Central Asia Archive

After many months of false starts, Afghan peace talks may finally officially begin in Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban opposition has established a quasi-official presence. But a newly published study (.pdf) by the International Center for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR) should again remind us that the likelihood of negotiating a sustained peace deal with the Taliban remains small. The report’s authors undertook a comprehensive study of almost three decades of negotiations with Afghan resistance movements, reviewing Soviet-era talks with the mujahedeen guerrillas as well as Western and Afghan government negotiations with the Afghan Taliban. Although generalizing lessons from history […]

Last month, Turkish President Abdullah Gul visited Turekmenistan to discuss bilateral ties. In an email interview, Bayram Balci, a visiting scholar focusing on Turkish foreign policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, explained Turkey’s broader relationship with the Central Asian republics. WPR: What has been the recent evolution of Turkey’s relationship with Central Asia, and why does Turkey prioritize the region in terms of its foreign aid? Bayram Balci: The last major political event between Turkey and Central Asia was the 10th summit of Turkey and the other Turkic republics—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan—which took place in Istanbul […]

For all the focus on contemporary Iran, relatively little attention is paid to its trilateral ties with Afghanistan and Tajikistan, the geolinguistic remnants of an eclectic series of empires collectively denominated Persian. Since 2005, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made it a point to revive Persian nationalism, contrasting it with the clerical elite’s claim to Islam as the exclusive basis of Iranian identity. Significantly, Ahmadinejad’s nationalist rhetoric was accompanied by a raft of summits, forums and agreements among the three countries, which he called “limbs of the same body,” echoing the 13th-century Persian poet Saadi. Despite the historical echoes, however, […]