Central Asian integration discussions and the Eurasian Union

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, political and economic integration establishing issue of newly-established Central Asian states and the issue of whether this integration will be among themselves or with external actors are still a matter of discussion. External actors who want to increase their interaction with the Eurasian region and especially Central Asia like Russia, China, the USA, European countries, Turkey and Iran have become competitors with each other in the matter of integration with the region. This competition has diversified regional integration projects, increased the significance of these projects, and become the driving force behind Russia's establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union which has been more assertive institution when compared to previous ones. In order to understand the current situation of the Eurasian integration, the type of this integration and integration dynamics which affect it, regionalization and regionalism processes and inter-relation of leading foreign actors were examined in this thesis. And then, Ernst B. Haas and Philippe C. Schmitter's integration conditions were adopted and applied to the Eurasian Economic Union. When the regionalization and regionalism processes of Central Asia was handled, it was concluded that the most forefront integration project is the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. In this integration, the decision-making process includes more intergovernmental features than supranational ones and major decision makers of the integration are political leaders, not integration institutions. In addition, the Eurasian Economic Union is not likely to transform into a political integration institution from an economic integration institution due to the fact that the low ranking of integration conditions which has been applied in this study.