How Turkiye's eastward ambitions serve the Atlanticist order

Ankara’s penetration into Eurasia blends neo-Ottoman ideology, Islamic soft power, and NATO-aligned geopolitics in a bid to rival Russia, China, Iran, and India.

Ali Nassar

JUL 3, 2025

https://thecradle.co/articles/how-turkiyes-eastward-ambitions-serve-the-atlanticist-order

Since the onset of the 21st century, Turkiye’s foreign policy agenda has shifted decisively eastward, charting a course through Central and South Asia. This transformation signals more than a revival of Ottoman-era influence. 

It reveals a layered geopolitical project anchored in Pan-Turanist nationalism, Muslim Brotherhood-aligned political Islam, and strategic deployment of military and development tools – crafted to serve Ankara’s national interests while converging with NATO’s broader regional goals.

Ankara's eastward thrust is taking place against a backdrop of eroding US influence, a return to multipolarity, and intensified global competition over energy, trade corridors, and emerging markets. In this context, Turkiye no longer views Eurasian expansion as optional; it is now a strategic imperative.

Bangladesh: Ankara's eastern frontier for ideological testing

Bangladesh has become a forward operating theater for Turkiye’s Eurasian ambitions. Geographically wedged between India and Myanmar, the Muslim-majority country offers fertile ground for Turkish influence. 

The 2024 rise of Muhammad Yunus’s government – a pro-Islamist administration sympathetic to Ankara – has paved the way for Turkish actors to operate not only as development partners but as cultural and political forces embedded within state and society.

One such vehicle is “Saltanat-e-Bangla,” a Turkish-backed NGO based in Dhaka that publicly identifies with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). This organization has gone well beyond charitable work, disseminating a provocative “Greater Bangladesh” map that claims parts of Myanmar’s Rakhine State, as well as Indian territories including Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, and India’s northeast region.

Though lacking formal recognition, the map has been quietly endorsed by figures within the ruling party – signaling a coordinated division of labor between like-minded Turkish and Bangladeshi political elites.

Diplomatic sources suggest that this cartographic venture reflects Turkiye’s attempt to establish a strategic counterweight to Indian hegemony in South Asia, particularly in light of recent confrontations between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and Islamic governance models. Some analysts have even tied this project to a broader Turkish–Bengali interest in Tibet – an area that remains a non-negotiable red line for Beijing.

Bangladesh, then, is more than a new arena of influence. It is a laboratory where Turkiye is testing the exportability of its political model and religious ideology into the Indian sphere, wrapped in the veneer of humanitarianism and Islamic solidarity.

This is not without precedent. The Indian subcontinent – of which Bangladesh was once a part – was home to some of the most fervent supporters of the Ottoman Caliphate in the early twentieth century. The Khilafat movement, launched in the aftermath of World War I, mobilized millions of Indian Muslims, including leading figures from Bengal, in defense of the Ottoman Caliph as a symbol of pan-Islamic unity. 

That historical memory still lingers, particularly among Islamist networks and religious elites, and Ankara appears keen to reactivate it as part of its broader strategy to rekindle a trans-regional Islamic identity aligned with Turkish leadership.

Turanism: The nationalist spine of Turkish expansion

Pan-Turanism, an early 20^th-century ideology premised on the unification of Turkic-speaking peoples from Anatolia to western China, has been resurrected in Ankara as a vehicle for geopolitical consolidation. Today, Turkiye deploys this vision to deepen its grip on Central Asia – particularly in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan.

This ideological push is operationalized through the Organization of Turkic states, which functions as a joint political, economic, and security bloc linking Ankara with these post-Soviet republics. Through state-sponsored cultural initiatives – such as the work of TURKSOY, scholarship programs, and student exchanges – Turkiye is reshaping regional educational and media landscapes. 

Concurrently, Ankara has supported efforts to replace Slavic-based scripts with Latin alphabets across these states, embedding the notion of a pan-Turkic family.

At the infrastructure level, projects like the East–West energy corridor and the Transcaucasian Railway are physically anchoring Central Asia to Turkiye and Europe. But this is not merely about logistics. It is about challenging Russia and China for influence in the Eurasian core, and positioning Ankara as a decisive actor in the balance of power across Asia.

The Brotherhood: A political bridge into South Asia

In Islamic societies outside the Arab world, Turkiye has expanded its reach through the AKP’s Muslim Brotherhood-style political Islam. This approach resonates especially in Pakistan and Bangladesh, where Islamist forces - other than foreign-backed terror groups - often lack cohesive structures or reliable foreign support.

