Building the Caspian Bridge in a Fragmented Eurasia: Kazakh-Azeri Relations

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are rapidly transforming a long-standing friendship into a cornerstone across the Caspian Sea. What began as cultural and energy alignment within the Turkic world has become one of Eurasia’s most consequential regional linkages - reshaping transit, energy diversification and strategic autonomy from great-power dependence.

Conflict, sanctions and shifting power dynamics have strained Eurasia’s established trade corridors, revealing just how fragile its east-west arteries have become. Against this backdrop, the Azeri-Kazakh partnership stands out as a stable, commercially viable and culturally coherent alternative.

Today, both governments describe their relationship as being at “the highest political level.” On the ground, this partnership has produced a web of transit, digital and green-energy projects, linking the movement of commodities, information and electricity across the Caspian. At the heart of this partnership is the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, or Middle Corridor. The network connects China and Central Asia to Europe via Kazakhstan’s Aktau port, across the Caspian Sea and onward through Azerbaijan’s Baku hub.

For Kazakhstan, the corridor offers redundancy: an overland trade path that bypasses Russia while keeping access to Western markets. For Azerbaijan, it reinforces its identity as the Eurasian hinge, the link between Central Asia and the Black Sea, the Turkic world and the European Union. Cargo volumes have surged since 2022, but the real inflection point is ahead. Baku and Astana have pledged to increase transit capacity and align customs, tariffs and port logistics. The physical challenges, such as ship availability, port efficiency and regulatory harmonization, remain formidable. For both governments, diversification has become more than a commercial policy; it has become the basis of resiliency.

Energy remains the backbone of bilateral ties. In 2024, Kazakhstan began shipping increasing volumes of crude through the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, a symbolic and strategic move. For Kazakhstan, it provides insurance against disruptions in the Russian export network; for Azerbaijan, it monetizes transit capacity and reinforces its regional hub role. However, the relationship is expanding beyond hydrocarbons. There are talks the two governments are finalizing plans for a submarine power cable across the Caspian, enabling electricity exchange and the export of Central Asian renewable power westward. Parallel to that is a fiber-optic cable project linking their digital infrastructures — a quiet but transformative step in building a connected Caspian basin.

If realized, these projects would turn the Caspian from a barrier to a bridge, carrying electricity, data and a measure of energy security across its waters. Together, they form the green-digital counterpart to the Middle Corridor’s freight and oil routes. With trade expanding and investment deepening, the economic base of the partnership is widening. Bilateral trade hit record levels in early 2025, led by Kazakh grain exports and Azerbaijani petrochemicals. Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Trade has identified a wide range of non-resource goods — including processed metals, machinery and food products — for export to Azerbaijan.

For Azerbaijan, the opportunity lies in leveraging its logistics ecosystem. The Alat Free Economic Zone, modernized ports and emerging digital infrastructure to become the gateway to Central Asia’s industrial future. For Kazakhstan, Baku represents both market and corridor: an entry point to Turkey, the Middle East and Europe.

Beyond commerce, the relationship rests on shared identity and diplomacy. Both states are active members of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), where cooperation on education, technology and culture reinforces political trust. This “Turkic solidarity” provides the political bandwidth for harder strategic deals to mature. Astana and Baku’s foreign policies share another feature: multi-vector balancing. Each maintains working ties with Moscow, Beijing, Ankara, Brussels and Washington; however, neither wants to be defined by any single alignment. Their bilateral deepening therefore reflects a mutual pursuit of agency within a crowded Eurasian chessboard.

The outlook for Azerbaijan–Kazakhstan cooperation is broadly positive, but several vulnerabilities could quell progress. Implementation remains a key challenge: large-scale infrastructure across the Caspian is technically complex and capital-intensive, meaning delays, cost overruns or logistical friction could easily erode momentum. External pressures also loom, as Russia, Iran and China all regard Caspian connectivity as strategically sensitive and may employ economic or regulatory levers to influence the pace or direction of these projects. Environmental considerations add another layer of risk. The Caspian’s fragile ecosystem is already under strain from oil transit and new subsea construction, making it essential to have governance frameworks that are as robust as the ambitions they aim to support. Finally, domestic dynamics in both countries could create unexpected challenges. In highly centralized political systems, internal shocks, protests or sudden policy shifts may test the resilience of their coordination and long-term alignment.

Both governments have demonstrated high degrees of policy continuity and their bureaucracies increasingly see the relationship as a structural asset rather than a diplomatic accessory. Taken together, these developments suggest something larger than bilateral cooperation. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are engineering a new geography of connectivity, one that runs under, over and across the Caspian Sea. It is a project of mutual self-reliance and subtle geopolitical recalibration: linking Central Asia and the Caucasus in a self-sustaining corridor less exposed to great-power volatility.

For investors and strategists, the implications are clear. Logistics, digital infrastructure, renewable energy and agribusiness stand to benefit as the Caspian corridor matures. The partnership’s success would also strengthen the broader Turkic economic space and position both countries as indispensable mid-tier powers between Russia, China and Europe. In a fractured Eurasia, Astana and Baku are not merely connecting their shores — they are redefining what lies between them. The Caspian, long seen as a line of separation, is fast becoming the bridge of a new regional order.