Between Economic Benefits and Strategic Dividends. The “Middle Corridor” and Turkish-Azerbaijani Infrastructure Alliance

Over the last decade, and chiefly as a result of the launch of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, infrastructure politics emerged as a new key domain for regional politics in the Eurasian chessboard. That is, the promotion of interstate and transcontinental connectivity networks has become a privileged ground for power cooperation and competition, involving countries spanning from Eastern Asia to Central and Western Europe. Unsurprisingly, a large and growing body of scholarly attention has been focusing on infrastructure politics. Yet, it was mainly great powers’ initiative drawing scholars’ and analysts’ attention, while the perspectives and actions of smaller powers were somehow sidelined. In an attempt to fill this gap, the present article focuses instead on infrastructure diplomacy of Turkey and Azerbaijan, a middle and small power which yielded an infrastructure alliance aimed at leveraging their rediscovered central position in the Eurasian system to come up with a joint recipe for connectivity. In particular, the article focuses upon the logic behind the joint Turkish-Azerbaijani flagship connectivity project - the so-called Middle Corridor Initiative - and upon the interaction between the latter and China’s Silk Road Economic Belt.