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THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Farman KULIEV
Ph.D. (Hist.), Associate Professor, Head of the Chair of Social and Political Disciplines of the North Caucasian Institute— Branch of the Russian Academy of the National Economy and Civil Service under the President of the Russian Federation (Piatigorsk, the Russian Federation).
THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN THE GEOPOLITICS OF RUSSIA AND TURKEY IN THE NORTHERN CAUCASUS
Abstract
This article examines the evolution of the role of the religious factor and the dynamics of Russia's and Turkey's influence on the domestic problems of the North Caucasian
region from the 18th century to the present day. It formulates several urgent tasks of Russia's foreign policy in light of the need to stabilize the situation in the Northern Caucasus.
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KEYWORDS: religious factor, geostrategy, Russian Empire,
Ottoman Empire, Northern Caucasus, Islamization, muridism, pan-Turkism, New Ottomanism.
Introduction
The unique geographic location of the Northern Caucasus has been a blessing and a curse from time immemorial. Situated in a temperate continental climate zone and known for its balanced combination of mountainous and forest areas, fertile lowlands, and steppes, the region has always been an almost ideal place for all kinds of traditional farming. As a coveted prize in itself, as well as a trade, settlement, and cultural hub, the Caucasus became a bone of contention among its powerful neighbors—Russia, Turkey, and Persia—as early as the 16th century.
The Northern Caucasus has always been and is still considered today to be one of the most important geostrategic regions separating Eastern Europe from the Asian steppes and Orthodoxy from Islam, as well as an arena of imperial struggle and ethnic conflicts.
Positional warfare went on in the Northern Caucasus for influence on the local peoples, during which now one side, now the other took the upper hand.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the world socialist system, Turkey's position in the region drastically changed. It acquired unique opportunities to raise its geopolitical status by means of pan-Turkic expansion into the Turkic republics of the former Soviet Union and to increase its influence on the Russian regions of the Volga Area, the Northern Caucasus, and even Siberia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. The U.S. and its allies welcomed Turkey's advance, particularly into the Muslim countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia, as a counterbalance to possible Iranian influence.
At present, based on its stable economic growth and consolidation of power, Turkey is persistently returning to the idea of forming a political union of Turkic-speaking peoples, creating a powerful mechanism for coordinating its foreign policy, and increasing its national might. The situation in present-day Turkey is having a direct effect on the Russian Islamic regions.
The Religious Factor in the Geopolitics of Russia and Turkey in the Northern Caucasus in the 18th-Beginnning of the 20th Centuries
The Caucasus occupies a special place in the history of the Russian nation. It became a military-political problem for Muscovia as early as the 16th-17th centuries. This was followed by the era of the Russian Empire. The Russian nation laid its geopolitical route to the East and the South through the Caucasus, entering there into contacts with Islamic world, which were rather difficult for it.
It can be said that the Caucasus, the Northern Caucasus in particular, was also attractive prey for southern neighbors, Iran and the empire of the Ottoman Turks, at the beginning of the 16th century. Before the 16th century, periodical clashes had occurred between Shi'ite Iran and Sunni Turkey, which ended in compromise agreements, as a result of which Iranian dominance spread to the Eastern Transcaucasus and Daghestan and Turkish influence to the Western Transcaucasus and the North-
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western and partially Central Caucasus. At the beginning of the 16th century, Turkey achieved the greatest success in the Northern Caucasus and the region became a strategically important vector in the foreign policy of the Ottoman Empire. The presence of a Turkic-speaking population and the predominance of Islam over other religions in the Caucasian-Transcaucasian region opened the way to gradual and relatively peaceful penetration of the Ottoman Empire into these territories.
