The Middle Corridor: Where Turkey’s rise meets China’s ambitions

The instability sweeping across the Middle East and Iran’s ability to threaten global maritime traffic continue to weigh heavily on international commerce. In this era of growing geopolitical fragmentation, Turkey has spent years cultivating a dense web of economic and strategic relationships across Central Asia, seeking to establish Ankara as the leading actor along a little-known but increasingly consequential logistical artery: the Middle Corridor, a trade route linking Europe and Asia while bypassing both Russia and Iran.

The corridor is far more than a commercial pathway; it is a strategic lifeline connecting China to Europe through Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus and Turkey. Known also as Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), the Corridor is a multimodal network of railways, roads and ports, designed to redraw the map of Eurasian trade, reduce dependence on routes vulnerable to conflict, and elevate Turkey’s role as a pivotal bridge between East and West. 

Strategic unease belies cooperation

While China is competing with Russia to preserve and expand its political and economic footprint in Central Asia — the birthplace of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — its relationship with Turkey in the region remains one of cautious cooperation. For Beijing, the stability of any trade corridor is of paramount importance, offering an alternative route to Europe amid mounting geopolitical uncertainty. Yet beneath this pragmatic collaboration lies a degree of strategic unease.

In Zhongnanhai, Turkey’s deep cultural, linguistic and historical ties with the Turkic republics of Central Asia and Caucasus are viewed with suspicion, raising concerns that Ankara’s growing influence could gradually challenge China’s long-term positioning in a region it considers critical to its Eurasian ambitions.

As geopolitical uncertainty grows, Central Asian countries are once more hedging their bets, and the Belt and Road itself is evolving in the region from infrastructure connectivity to critical minerals exploitation and green energy cooperation. In this respect, climate change is becoming a powerful driver of China’s influence in Central Asia, as desertification increasingly threatens agriculture, water resources and economic stability across the region. Beijing is leveraging environmental cooperation to strengthen its partnerships and expand its strategic footprint. 

On the other side, Turkey is moving aggressively to consolidate its position as the gateway for Eurasian transit. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more than 85% of Eurasian freight travelled through the Northern Corridor across Russian territory, while the Middle Corridor accounted for a negligent percent of total traffic. That equation is now changing rapidly. As sanctions and political risk diminished the appeal of routes crossing Russia, cargo volumes along the Middle Corridor surged more than 70% in 2023-24.

Turkey’s rising soft power in Central Asia

Turkey’s ambition builds on decades of outreach by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose policy toward Central Asia has combined economic engagement with cultural and linguistic affinity. From Turkmenistan to Uzbekistan, Turkish schools have become an important training ground for local elites.

Where necessary, economic influence has been reinforced by hard power. During the 44-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones played a decisive role in Azerbaijan’s military success, devastating Armenian armored formations and demonstrating Ankara’s growing influence in the Caucasus.

Turkey’s military credentials remain formidable. The country fields NATO’s second-largest standing army and has spent the past decade accelerating the development of its domestic defence industry. By reducing dependence on foreign technologies and components, Ankara has created a portfolio of indigenous weapons systems that have rapidly gained market share from the Caucasus to Africa.

Turkey’s effort to deepen commercial and security ties across its wider neighbourhood is unfolding amid profound geopolitical turbulence. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had already disrupted Eurasia’s traditional trade arteries, undermining east-west land routes between China and Europe and complicating north-south corridors linking Russia and Iran. 

Today, Washington’s confrontation with Tehran is producing even deeper consequences. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is reshaping the strategic geography of the Middle East, disrupting global supply chains and placing additional strain on already fragile energy markets. In an increasingly fragmented world, maritime chokepoints and overland corridors are once again becoming instruments of geopolitical power rather than merely channels of commerce.

The conflict involving Iran has also disrupted the internal routes that once connected Central Asia to the Persian Gulf and, from there, to global maritime markets. It is precisely in this context that Turkey has accelerated its Eurasian connectivity strategy.

Working closely with Azerbaijan, Georgia and the countries of Central Asia, Ankara is strengthening the Middle Corridor through a variety of regional platforms, most notably the Organization of Turkic States. At a summit of member states held in Baku on 2 April, leaders emphasised the resilience of Turkic infrastructure networks and their growing strategic potential.

The symbolism was reinforced just days later when Turkish diplomacy marked a rapprochement with Armenia through the reopening of a bridge. The gesture carried a clear geopolitical message: preventing renewed instability in the Caucasus that could undermine Azerbaijan, Turkey’s closest regional partner and a cornerstone of Ankara’s ambitions along the Middle Corridor. As momentum behind the corridor grows, Turkey aims to transform the route into both a geopolitical lever and a magnet for foreign investment. 

At the same time, China remains Central Asia’s leading external economic power and an increasingly consequential security actor. While Moscow remains a key security stakeholder, Beijing is steadily broadening its influence in selected security domains, particularly counterterrorism, border management, intelligence sharing and joint military exercises.

In this respect, China supports Turkish initiatives when they advance the objectives of the BRI, but competes with Ankara wherever their strategic interests diverge, cooperation and competition therefore coexist, reflecting a pragmatic relationship shaped by overlapping ambitions across Eurasia. 

Turkey a key power broker in the wider region

Not only that, Erdoğan’s strategic network extends far beyond the Caucasus and Central Asia. Turkey’s ties with the Middle East and North Africa are expanding rapidly, reflecting what many observers describe as an increasingly neo-Ottoman vision of regional influence.

In Syria, Ankara has positioned itself as a central actor in the country’s stabilisation after years of civil war. A similar pattern can be seen in Libya, where Turkey has become a key power broker in Tripoli and across Somalia and parts of Central Africa, where Ankara is steadily building influence through a combination of investment, military partnerships and security cooperation.

However, here the geopolitical equation differs markedly from Central Asia. In these key theatres, it is Beijing — not Ankara — that often benefits most from the other’s reach. Turkey’s growing influence frequently complements Chinese economic interests, helping create the stability and access that allow Beijing to expand its commercial and strategic presence while avoiding the burdens of direct intervention.

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