Despite immense promise, reaching the full potential of bi-regional ties faces a number of hurdles.
The GCC-Central Asia summit, initially scheduled for May 2025 in Tashkent, was postponed due to heavy flooding in Uzbekistan, which required the full attention of the Uzbek authorities. This, however, doesn’t change the fact that for the Central Asian states—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan—deepening multifaceted relationship with the Gulf Cooperation Council plays a pivotal role in advancing their national interests in a multipolar world. Building on the Jeddah (2023) and Tashkent (2024) summits, this relationship aims to deepen economic ties while strengthening Central Asia’s strategic autonomy amid regional threats and great power rivalries.
From a Central Asian perspective, the GCC ties offer a critical platform to counter security challenges, particularly those emanating from Afghanistan, and reduce dependence on Russia and China without entering into direct conflict with either Moscow or Beijing. However, intra-Gulf rivalries, Turkey’s assertive role, Russia’s enduring security influence, and broader geopolitical turbulence pose limits to this ambitious vision.
The Economic Foundations
Economic cooperation forms the backbone of GCC-Central Asia relations, providing Central Asia with resources to bolster security and development. As noted by Layla Ali from the Gulf Research Center, Central Asia’s vast reserves of minerals, metals, and agricultural goods align with the GCC’s need for diversified supply chains to support non-oil growth, which reached an average of more than 4 percent across the GCC in 2024.
Uzbekistan has secured $14 billion in Saudi investments in the energy sector, while the UAE has committed $10 billion for regional infrastructure, industry, and green energy projects. These investments empower Central Asian states to modernize their critical infrastructure, enhancing economic resilience against external pressures and fostering greater economic independence from traditional powers such as Russia and China.
Responding to Regional Threats
Growing economic investment reinforced security dialogue between Central Asia and the GCC in recent years, driven by the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan, the ISIS threat, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Central Asia expert Peter Leonard marks the Jeddah summit in 2023 as a turning point in this regard, with its joint statement establishing an inter-regional partnership and pledging to combat terrorism, explicitly naming ISIS, and curb terror financing. This built on prior engagements, such as the Dushanbe border security conference in 2022 and the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS ministerial in Riyadh in June 2023.
Leonard notes that while much of this cooperation occurs bilaterally and behind closed doors, public examples include Uzbekistan’s Anti-Terrorism Cooperation Pact with Saudi Arabia (November 2024), covering terrorism, terror financing, and organized crime, and Kazakhstan’s memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the UAE (December 2023) targeting money laundering and terror funding. Kazakhstan’s military cooperation with Qatar, including joint training initiatives announced in early 2025, further signals growing comfort with deeper ties.
For Central Asian states, the GCC offers critical counterterrorism expertise and intelligence-sharing capabilities. In line with the Central Asian states’ preference for multi-vector foreign policies rather than rigid geopolitical alignments, this security cooperation significantly does not conflict but rather complements the Russian-led frameworks, such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), of which Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are members.
The shared perception by Central Asian states, GCC, and Russia of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) and other threats from Afghanistan underscore the urgency of these partnerships. According to Leonard, the presence of a Central Asian business diaspora in Dubai also motivates governments like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to monitor financial flows under the guise of counterterrorism. However, political motives, as seen in Kyrgyzstan’s attempted extradition of an opposition figure from Dubai, highlight the broader uses of this framework.
Hedging Against Great Powers
Leonard believes that the appeal of the engagement with the GCC for Central Asia lies in the fact that it helps to avoid over-reliance on any single great power, a priority heightened by Russia’s weakened regional clout post-Ukraine and China’s debt-heavy Belt and Road initiatives. The GCC engagement comes largely free of geopolitical strings, offering investments without the coercive pressures of Moscow or Beijing.
