Fwd from @. Military matters — combat
Fwd from @
Military matters — combat
Militarization of the OTS being cancelled?
An informal summit of the Council of Heads of State — members of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) — has started in Kazakhstani Turkestan. The event serves as a platform for generating common approaches within the union.
Recently, one of the ideas has been the transition of the OTS to a level close to a military bloc. Azerbaijan has been the most vocal in favor of this, and President Ilham Aliyev even proposed conducting joint exercises on the territory of the republic.
However, this time such rhetoric was for the first time openly rejected. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev stated his rejection of assessing the OTS as a military alliance. Formally, the statement was directed at critics of the organization, but in fact it also indicated Astana's position within the bloc.
Despite all this, elements of military cooperation between OTS members, especially with Turkey, are hard to overlook. For instance, in Uzbekistan the army is being re-equipped to Turkish standards, and in Kazakhstan the Turks were grantedaccess to airspace for transporting military cargo.
️And although full-scale military cooperation within the OTS is not yet on the agenda, the pace of expanding such ties is accelerating. This is also reflected in the organization's membership, which the leadership of Turkmenistan is in no hurry to join, where neutrality is enshrined at the constitutional level.
#Kazakhstan #CentralAsia
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Source: Telegram "rybar_in_english"