Azerbaijan and Central Asia in the light of Uzbek president's visit to Baku Farhad Mammadov's opinion

Political scientist and head of the South Caucasus Research Centre Farhad Mammadov commented on the visit of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to Azerbaijan in his Telegram channel.

"The Uzbek president's visit is interesting in different contexts. Over the past two years, there has been an unprecedented dynamic in Azerbaijan's relations with Central Asian countries, and with Uzbekistan in particular. The context of relations encompasses both geopolitical and economic and regional processes. The leaders of Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, Ilham Aliyev and Shavkat Mirziyoyev, practically manually control the implementation of agreements to achieve results.

Geopolitical context

After the war in Ukraine, a new conjuncture of relations in Eurasia is taking shape, which carries risks and opportunities. Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan are not members of politico-military blocs, both are 'landlocked' countries, have important geographical locations, and have identical foreign policy priorities, which are to level out external threats by building predictability at the regional and global levels, increasing security by strengthening their own armed forces and refraining from becoming an arena of confrontation. Interaction of such countries with each other creates a basis for forming alternatives, additional opportunities to counter threats, and to realise opportunities, and increases the level of subjectivity.

The visit of the US Secretary of State to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan is also noteworthy. In purely physical terms, the US and EU can enter the region only through the South Caucasus, through the territories of Georgia and Azerbaijan, which are predictable to the West.

The intensification of relations between Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan goes hand in hand with a broadening and deepening of relations with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. This element of interdependence and complementarity of processes, as well as the shared vision of the countries' leaders, demonstrates that results will be forthcoming in the very near future.

Economic basis

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev at a meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced preparations to implement joint projects worth $800 million, and this is not the limit of cooperation. The emerging opportunities allow for raising the bar of both trade turnover, and the creation of production capacities in the territory of the two countries.

Cooperation at the level of the Organisation of Turkic States is a separate topic, which will become even more pressing after the devastating earthquake in Türkiye. Objectively, Türkiye will be limited in terms of resources in the coming years. However, this will not cause Türkiye to drop out of the integration processes in the OTS system. Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan will take even more responsibility to implement the outlined plans, take initiatives and implement joint projects. This will be another proof of the viability of the OTS, as this integration bond proceeds from the interests of all its participants and is not imposed from the outside. Decisions here are taken independently and within the interests of the participating countries.

In general, the dynamics demonstrated by the leaders of Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan allow us to say that in the near future, we will witness a breakthrough in relations and an even greater rapprochement of the two Turkic states, as well as the regions of the South Caucasus and Central Asia," Farhad Mammadov wrote.