It wasn’t always like this. The Saudi push into Tajikistan in late 2017, aimed at countering Iran by seizing on Dushanbe’s own bilateral crisis with Tehran, shows occasional geopolitical motives in GCC strategies. Since then, however, Saudi-Iran relations have been marked by a détente that dovetails with the Central Asian capitals’ own drive to diversify, which includes a cooperative relationship with Iran as well as GCC. These shifts mitigate the impact of Middle Eastern rivalries on Central Asia.
Navigating Complex Rivalries and Influences
Despite the promise, the full potential of bi-regional ties faces a number of hurdles. For one, the GCC’s relative lack of cohesion complicates a unified approach, leading to fragmented leverage and forcing Central Asian states to navigate competing bilateral deals rather than a cohesive regional strategy.
This is particularly relevant when it comes to Turkey’s growing influence through the Organization of the Turkic states. Turkey positions itself as a cultural and economic partner for Central Asia, based on shared Turkic identity (except the Persian-speaking Tajikistan). However, Turkey’s alignment with Qatar and rivalry with the UAE create friction. Ankara’s support for Qatar during the 2017–2021 GCC blockade and its backing of Islamist movements strain ties with Abu Dhabi, which competes with Turkey in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
Despite Turkey’s build-up in Central Asia, the regional states clearly prioritize their national interests over any notion of ethnic solidarity. That manifested itself at the EU-Central Asia summit in April 2025, when Central Asian states agreed to endorse in the final joint declaration the UN Security Council resolutions reaffirming the sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus, a member of the EU, the northern part of which remains under the Turkish occupation.
That prompted accusations of betrayal in Turkish nationalist circles. Still, it reaffirmed the Central Asian states’ commitment to balancing their relationships. They seek to avoid excessive dependence on Turkey, as with Russia or China. That preserves autonomy in dealing with extra-regional players, whether it be the EU or the GCC.
Russia’s Security Shadow
Despite its weakened regional clout, Russia remains a key security player through the CSTO, which includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and maintains military bases in the region. Central Asian states rely on Moscow for counterterrorism and border security, particularly against threats from Afghanistan, a role the GCC cannot replicate.
Russia’s share of Central Asia’s exports far exceeds that of the GCC. Russia is also home to approximately 10.5 million guest workers from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Tajikistan’s dependence on migrant workers’ remittances from Russia is especially crucial, as they account for a significant 45 percent of its GDP in 2024. While Russia is actively developing ties with the GCC, particularly with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, it seeks to limit the influence of external players in Central Asia, which it views as a vital area of interest. Central Asian states must strike a delicate balance—maintaining CSTO ties while cultivating GCC investment and promoting enhanced security cooperation.
Geopolitical Tensions
Finally, the unresolved geopolitical tensions around Iran’s nuclear program further limit the potential of the partnership. That is so because Iran provides the shortest and most cost-effective land route for trade between Central Asia and GCC. However, as Brandeis University’s Nader Habibi underscores, many GCC economic operators will avoid using this route in compliance with the U.S. economic sanctions against Iran. GCC countries have demonstrated high compliance with U.S. sanctions against Iran due to their heavy reliance on American security and military protection. A negotiated resolution of the tensions between the United States and Iran, which President Donald Trump has shown a preference for, would have positive spillover effects on broader economic integration between the GCC and Central Asia.
The GCC-Central Asia relations blend economic ambition with diversification in security and foreign policy. By navigating the challenges to this relationship with pragmatism and foresight, Central Asian states can improve their economic situation, counter regional threats, reduce dependence on Russia and China, and assert strategic autonomy.
About the Author: Eldar Mamedov
Eldar Mamedov is a Brussels-based foreign policy expert. He has degrees from the University of Latvia and the Diplomatic School in Madrid, Spain. He has worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and as a diplomat in Latvian embassies in Washington and Madrid. Since 2009, Mamedov has served as a political advisor to the Social Democrats in the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee and is responsible for the EP delegations for inter-parliamentary relations with Iran, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula. Find him on X: @EldarMamedov4.
Image: Pavel Mikheyev / Shutterstock.com.