At the end of the 1760s, the Russian Empire entered into open confrontation with Turkey. As a result of two Russo-Turkish wars, Russia acquired several territories in the Northern Caucasus and so reinforced its position in this region. Under the Treaty of Kuguk Kaynarca signed in 1774, the sides also assumed religious obligations: Russia was recognized as having the right to defend the interests of the Christian population of the Ottoman Empire, while the treaty also envisaged patronage of the sultan, "the supreme caliph of Mohammedan law," over the Muslims of the Russian Empire. It was proposed "to appoint a supreme official-mufti or khan, spiritually subordinate to the caliph, from the indigenous Russian Muslims who had the relevant religious education and squireship."1
After the wars, czarist Russia sent people en masse to settle in the new places. Initially a political move, Muslims were also incorporated into the mass resettlement policy of the czarist regime. In so doing, much depended not only on the domestic political situation, but also on the often very complicated and not always peaceful relations with neighboring Muslim states—Persia and, in particular, the Ottoman Empire. The czarist authorities had to reckon with the effect the propaganda coming from these neighboring states had on the Muslims under their control, which was Islamic in form and anti-Russian in content. Therefore, "the government was faced with the task of nipping in the bud the foreign political orientation of the Russian Muslims (Volga Tatars, mountain-dwellers of the Northern Caucasus) toward Turkey as a bastion of Islam in the world."2
At the end of the 18th century, the Northern Caucasus was engulfed by a new wave of Islamiza-tion, which also had clear signs of radicalism. The efforts of the Russian authorities to Christianize the population, which had been quite successful in Ossetia, Ingushetia, and to some extent Balkaria, were largely reduced to zero. Essentially all the influential political forces of the region striving to retain their political independence began applying Islamic ideology in almost every sphere of their activity. Preaching Christianity was frowned upon, whereby feudal circles actively enforced such views among the population, offering certain privileges to those strata of the dependent population that adopted Islam. For example, Ossetian elder Mirzabek Tulatov (a nobleman) reported: "Anyone who supports the Muslim faith is given an advantage and considered to be on a par with the elders, while those that support the Christian faith are subordinate to them."3 Changes began occurring in the way the mountain people dressed and behaved. Delpozzo, superintendant of Kabarda, noted these changes at the beginning of the 19th century, saying that "now many uzdeni [noblemen], who are almost 40 years old, are learning how to read and write in Tatar in order to understand the Koran ... they all have changed the way they dress: instead of the previous short caftans [long-wasted collarless outer garment], they have begun wearing long ones, they wrap turbans around their heads over their hats, they are growing beards, they have stopped drinking hot wine or smoking and sniffing tobacco, and they do not eat any meat that has not been killed by a Muslim, and consider this their salvation."4 Russia, in turn, was also hatching just as sweeping modernization plans, but so-called Western attributes predominated in them: imperial state power, introduction of unified laws, development of
1 See: M. Kandur, Muridism. Istoria kavkazskikh voin, 1819-1859, Nalchik, 1996, pp. 234, 240; E.Iu. Barkovskaia, Islam i gosudarstvennoe stroitelstvoRossii (vtoraiapolovinaXVI v.-fevral 1917), Moscow, 2006, p. 44; V.V. Degoev, Bolshaia igra na Kavkaze: istoria i sovremennost. Statyi, ocherki, esse, Second Edition, Moscow, 2003, p. 18.
2 A. Iunusova, Islam vBashkortostane, Ufa, 1999, p. 42 (see also: A. Maremkulov, Iuridicheskie formy politikiRossiiskoi imperii na Severnom Kavkaze vXVIII-XIX vv.: istoriko-pravovoi aspekt, Rostov-on-Don, 2005, pp. 17, 292).
3 N. Kiniapina, M. Bliev, V. Degoev, Kavkaz i Sredniaia Azia vo vneshnei politike Rossii (vtoraia polovina XVIII-80-e gody XIX v.), Moscow, 1984, p. 113.
4 Russian State Military-Historical Archive, rec. gr. MSA, inv. 16, Vol. 3, f. 18491, sheets 8-9.
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the economy and social sphere, cultural Westernization, including missionary work, and so on. Of course, these transformations also presumed interference in the customary way of mountain life, which the preachers of Sufism-muridism did not like. The geopolitics of Russia and Turkey in this region always had room for people who were inclined both toward Islamic and Russian modernization proj -ects. In this sense, the mountain communities became an arena where the ideas presented by the supporters of Islam, on the one hand, and by Russian imperial civilization, on the other, vied with each other.
