Analysis of the belt and road initiative of people's Republic of China in the context Turkistan geopolitics

The Belt and Road Initiative is the largest international infrastructure effort in history that China has initiated to make its growth and development sustainable. With this move, China encourages peaceful, free, fast and less costly trade through its infrastructure investments all over the world, especially in its own region; however, the international distrust / suspicion in the perception regarding China causes the project to be questioned with security concerns. China, whose rise cannot be stopped, continues the project despite the regional and global crises and the global epidemic. The fact that Turkestan geography, which is its neighbors in the west of China, is in a very important place in the Belt and Road Initiative has made the impact of the project on Turkistan states a subject of curiosity. The aim of this dissertation is to estimate the challenges and the opportunities of the "Belt and Road Initiative" by setting forth the geopolitical and geo-economic reflections of the routes China has mapped out along with to analyze whether China pursue an expansionist foreign policy based on its relations with Turkistan states. It is witnessed that China is trying to increase its reputation in the world with this project, which is carried out with an emphasis on peace, but it causes significant concerns both in the geographies subject to the project and in other states. The basis of these concerns is that China is working to change the international system and become a global hegemonic power, so the project is a kind of geopolitical control project. It cannot be strange for China, which aims to achieve geopolitical superiority, to make efforts in this way; however, it is understandable that the actors who are worried about the erosion, decline and / or total loss of their power positions in the current international system, doubt and question the project. Ultimately, the fact that China is an actor whose geopolitical ambitions are becoming more and more visible also increases these inquiries.