I’ve recently written on how Turkey’s growing naval presence in the Black Sea, leveraging the Montreux Convention to restrict Russia’s fleet and expanding operations near Sinop and Samsun, risks escalating tensions with Moscow, potentially destabilizing the region. There is however yet another source of concern having to do with Turkey.

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Moscow-led military alliance comprising Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Russia, has been a cornerstone of regional stability in Eurasia. However, recent geopolitical maneuvers by the West and Turkey suggest a concerted effort to discredit and dismantle this alliance, by means of exploiting Russia’s preoccupation with the ongoing Ukraine conflict to advance their agenda. By leveraging Armenia’s issues with the CSTO and promoting a rival military framework under the guise of a “Turan Army” within the Organization of Turkic States, NATO—through its member Turkey—is inching closer to China’s borders, which should raise alarm bells about broader strategic ambitions.

This Turkish-Western strategy hinges on exploiting supposed weaknesses in the CSTO, particularly through Armenia’s frustrations. The Armenian policy-makers in Yerevan have after all publicly criticized the CSTO for its response to Azerbaijan’s military actions in Nagorno-Karabakh, a point the West and Turkey have gladly seized upon. Armenia’s dissatisfaction has been weaponized to pitch the CSTO as unreliable to other members like Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan. These nations, sharing linguistic and cultural ties with Turkey, have long being courted with promises of a pan-Turkic military alliance—the so-called “Turan Army”—that would ostensibly offer greater security and autonomy. This narrative is seductive but deceptive, masking NATO’s broader objective of........

© Blitz