The rapid advance of the Russian Empire in the 19th century could not help but make Persia and Turkey, as well as Great Britain and France, nervous. Despite their influence in this region, Persia and Turkey soon understood that a war with Russia was inevitable. The Ottoman Empire openly regarded the Transcaucasus and Northern Caucasus as its time-honored domains or, to use the phrase popular today, "spheres of its vital interests."
It should be noted that all the states participating in the Great Game in the Caucasus pursued their own goals, striving in this way to take maximum advantage of the political situation. Of course, Russia, Iran, and Turkey remained the main players. Each of the three rivals tried to draw as many of the local rulers as possible to their side, on the one hand, while prevent the other two from forming an alliance against them, on the other.
In addition to regional nations, Turkey and Iran, which had territorial possessions in the Caucasus, the European nations were also Russia's strategic adversaries. The strivings of the latter in the Caucasus were spurred on by political calculations and economic interests related to the expansion of the sales market of European goods in the Sublime Porte and Persia, including in their Caucasian domains, and sources of raw materials that were provided by the Eastern nations for the growing European industry.
Turkey and Iran, which at one time dominated in the Caucasus but now did not have the power to win a war with Russia, carried out propaganda among the Caucasians in an effort to destabilize the situation in the region. However, they were unable to form a united front against the Russian Empire: confessional disagreements and mutual territorial claims barred their way to cooperation, extra proof of which was the Ottoman-Persian war of 1821-1823.
By 1830, the wars with Turkey and Iran resulted in the entire Northern Caucasus being formally transferred to the possession of the Russian Empire, while accession of Akhalkalaki and Akhaltsikhe isolated Chechnia, Daghestan, and Kabarda even more from Ottoman influence. What is more, accession of the Porte's Transcaucasian pashaliks made it possible for St. Petersburg to create a safety belt between Georgia and the Porte.
The Russian Empire had learned how to move with skill and patience on the Transcaucasian chessboard, conquering and disuniting its allies. By competently playing on the contradictions of its "enemies" and maneuvering among the interests of its "friends," Russia simply outwitted the first and the second. Turkey's and Iran's understanding of this fact found expression in the vengeful wars of the first third of the 19th century that led to their complete ousting from the Transcaucasus.
In the mid-19th century, during the Crimean War, the Ottoman Empire and its allies placed the stakes on the murid movement in the Northern Caucasus. But the murid movement suffered defeat. Both Turkey and Persia reacted passively to the murids' pleas for help, since Sunni Turkey and Shi'ite Persia were constantly at loggerheads with each other. It was essentially impossible for these two rivaling nations to cooperate in assisting the murids. On the other hand, Russia took skillful advantage of the religious differences between these two Muslim states and methodically sowed dissent between them.
Turkish emissaries placed the stakes on the religious factor, calling for emigration that promised a better life in the same land with people of the same faith. The extensive propaganda activity carried out by the Porte even encouraged the conversion of Ossetian Christians to Islam so that they could join the migrants on religious grounds.
