The Kremlin, through its spokesman Dmitry Peskov, reacted to the creation of the Turkic Council, about which we wrote earlier (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=40268). More precisely, the reason for this reaction was not the creation of the Turkic Council itself, but the map given to its ally, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, by Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party. «Our Turkish partners value the idea of Turkish unity, and that is normal. The only thing I regret is that the map does not have a big red star in the center of the Turkic world. It is not in Turkey, it is in the territory of the Russian Federation, in Altai, in that sacred place for every Turk, where they come from. I say this as a Turkologist,» Peskov said.
Well, it is elegant, there is no denying that. For once, because this is a rare case where Peskov at least has some understanding of what he is commenting on, since he once studied Turkology.
Of course, one could nitpick and say that the Altai hypothesis of the Turks’ origin is no longer the only or even the strongest one in modern Turkology. But let’s not ask the impossible of our Kremlin Turkologist. Fortunately, Altai can still be considered one of the important centers of ancient Turkic history.
The problem is different. Unlike the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, which could claim this role because they had the largest Turkic population in the world, modern Russia within its current borders is no longer a country with the largest Turkic population.
Incidentally, despite such proposals, neither the Russian Empire nor the Soviet Union, where there were more Turks than anywhere else, took advantage of this potential. For example, this idea was proposed by Ismail Gasprinsky in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. But instead, it led the «brothers», the Serbs, into World War I, and internally it started new persecutions of Turkic Muslims, resulting in a wave of their emigration to the Ottoman Empire. The same thing happened in the early Soviet Union, when Mirsultan Said-Galeev promoted these ideas in the Soviet leadership, but became one of the first victims of Stalinist repression. In addition to its general cannibalistic nature, Stalin’s policy was characterized by an obvious anti-Turkish and anti-Islamic orientation.
In modern Russia, there are no longer the tens of millions of Turks who lived in the Soviet Union. But there are still many. However, the Kremlin remembered them only when it became known about the map on which the territories of their compact settlements are marked as part of the unified Turkic space with Turkey and independent Turkic states.
In reality, however, no one forgets them — in the repressions and harassments, in the fight against Islamic literature and communities historically linked to other Turkic countries, in the constant Turkophobic propaganda under the guise of «opposition to pan-Turkism».
Moreover, if we think about it, Russia, with its many indigenous Turkic peoples, could be, if not the center of the entire Turkic world, then one of its centers. And it could cultivate Altai, just as Kazakhstan is doing with the reconstructed ancient city of Turkestan.
The same goes for its Muslim population as a whole, which is usually viewed from the perspective of the need to protect it from the influence of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, or anyone else. However, in the case of its development with the support of the state, it could very well become one of the beacons of the global Islamic Ummah.
Therefore, in the end, Peskov’s words are nothing but a bluff. If this were not the case, Moscow would be discussing concrete programs for the development of its Turkic and Muslim space in order to transform it into one of the centers of the corresponding global spaces. But instead, they are discussing the imminent war with Ukraine and perhaps even with Poland due to the actions of Belarus.
In other words, another fight for the «protection of the Slavic brothers» that already destroyed the Russian Empire. Or rather, against them, because real Slavs are not interested in such protection and are thinking about who will protect them from such a «protector».
So you cannot count on the Kremlin, which is hiding behind Altai, one of the centers of the Turkic world. Peskov’s words are just good acting in a bad game, nothing more.