da Escola de Guerra Naval (Ed. Português. Online)
• Texto Completo: https://www.portaldeperiodicos.marinha.mil.br/index.php/revistadaegn/article/view/4569
• topic: Central Asia; Iran; Turkey; Geostrategy; Realism

This paper aims to contribute to increase knowledgeabout a remote region of the world, but of utmostimportance in the geopolitical context of today - CentralAsia - as a result of its strategic position as a link betweenEast and West, a space of competition and reinforcementof the great powers. Besides, the region has been, inrecent years, attracting the attention of foreign investorsdue to the existence of large reserves of oil and gas. Thecentral argument is that Iran and Turkey demonstrate apredominantly economic interest (the search for energyresources) towards the region, pursuing fundamentallyrealistic-driven policies with regard to it. Alternatively to the participant and non-participant observation,we resorted to the semi structured interview. The fieldresearch was done through interviews conductedpredominantly in Central Asia. Convinced that thebehaviour of the states is not likely to translate intotangible realities or mathematical formulas, we assumethat the use of the qualitative method, through thehermeneutic analysis, is the methodology supporting thisinvestigation. We suggest that Iran inspires itself on theChinese policy towards Central Asia, which has shownremarkable vigour in recent years in order to to project itspower in the regional sphere and to mitigate the effectsof Washington’s (essentially) isolationist policy about it.Besides, we believe that an axis Ankara-Tehran-CentralAsia-Beijing can provide extraordinary opportunitiesto Turkey, of course, if it knows how to use a skillfuldiplomacy to maximize its interests without hurting thealliance with Washington.