Ankara has established a growing network of advocacy and media outlets that present it as the spiritual and political vanguard of the Muslim ummah (community of believers). These include branches of the AKP or AKP-aligned formations operating inside countries like Bangladesh. Parallel to this, Brotherhood-affiliated NGOs—most prominently the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation—extend Turkish soft power through education, healthcare, and emergency relief.

Turkiye has also instrumentalized the Rohingya crisis to cultivate goodwill among Muslims in the region, presenting itself as the only Islamic power willing and able to defend oppressed Muslim populations.

This architecture enables Ankara to entrench itself within both civil society and state institutions, fostering political parallelism without triggering overt confrontation with entrenched national elites.

Pakistan: Ankara's ideological and strategic bridge

Pakistan has long served as a foundational pillar in Ankara’s regional outreach. The bilateral relationship is reinforced by joint defense projects – especially in the manufacture of drones and armored vehicles – and a shared ideological framework between the AKP and Pakistan’s conservative Islamist elites.

Both countries have jointly championed Muslim causes to varying degrees, including Kashmir and Palestine. More discreetly, Islamabad plays a mediating role in Turkish–Bangladeshi coordination, smoothing Ankara’s entry into Dhaka’s political scene. Through religious networks and Islamist media, Pakistan also helps lay the groundwork for Turkish influence in both Afghanistan and Central Asia.

This partnership extends to Northern Cyprus, where Pakistan has repeatedly affirmed its support. Shortly after the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) declaration in 1983, Pakistan was among its earliest recognizers, though it formally withdrew recognition under UN pressure within days.

Decades later, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif publicly declared that Pakistan “fully supports the cause of Northern Cyprus” and will “unwaveringly” stand by Ankara on the issue. This steadfast solidarity underscores the deep wherewithal of the Ankara–Islamabad axis, rooted in shared ideological commitments and mutual strategic interests.

Turkiye's soft power architecture

Ankara’s expansion into Eurasia is underpinned by a carefully curated soft power strategy. The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) implements development projects across the education, health, and infrastructure sectors. The Turkish Religious Foundation builds mosques, funds religious centers, and offers Turkish-language Islamic education abroad. 

Meanwhile, Turkish schools and universities overseas are producing a new cadre of elites aligned with Ankara’s political worldview.

In Bangladesh, these efforts are particularly visible in Rohingya refugee camps, where Turkish humanitarian outreach has helped embed a political presence under the guise of benevolence. These initiatives are not merely charitable; they are long-term investments in geopolitical loyalty.

NATO synergy – and the Eurasian backlash

Although Ankara frequently claims to pursue an independent foreign policy, its expansionist posture in Eurasia aligns neatly with key NATO objectives. In Tibet and Xinjiang, Turkish activity directly complements western efforts to contain China. In Afghanistan and Central Asia, Ankara’s presence encircles Iran. And in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, Turkiye serves as a rival to Moscow’s residual influence.

Far from acting as a rogue state, Ankara is performing the role of NATO’s regional auxiliary. Its use of culturally resonant narratives – whether pan-Turkic or Islamist – makes its intervention palatable to local audiences, while serving long-term Atlanticist designs. This convergence of aims may explain western tolerance for Turkiye’s expansionist maneuvers, despite high-profile disputes over Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Despite its gains, the Turkish project is not without limits. India views Ankara’s growing footprint in Bangladesh with rising alarm, particularly the circulation of the “Greater Bangladesh” map. China considers Turkish engagement in Tibet as a strategic provocation. Russia, reasserting itself in Central Asia, is unlikely to cede ground to Turkish competitors.

Moreover, local populations may resist Ankara’s ideological push, especially if they perceive political Islam as a foreign imposition. The risk of over-reliance on religious soft power is that it may alienate secular elites or provoke backlash from emerging regional blocs seeking to curtail Islamist expansion.

Turkiye’s eastward advance is not merely strategic – it is ideological. By fusing Brotherhood-aligned Islam with Turanist nationalism, and packaging both within a NATO-friendly framework, Ankara is methodically carving out a sphere of influence across Central and South Asia.

But this expansion is not without risk. It demands careful calibration: asserting regional power without provoking a backlash from entrenched powers like Russia, China, and India; projecting independence while remaining a functional pillar of the western alliance.

This is not just a bold manoeuver, but a provocation. Whether Turkiye can entrench its influence in this contested Eurasian theater or whether the contradictions of its dual alignment will force retreat is no longer a hypothetical. The outcome will shape the limits of Ankara’s ambition, and expose the fragility or resilience of the Atlanticist order it claims to defy.