ANKARA AND TEHRAN IN RUSSIA’S ‘NEAR ABROAD’: THE WAY TO CENTRAL ASIA

This paper aims to contribute to increase knowledge about a remote region of the world, but of utmost importance in the geopolitical context of today - Central Asia - as a result of its strategic position as a link between East and West, a space of competition and reinforcement of the great powers. Besides, the region has been, in recent years, attracting the attention of foreign investors due to the existence of large reserves of oil and gas. The central argument is that Iran and Turkey demonstrate a predominantly economic interest (the search for energy resources) towards the region, pursuing fundamentally realistic-driven policies with regard to it. Alternatively to the participant and non-participant observation, we resorted to the semi structured interview. The field research was done through interviews conducted predominantly in Central Asia. Convinced that the behaviour of the states is not likely to translate into tangible realities or mathematical formulas, we assume that the use of the qualitative method, through the hermeneutic analysis, is the methodology supporting this investigation. We suggest that Iran inspires itself on the Chinese policy towards Central Asia, which has shown remarkable vigour in recent years in order to to project its power in the regional sphere and to mitigate the effects of Washington’s (essentially) isolationist policy about it. Besides, we believe that an axis Ankara-Tehran-Central Asia-Beijing can provide extraordinary opportunities to Turkey, of course, if it knows how to use a skillful diplomacy to maximize its interests without hurting the alliance with Washington