In the 1860s, the Russian leadership in the Caucasus—general adjutants Alexander Kartsev and Dmitri Svyatopolk-Mirsky, who were assistants to the commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, general
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adjutant Prince Levan Melikov and general adjutant Mikhail Loris-Melikov, who were district heads of Daghestan, general adjutant Sergey Sumarokov-Elston, head of the Kuban region, and head of the Caucasian Mountain Administration General Major Staroselsky— suggested spreading Christianity in the region, particularly in the districts where it had already put down strong roots: Ossetia, the Zakataly District, and the Sukhumi District. "There are around 850,000 Muslims in the Caucasus, 32,000 Christians in Ossetia with a total population of 47,000, 3,500 in Zakatalia with a total population of 52,000, and 46,000 in Sukhumi with a population of 66,500. In 1867, the stronger, among the Muslims, part of the population was moved from the Sukhumi District to Turkey. By 1865, of the 500,000 mountain dwellers of the Western Caucasus, only 90,000 remained who had not been sent to Turkey. They were also exiled from northern and southern Daghestan, as well as from Kabarda and Chechnia. After the end of the war, the mountain dwellers were in a state of transition, but the old customs are being too hastily replaced with the new. No one trusts Russia, there is only mistrust, albeit less than there was before. It is the Muslim clergy, who are fanatical and have always been hostile toward us, that are keeping this mistrust alive."5
In the mid-1870s, before the beginning of the next Russo-Turkish war, Turkey stepped up its efforts to hold sway over the Russian Muslims. With this goal in mind, campaigning was carried out among the local population, which Istanbul allured to its side with promises of material and military assistance, as well as calls to build Islamic solidarity and fight the infidels. As the war drew closer, contacts became more frequent and more active. The mountain dwellers traveling to pray in Arabia participated in meetings of Muslims in the towns of Medina, Mecca, and Istanbul, and when they returned to their Homeland, they convened unofficial meetings where they expounded on Turkey's position and the need to liberate themselves from the control of the Russian empire. The haji returning from Turkey in the fall of 1876 and the spring of 1877 equipped with the inculcating ideas of the Turkish authorities, as well as spiritual people reputed to be academics, were particularly zealous in their efforts to incite the people.6 This campaigning was carried out not only in areas where resistance to Russia was customary—Daghestan, Chechnia, Abkhazia, and among the Circassians strongly influenced by Turkey, but in other densely populated regions too. One of these areas was the Karanogai steppes, where mullahs, campaigners, and people collecting money to fight the Christians found support and were hidden from the authorities by the local residents.7 Turkish agents in Abkhazia, which maintained enduring trade and political contacts with Turkey, were the most active. They often appeared in Sukhumi, where they gathered political information and also spread proclamations in the sultan's name and influenced the local population in different ways, calling for assisting Turkey if a war should break out with Russia.8
A whole group of agents functioned in Abkhazia: Haji Husein, Mamad-bei, Bandikam Bekat, and others.9
Several months before the beginning of the Russo-Turkish war, muhajirs, particularly Chechens Usman-Hajiev and Alibek-Haji, appeared in the mountains of Chechnia from Turkey.10
On the eve of the war, other representatives from Turkey arrived in Sogratl with a letter from the son of Imam Shamil Ghazi Muhammad, general of the Turkish army. This letter told of Turkey' s certain victory in the war with Russia and the imminent arrival of the Ottoman troops "with money and weapons," and said that the Daghestanis should immediately rise up against Russia.11
5 All-Loyal Report of the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Army regarding military-national administration for 1863-1869, St. Petersburg, 1870, pp. 86, 87, 109, 115, 117.
6 See: Materials for describing the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 in the Caucasian-Asia Minor Theater, Comp. by V. Tomkeev, Vol. 6, Part 2, Tiflis, 1910, p. 38.
7 State Archive of the Republic of Daghestan (hereafter SA RD), rec. gr. 126, inv. 2, f. 2, sheet 1.
8 See: Sh.V. Megrelidze, Voprosy Zakavkazia v istorii russko-turetskoi voiny 1877-1878gg., Tbilisi, 1969, p. 9.
9 Ibid., p. 6.
10 See: R.M. Magomedov, Vosstanie gortsevDaghestana in 1877godu, Makhachkala, 1940, pp. 32-33.
11 See: Istoria narodov Severnogo Kavkaza (end of the 18th century-1917), Moscow, 1988, p. 289.
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In order to counteract such phenomena, Russian-Tatar and Russian-Arabic newspapers began telling the truth about life in the Ottoman Empire.
