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The paper draws on historical institutionalism to examine how asymmetric institutional structures between China and Kazakhstan shape the outcomes of BRI-led infrastructure development. It uses the concept of asymmetrical interdependence to explain unequal power relations and their implications for state-society relations. Broadly, situating the study within discussions of how Central Eurasia is evolving as an interconnected region, the paper aims to explain how BRI-led infrastructure development is reshaping Kazakhstan’s strategic space. This primarily includes key infrastructure corridors across the border region between Kazakhstan and China, which are central to connectivity. The paper aims to analyse, first, how these developments shape state-society relations through local responses; second, how infrastructure initiatives highlight the asymmetrical institutional structure and power relations between Kazakhstan and China.

The paper further argues that these power relations generate new socio-spatial vulnerabilities. The large-scale connectivity projects reconfigure not only economic geographies but also social hierarchies and local perceptions of risk and security. Therefore, the flagship Chinese connectivity initiative- BRI- can be seen not merely as an economic initiative but as a strategic instrument through which China seeks to stabilise its western periphery, particularly in relation to Xinjiang and transnational ethnic linkages involving Uyghur communities, thereby embedding security logics within development practices.

The paper further examines how China’s BRI interacts with Kazakhstan’s domestic infrastructure development program, Nurly Zhol, highlighting the 2016 alignment between the two. This alignment shows how Kazakhstan balances external projects with its own development priorities. By examining the connection between infrastructure development and power hierarchies, the paper locates large connectivity projects like the BRI within increased dependence of Kazakhstan on external actors, which shapes its position in Central Eurasia.

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This paper analyzes the strategies, directions and instruments of the soft power policies pursued by Turkey and China in Central Asia. Both states have focused their main attention on education, language, and culture, which serve as the main tools of their soft power policy in these areas. The theoretical framework of the research is based on the concept of soft power developed by Joseph Nye. In addition, in the study was discusses the interpretations of soft power proposed by Chinese and Turkish scholars. The research methodology is based on content analysis and case study methods. The linguistic and cultural activities of the Confucius and the Yunus Emre Institutes were examined using the case study method. Within the framework of Turkey's language policy, particular attention has been given to the issue of adopting a common alphabet. China conducts educational and cultural activities within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Belt and Road Initiative. I argue that the soft power strategies of Turkey and China in Central Asia have a distinctive characteristic: China employs soft power primarily to reinforce its economic and political influence, whereas Turkey utilizes it within the framework of a common ethnolinguistic space and the formation of a common Turkic identity. This research is based on published materials, including reports, official documents, and analytical materials.

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Monograph chapter part of my PhD thesis

Thesis research question: How regime security shapes China's foreign policy in Central Asia

This chapter is the second analytical section of the thesis, in which I discuss the connection between China's own domestic supply line concerns and its foreign policy in Central Asia.

The root cause is the 'Malacca Strait Dilemma', a maritime channel in the Indo-Pacific, through which most of China's trade flows, including vital imports of energy, agricultural goods, precious metals, and rare earths. China is not self-sufficient in many key areas, so in the eventuality of a conflict between the US and China, the closure of the Malacca Strait (which is also surrounded by US military bases) would essentially represent an existential threat in a long, drawn out conflict.

The Chinese elite are very aware of this dilemma, and the concept was already introduced back at the turn of the millennium by then president Jiang Zemin in a speech to the National Congress. He emphasized the need for China to prioritizing building trade routes elsewhere, so as not to be fully reliant on maritime trade in the Indo-Pacific. This is the backdrop of China's 'Great Western Development Program' and later, the Belt and Road Initiative, first announced at Nazarbayev University in 2013. In an attempt to recreate the classical silk routes, China seeks to connect itself to the important European market by creating new trade routes, logistical hubs, extraction mines, and pipelines in Central Asia to de-risk their overall trade-flow. This gives an alternative dimension to the typical framing of Chinese infrastructure projects in Central Asia.

This chapter is based on CCP primary literature (white papers, speeches, China-Central Asia events), and from my own interviews conducted in China in late 2025 with prominent scholars at Tsinghua University, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Northwest University, and Lanzhou University - and also a previous fieldwork conducted in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in 2024.

The chapter is not completed yet, but will be at the time of the conference, my deadline being the end of May.

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The Silk Road of Central Eurasia had a distinctive kind of space where cultures met, intellectual traditions intersected, and trade networks took place, thereby reassigning meaning and movement to the rich, diverse history of the land. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s reflections on dwelling, alētheia (unconcealment), and Gelassenheit (releasement), the author intends to reinterpret space through a distinctly philosophical lens. The scholar seeks to answer the question of how Silk Road hubs such as Samarkand, Bukhara, and Kashgar can be rethought as “gathering” spaces rather than only as backdrops to trade.

The scholar in her research employs a conceptual and interpretative methodology with an emphasis on phenomenological textual analysis. The philosophical texts by Heidegger, especially “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” and related essays on technology and space, along with references to selected historical and travel accounts, will reconstruct how these sources describe movement, staying, and encounter in ways that resonate with or challenge high understanding of space as constituted by dwelling, not merely by coordinates of property. The paper will address the following questions: Can we view the Silk Road not as a corridor of commerce, but as a space of relational dwelling? In what ways do the Silk Road gatherings resemble the gathering spaces that Heidegger associates with poetic and non-instrumental forms of dwelling? How do we look at spaces that are shaped by modern technological framing (Gestell)? The scholar further raises the question of what implications this interpretation will have for contemporary debates about borders, migration, and environmental belonging in an age of digital and economic abstraction.

By focusing on these philosophical questions, the paper seeks to understand and show how Central Eurasian crossroads can contribute to a broad philosophy of space, in which one comes across hospitality, openness, and the rethinking of place as relational and process-oriented in the global interconnected world. The conclusion will focus on how Silk Road is not only limited to regional study, but also as a conceptual resource for rethinking how humans inhabit and share space in an interconnected world

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The historiography of the Silk Road has long focused primarily on the northern and central trans‑Eurasian routes linking China with Central Asia and the Mediterranean world. In this dominant narrative, the southern corridors that connected Iran, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian subcontinent have received comparatively limited scholarly attention. This paper introduces and develops the concept of the “Jade Road” as an analytical framework for reconsidering the role of southern Silk Road networks in the historical formation of Central Eurasian space.

Drawing on Persian and Arabic historical sources, geographical literature, and commercial records, this study examines the routes that connected Khurasan, southern Iran, the Persian Gulf ports, and the markets of the Indian subcontinent. These routes constituted an important system of exchange through which commodities such as horses, precious stones including jade, textiles, and other luxury goods circulated across regions. At the same time, these networks enabled the movement of merchants, administrators, scholars, and religious figures, facilitating broader processes of cultural and social interaction.

Particular attention is given to the Mongol period in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the political integration of large parts of Eurasia under Mongol rule significantly enhanced long‑distance mobility and commercial exchange. During this period, southern routes linking Iran with India gained renewed importance within the wider Eurasian trade system. The paper argues that these networks played a key role in connecting Central Asia with the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean world, thereby reshaping patterns of economic geography and regional connectivity.

By proposing the concept of the “Jade Road,” this study seeks to highlight the importance of southern Silk Road corridors in the spatial reconfiguration of Central Eurasia. Reconsidering these routes allows for a more balanced understanding of Eurasian historical connectivity and emphasizes the role of Iran and the Persian Gulf as critical intermediaries between Central Asia and the Indian Ocean world