How would United Turkestan post Soviet Collapse look like

You would definitely have internal problems with regards to ethnic issues. The largest group by a fairly large margin would be the Uzbeks, followed by the Kazakhs. Its likely that the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Tajiks (and, most likely, the Karakalpaks) form a bloc against Uzbek dominance. Civil war is relatively likely, although Russian influence would likely be even greater, as rebels wouldn't dare violently oppose whatever faction is backed by Moscow.
 
Well, almost certainly water is better managed making things better for everyone. The Aral Sea won't death-spiral quite as fast (though it's unlikely that Turkestan alone would be able to stop the sea's collapse completely, at least not in the 90s, by the 21st Century, if Turkestan hasn't gotten too messed up it may be able to stabilize things). The mountain regions are likely better off since there is much less foreign interventions in their affairs, but as the price of that, they are likely junior in influence to the more populous lowlands.

You would definitely have internal problems with regards to ethnic issues. The largest group by a fairly large margin would be the Uzbeks, followed by the Kazakhs. Its likely that the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Tajiks (and, most likely, the Karakalpaks) form a bloc against Uzbek dominance. Civil war is relatively likely, although Russian influence would likely be even greater, as rebels wouldn't dare violently oppose whatever faction is backed by Moscow.

IMO this depends on how the SSR was governed during the Soviet period. It is possible for a (in relative terms) much larger Chechniya style mess to evolve in some region of the country or a full scale war to happen.

I think it depends heavily on what kind of nomenklatura exists in the Turkestan SSR. These are the people who will hold most power, so if they see no reason to fight, then any nationalist groups have little to fight with. Whereas if some group of the nomenklatura decides that it is worth trying to overthrow another group to try and take their place as top dogs over all Turkestan, or if some group decides that nationalism could be a convenient vehicle to break off a relatively rich area of Turkestan to create an independent country their group had complete power over, then violence could be much more serious.

As to Afghanistan, I think what happens there would mainly depend on how bad factionalism within the Turkestani nomenklatura was. If they weren't too factional, I could see Turkestan replacing the Soviets as the main allies of Afghanistan. If we assume that Afghanistan followed a similar course (not at all a given, but let's assume that everything outside Soviet Central Asia has followed the same course as OTL) Turkestan will have a large population of Afghan refugees that share the ethnicities of the major Turkestani ethnic groups, so there will be an interest in keeping Afghanistan stable and making sure that the Soviet-aligned government maintains itself as a Turkestani ally. Turkestan should be able to keep Afghanistan stable if it is itself stable.

So ya. Much depends on how factional the bureaucrat class in Turkestan are.

fasquardon
 
I think the most realisitic Turkestan state would be the denser areas of the south like Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, southern Kyrgyzstan and south and east Uzbekistan. I highly doubt they can wrangle the Kazakh steppes out from Russia.
 
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