The czarist government also undertook other measures. General Rostislav Fadeev was sent to Istanbul in 1874 where he met with former general of the czarist army Musa Kundukhov and Shamil' s son, Ghazi Muhammad. During the meeting, General Fadeev presented his interlocutors with the following project: "creation of a state on the border with Afghanistan to which all the mountain dwellers in the Ottoman Empire and those wishing to leave the Northern Caucasus would move. Russia would assume all the expenses, providing the state of Caucasians on the border with Afghanistan recognized Russia's protectorate as an autonomous state and would be subordinate to the czar. This project pursued the goal of preventing the mountain dwellers who emigrated from being used in Turkey's interests during the war that czarism was about to wage." This offer was rejected since, apart from everything else, it "opposed the policy of the Turkish government aimed at using the Caucasians who had found shelter in Turkey and were filled with hate and revenge toward czarism."12
During the second half of the 19th century, after the failure of the idea of muridism, the Ottoman Empire offered the Caucasian peoples a new ideology that could unite them against Russia. This ideology initially became known as pan-Turkism, as well as pan-Islam. This term implies the trend that set itself the task of somehow recreating a single Islamic state in the form of a caliphate. The old idea of gazawat could no longer attract a sufficient number of mountain dwellers, but the new idea of religious and national unification was more progressive and long-term.
During the Crimean War, the idea emerged of establishing a Caucasian Home, which envisioned economic and political unification of the Caucasian peoples. At the beginning of the 1880s, Tatar public figure and enlightener Ismail Gasprinski developed a concept for unifying the Turkic-Tatar peoples of the Ottoman and Russian empires into a single federation. The ideological concepts of pan-Turkism were spread by means of Tercuman, a newspaper coordinated by Ismail Gasprinski that was published in the Caucasus, as well as in Central Asia, including in its Russian part at that time— the Turkestan Governorate General. Ismail Gasprinski drew parallels between the Muslim society of Russia and the Porte and explained the principles of pan-Turkism.13 His journalistic pursuits and the awareness campaigns he carried out were absolutely legal, on the one hand, while his newspaper Tercuman openly promulgated the political, religious, and cultural values of the Ottoman Empire, on the other, rallying around itself reactionary groups of Russian Muslims in the Caucasus and the Crimea.
The ideologists of the Ottoman Empire gave equal attention to both unifying the Turkic peoples and to the idea of a universal religious renaissance under the sultan, who was the religious leader of the Muslims at that time.14 Thus playing on national and religious consciousness at the same time, the Ottoman Empire was able to strengthen its position in the Caucasian region, reducing the spatial gap with the Turkic world. In order to disseminate the new ideological trends, the Porte took advantage of old methods tested as far back as the times of the Caucasian war: special agents spread the ideas of pan-Turkism and pan-Islam. So-called ideological preachers disguised as merchants, pilgrims returning from Mecca, and instructors visited places with a large Muslim and Turkic-speaking population. At the beginning of the 20th century, the revolution gave a boost to the development of national ideas in the Russian Empire, which opened up broad opportunities for promulgating pan-Islam. The mountain peoples were very drawn by the prospect of all the Muslim people being united under Caliph Abdulhamid II and the ensuing liberation from Russia that might follow. Despite the fact that Turkic peoples—Balkarians, Kumyks, and Karakalpaks—were living in the Northern Caucasus, it was risky to place the stakes exclusively on the idea of pan-Turkism in the region.
A.M. Magomeddadaev, EmigratsiiaDaghestantsev v Osmanskuiu imperiiu, Book 2, Makhachkala, 2001, pp. 81-82.
See, for example: I. Gasprinsky, Turetsko-russkoe obshchestvo, Terjuman (Istanbul), 1914, No. 61.
See: I. Malkhazouny, Le Panslavisme et la question d'Orient, Paris, 1898, p. 45.
