For Muslims in the post-Soviet space, one of the important events of last week was the visit of Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to Turkey, where he and other members of the Kazakh delegation met with their Turkish counterparts. Agreements were reached to deepen cooperation in various fields — economic, social and cultural. However, given the current events in the world, including around Kazakhstan and Turkey, the agreements reached by the heads and relevant agencies of the two states in the military and intelligence spheres are of particular importance.
So, commenting on this news, let’s start with the fact that this trend can only be welcomed in any case. In other words, no matter what other aspects are discussed below, it definitely won’t make things worse, and it might even make them better.
Now to these specific aspects. Last fall, we wrote with great optimism about the establishment of the Turkic States Organization (TSO), within which cooperation in all these areas was planned between Turkey and the Turkic states of Central Asia, including Kazakhstan (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=40268).
This course was chosen by Kazakhstan under President Tokayev. However, the events of the beginning of this year, when Tokayev called on the CSTO troops to suppress popular uprisings and made a sharp turn towards Moscow, made us strongly criticize him as a Moscow puppet (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=40405).
Now, against the background of his visit to Turkey, to be honest, it would be nice to admit our mistake — this is one case where we could do it with pleasure. Moreover, a number of other steps taken by Tokayev indicate that he has managed to keep a distance from Moscow in foreign policy. For example, Kazakhstan did not recognize the DNR and LNR and did not support Moscow in votes on the Ukrainian issue in international platforms. Of course, it does not have the same attitude towards the Kremlin as Ukraine’s allies such as Poland and Lithuania, but it is not the same as Lukashenko’s Belarus either. And for that I thank you.
In short, let us hope that the logic of history and geopolitical processes will lead to the final overcoming of Kazakhstan’s dependence on Moscow and its rapprochement with Turkey and other Turkic-Muslim republics. This is also important because to be tied to China, as many of them are doing, while being tied to Russia is like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. That is why it is important for Turkestan-Turkish cooperation to gain momentum and for the signed agreements to be implemented.
However, we must not forget the events of January… Because then, in order to save his own power, Tokayev gave a carte blanche to the Russian security forces and they could do whatever they wanted in Kazakhstan. In essence, they could begin to absorb the country through purges, which we feared at the time.
Kazakhstan was saved from this by the fact that Moscow had other plans at the time — as we now know, it was preparing to seize and occupy Ukraine, mobilizing all its forces, including the reserves of the Russian National Guard, the Interior Ministry, the FSB, and so on. And that is why they could not divert these forces to absorb Kazakhstan, because their priority was already Ukraine. So they suppressed the acute flare-up in Kazakhstan, left it to the Kazakh authorities and concentrated on Ukraine.
In essence, Kazakhstan was saved by a miracle, without which it could have ended up under occupation. Thanks to Allah, this did not happen, and it is wonderful that Tokayev is using the Kremlin’s loosening grip in the right way. But how will he behave if a similar situation occurs next time, but without a saving miracle? After what has happened, no reasonable person can ignore this question.
We advise both Kazakh Muslims and patriots to think about it. And strive for a critical moment, when decisions on the choice of the country’s future will be made by the whole nation and its defenders in power, and not by individual opportunistic politicians without strong convictions.