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The ideas of pan-Turkism and pan-Islam were able to form reliable bonds between the Ottoman Empire, and then Turkey, and the Northern Caucasus. Combining nationalism and religious influence made it possible for Istanbul to reinforce its position in the region. Thanks to the support of the local population, Turkey, which was already a republic, continued to develop its political vector in the region and throughout the 20th century. Spending on the Northern Caucasus was included as a separate item in the budget of the Ottoman Empire. For example, the Chancellery of Sheikh-ul-Islam in Istanbul issued 5,000 lira in 1907 to support Turkish agents in Russia.15 In 1907, the Caucasus and Turkestan was secretly visited by sultan Abdul Hamid's personal adjutant, Colonel Ismail Hakim-bei. During the three months of his stay in Russia, he campaigned among the Turkic and Islamic population and gave instructions on how to establish relations between the Russian Muslims and representatives of the Ottoman Empire.
On the eve of the world war, the idea of creating a unified ethnic and religious state predominated in the foreign policy of the Ottoman government. Turkish consular institutions were subordinate to the Founding Committee of Pan-Islam and, just as during the Caucasian war, the Porte's trade and diplomatic representation offices in other countries (primarily in Russia) became the centers of agents' activity. In the Northern Caucasus, the Circassians, Daghestani, and Chechens who emigrated after the Caucasian war of 1878 often acted as agents and disseminators of the ideology of the Ottoman Empire. Most of them occupied high-ranking posts in the civil or military service by that time. Russian governmental circles were aware of the activity various Ottoman trade and consular representative offices were carrying out in Russia, particularly in the Crimea and the Caucasus, but officially did not have the right to prohibit the Porte from opening such offices.
So, at the turn of the 20th century, as the entire Caucasus became more integrated into the world economy, its geopolitical significance grew. However, the unprecedented aggravation of social, ethnic, and religious conflicts prompted Turkey and several other states to interfere in the domestic political processes going on in Russia.
Geopolitical Reality of Present-Day Relations between Russia and Turkey
Beginning in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the systemic weakening of the Russian state and its expulsion from the economic, energy, and transportation-communication projects, prompted Turkey to fill the vacuum that arose in the Central Caucasian region, as well as attempt to become a regional leader for the newly independent states in the post-Soviet expanse with a Turkic population. This complied with the West's interest in weakening Russia, on the one hand, while Turkey wanted to build its own policy, which differed from the West's, on the other. First, Turkey exported so-called Kemalism to these regions, that is, a Western-oriented ideology that called for building society and the state on secularism (in recent years, propaganda of Islamic solidarity has been paradoxically, although quite successfully, combined with the export of Kemalism). And today we see that the newly formed Turkic-Islamic post-Soviet states are choosing the Turkish rather than the Iranian alternative for themselves. Second, Turkey is taking a very pragmatic approach to relations with the newly formed Turkic states in economic and energy matters. Turkey is offering itself as a transit state for the new energy flows, while oil and gas are paving the way to the creation of a new sales market. Turkish industrial goods are not very competitive in the European markets for well-
See: J.M. Landay, The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and Organization, Oxford, 1990, p. 11.
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known technological reasons, but they are in demand in the post-Soviet expanse. Third, Turkey and the newly formed post-Soviet countries that have a Turkic population share ethnic roots, common cultural processes, as well as mentality and spirituality. So Turkey is pursuing cultural cooperation with Azerbaijan and the Russian federal constituencies in the Caucasus, and also with the Central Asian states, which is also creating prerequisites for integration. The Turkish media, nongovernmental organizations, funds, religious organizations, and foreign political state institutions (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Agency for Developing Relations with Turkic CIS States, and so on) are aimed at carrying out this integration. For example, all the new Turkic states and Turkey itself take turns to hold Turkic kurultai (congresses). The national program of Turkish radio and television (TRT) announced that words from the languages of other Turkic peoples would be gradually included in their broadcasts in order to bring them closer together.
It was then that former Turkish president Turgut Ozal even predicted that "the 21st century will be the century of Turkey, which has wonderful prospects for promoting new historical unification of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and the Caucasus under the Turkish aegis."16 After Turgut Ozal's death, the new Turkish president, Suleyman Demirel, talked about "the Turkish world stretching from the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China."17
It should be noted that in addition to establishing official contacts along government lines, nongovernmental structures have also been playing a noticeable role in Turkish expansion. The matter largely concerns the business and educational initiatives coming from the religious network structure of Fethullah Gulen (so-called Nurcular).18 The post-Soviet space is incorporated to a significant extent into the sphere where Neo-Ottomanism is being applied. Particular groups of the population of post-Soviet countries were also exposed to Turkish influence on the economy and politics earlier. In the new conditions, Turkey's role in the Eurasian space could significantly change with a change in its foreign policy strategy. The Central Caucasus, and of course the Northern Caucasus, comprises the main strategic vector in Turkey's policy.
Neo-Ottomanism (yeni osmanlicilik in Turkish) has been a topic of extensive discussion among experts since 2008. On 1 May, 2009, Ahmet Davutoglu, the chief architect of Ankara's new foreign policy, was appointed as Turkey's minister of foreign affairs. His numerous vibrant Ottoman speeches soon became the source of frequent quotes. Some analysts, particularly in countries that used to belong to the Ottoman Empire, became nervous and began talking about the "Ottoman threat" and the "revival of bloody traditions."19
Neo-Ottomanism poses Turkey exclusively as a regional superpower, the geographical and cultural heir of the Ottoman and Byzantine empires.
However, the Ottoman idea has found its way into the Russian Northern Caucasus, although in a somewhat unexpected form. The Ottoman language turned out to be one of the alternatives being considered in the virtual expanse as the official language of the Caucasus Emirate. Furthermore, it is obvious that advocates of the Shari'a system in the Caucasus have no command of the Ottoman language, which nowadays is only used in manuscripts and old printed books and heard exclusively in rare university auditoriums. The Caucasian separatists need a symbol, an "imperial" language for the multinational state they are planning, that does not give priority to any of the local ethnic groups.
16 K. Panarokis, "Turetskie metamorfozy," in: Pantiurkizm i natsionalnaia bezopasnost Rossii: Tez. Dokl. Mezhdun. Nauch. Konf., Moscow, 1994.
17 R. Zargarian, "Turetskaia model "novogo mirovogo poriadka," Observer, No. 6, 1996, p. 45.
18 Mullah Said Nursi who preached extremely radical views was the founder. Later, in the 1970s, Said Nursi's ideas on establishing Shari'a were actively preached by Imam Fethullah Gulen Haji effendi. Some of the main trends of its activity are the introduction and advancement of its adepts into the power and administration bodies both in Turkey and in Russia and other CIS countries.
19 L. Melik Shakhnazarian, "Turetsky neoosmanizm. Vozrozhdenie krovavykh traditsii?" available at [http://www. golosarmenii.am/ru/19922/world/520/].
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There is no need to prove how remote this project is from reality. However, it cannot be denied that Ottoman ideas are circulating in one form or another in the radicalized Muslim environment.20 The Turkish government officially adheres to the policy of non-interference in the situation in the Northern Caucasus, but there are numerous testimonies to the activity of official Turkish emissaries in Chechnia. For example, on 13 May, 2012, an International Caucasian Conference was held in Istanbul organized by the Caucasian diaspora of Turkey and the nongovernmental Imkander organization. Like their Russian colleagues, many Turkish officials adhere to traditional geopolitics. Turkey was categorically against re-examining the flank limits under the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. This treaty strictly limited the levels of weapons that Russia had the right to deploy in the Northern Caucasus. In turn, Turkey is now strengthening military cooperation with Azerbaijan, which has essentially come right up to the level of a military-political alliance. In this respect, Baku's initiative on creating a NATO military base in its territory, although it shows no signs of being implemented in the foreseeable future, was probably coordinated in advance with Ankara. Some supporters of Turkey's active policy in the Caucasus would be willing to deploy a Turkish military base near Baku.
There is clearly some duality in Turkey's position. Geopoliticians and geo-economists often follow intercepting courses. While the military are taking a hard line about the prospect of a stronger Russian military presence in the region and the enthusiasts of pan-Turkism are elaborating new grandiose projects, Turkish construction companies are building towns in Vladikavkaz for Russian servicemen to live. Revival of the traditional image of an enemy is not preventing the business circles of both countries from carrying out large-scale projects like Blue Stream (transportation of Russian gas to Turkey along the bottom of the Black Sea). These facts confirm that Turkey, as Russia, has not determined the vector of the country's future development, and is forming its future foreign policy model not so much during national debates as in the aftermath of a struggle among different trends. The Russian foreign political departments, other state, sociopolitical, and business organizations and forces should pay particular attention to reinforcing the economic and humanitarian ties of both countries with active participation of North Caucasian government and business structures. Only this policy can ensure a more favorable Turkish foreign policy course for Russia. The vast benefits that Turkey has been acquiring in recent years from the activity of construction and other companies in the Russian Federation and from the economic and recreational tourism of Russians in Turkey are an argument that has still not been used to support Russia's position.
On the whole, Turkey's entire policy in the 1990s and 2000s shows that Turkey has essentially reanimated the new foreign political and geopolitical doctrine and concept of pan-Turkism, we will call it neo-pan-Turkism, and is trying to have a strong influence in this area. Turkey is primarily implementing the so-called Turan project supported by the U.S. using the ideology and practice of pan-Turkism. This policy is stoking separatism, nationalism, and religious fanaticism, while also preserving hotbeds of tension, and so on.
In the current situation there are many reasons why it is counterproductive for Russia to oppose the Islamic world with which it has historic ties. The Muslim population within the country is the second largest religious group after the Orthodox Christian. What is more, Islam are closer to Russian Orthodoxy in spiritual values than to Western Christianity, which gives reason to talk about inter-civilizational contact and dialog, as well as cultural interpenetration, and not about confrontation and hostility in the spirit of the Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations." "The phenomenon of the Russian civilization," emphasized L. Bashirov, "lies not only in relatively peaceful coexistence within a single state of autochthonous peoples of the Christian and Muslim faiths. The matter concerns a
20 For example, the Sheikh Abdusalam organization is carrying out this kind of work in Daghestan. The leader of terrorist formation, known as Sheikh Abdusalam, Turkish citizen Mukhanned, was killed in the Northern Caucasus during a special operation.
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deeper foundation of unity of these peoples—spiritual affinity and coincidence of national mentalities formed on common doctrinal principles and the practice of Russian Orthodoxy and 'Russian' Islam, interdependence, and interpenetration of national cultures."21
Conclusion
The Northern Caucasus is situated in the mountainous area of the Caucasus that borders on Atlantic Turkey, which, in turn, strategically controls the border zone with Russia. The main world religions—Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism—have a strong influence here. So it stands to reason that the U.S., Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and several other countries are interested in this multiethnic region. The task of Russian foreign policy and diplomacy is to create favorable external prerequisites for achieving its main objectives of preserving state integrity and reinforcing unity during the development of a law-based democratic state. In order to reach this goal, a coordinated strategy must be elaborated and implemented that expresses the geopolitical interests of Russia, the main vectors of which should be the following:
(a) explaining the goals and methods of Russian policy in the Northern Caucasus to Russian society and the outside world in order to attain understanding and support;
(b) institutionalizing the political dialog with Turkey in favor of strategic understanding with Russia; introducing the practice of consultations at the level of the Chiefs-of-Staff of the Russian and Turkish Armed Forces;
(c) defining normalization and development of relations with direct neighbors in all the main vectors as a vital priority;
(d) carrying out measures aimed at historical reconciliation of Russia with the Islamic world in order to turn traditional Islam in the Northern Caucasus into an ally in the fight against extremism;
(e) isolating extremist forces in the Northern Caucasus by means of an engaged dialog with the leaders of Turkey, Egypt, other Middle Eastern states, CIS countries, the European Union, and the U.S.; strengthening interaction with the corresponding services of these states in order to pool efforts to combat international terrorism.
L.A. Bashirov, Islam i etnopoliticheskie protsessy v sovremennoi Rossii, Moscow, 2000, p. 49.
