In the 19th century, the British and Russian empires played the so-called "Great Game" for power in Central Asia. A century and a half later, the European Union would be happy just to get a foot in the door of the resource-rich buffer region sandwiched between Europe and Asia.
On June 30, the 27-member union took its first step towards that goal when Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier unveiled a dedicated EU Central Asian policy.
As Germany bowed out of the EU's six-month presidency, Steinmeier offered the states in the south of the former USSR - known for their poverty and internal problems - a summer shower of EU funds.
A total of 750 million euro (1 billion dollars) has been allocated for educational, environmental, infrastructure, anti-terror and cultural-exchange programmes in the region.
It is not simply charity: the EU is keen to find sources of energy outside Russia, and to strengthen its influence on the countries of the ancient Silk Road - the route of choice for an estimated two-thirds of the Afghan heroin smuggled into Europe.
Moreover, unlike the United States, China and even Russia, the EU is seeking to influence Central Asian countries, not just as individual states, but as a region. One possible source of cooperation could be the coordination of water supplies: while the mountainous and heavily-glaciated republic of Kyrgyzstan is overflowing with water, its neighbours suffer from an acute lack.
Observers fear that the issue of access to water resources could spark bloody conflicts in the coming century - a process the EU hopes to forestall by encouraging the neighbours to implement integrated hydro-economic policies.
But that goal seems as yet a long way ahead. The states included in this ambitious policy - Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, known collectively as "the Stans" - seem only united in their grim human-rights record.
"It is an illusion to think of Central Asia as a unit," Kyrgyz political scientist Valentin Bogatiryov said. Kazakhstan has long since parted ways with the rest of the quintet, at least from an economic point of view. Its combination of massive oil and gas reserves and liberal economic policies have pushed the steppe nation to a leading position in the region. That success has not been to Uzbekistan's taste, but the region's most populous country has other problems to deal with. A fear of Islamist fighters in Tajikistan has led Uzbekistan to keep its mutual border heavily mined.
And the Uzbek regime's relationship with the EU has proven to be a diplomatic minefield ever since Uzbek police units shot dead hundreds of demonstrators in the eastern town of Andizhan in 2005.
Critics of the Tashkent regime estimate that the number of Uzbekistan's political prisoners runs into the thousands. Recently, however, President Islam Karimov released several human rights activists - allowing the EU to symbolically weaken the sanctions it imposed after Andizhan.
The former colonial power in the region, Russia, has not taken kindly to the EU's quest for Kazakh and Turkmen gas. In mid-May President Vladimir Putin travelled to Central Asia specifically to build up his own long-term gas stocks around the Caspian Sea.
If that happens, the planned "Nabucco" gas pipeline from the Caspian to Southern Europe could end up without gas. "It's a cause for concern: we could end up by building an empty pipe," the chairman of a European energy supplier said.
Central Asian leaders have so far been receptive to the EU's advances. Ashkhabad, Tashkent and Astana are all looking for an alternative to their powerful neighbours, China and Russia. But whether the EU is likely to insist on the observance of democratic principles remains to be seen.
"The theme of human rights is sounding weaker and weaker in the EU's Central Asian policy," Tajik journalist Marat Mamadshoyev said at a conference on Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan in March.
In the heady days following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Turkish nationalists dreamt of creating a pan-Turkic empire of the newly independent Caucasus states - led, naturally, by Turkey. On a visit to a series of Muslim countries in 1992, President Suleyman Demirel made it clear what he was hoping for, saying "Nobody can now deny that there is a Turkic world stretching from the shores of the Adriatic to the walls of China."
Turkish nationalists jumped on the bandwagon, hoping to build an empire based upon folklore that the Turkish race was born of a wolf somewhere in Central Asia.
The idea was dismissed by both Turkey's then-Prime Minister Turgut Ozal and the newly independent states, who hardly felt Turkish at all - something that became obvious at summits of Turkish-speaking nations, where translators are still needed today to help leaders understand each other.
As the pan-Turkic dreams were quietly ditched, Turkey's role in the region changed from one of potential overlord to one of energy link between the Caucasus and Europe.
In the 16 years since the independence of the Caucasus republics, centuries-old rivals Turkey and Russia have fought a battle over how to get Central Asia's huge oil and gas supplies to western markets. The advent of capitalism allowed Western oil companies to invest and scale up the production of local companies extracting oil from the Caspian Sea. But with the Caspian Sea landlocked, a new route to export the oil was needed.
Russia wanted a new pipeline to go through its own territory, while a direct route from Baku through Iran to the Gulf would have been the cheapest option. But with strong backing from the United States, Turkey won the battle, building the 300-billion-dollar Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. Last year, the first oil was pumped from Azerbaijan, via Georgia, to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
Gas is at the centre of the latest battle between Russia and Turkey. Turkey plans to use its geographical position to become a major transit country for gas supplies from Central Asia to Europe.
But that dream suffered a blow last month when Russia's Gazprom and Italian natural gas company Eni agreed to build a 900-kilometre pipeline under the Black Sea between Russia and Bulgaria which would be used to funnel natural gas from Turkmenistan to Europe via Kazakhstan and Russia.
The route would be in direct competition to the European Union's planned 6-billion-dollar Nabucco project - a pipeline under the Caspian Sea, through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, to Europe. That project is designed mainly to lessen Europe's current heavy reliance on Russian energy supplies.
The battles over the competing gas routings are not over yet, but Turkey is starting to get worried. At an energy conference last month in Istanbul Turkish officials pressed the EU to get more involved in pushing for the Nabucco project.
"The EU needs to force the gas-owning countries to invest (in a trans-Caspian Sea pipeline)," Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler said at the conference. Turkey may have given up its dream to lead a pan-Turkic empire but it is still determined to live up to the identity its tourist board has coined as the bridge between Asia and Europe. And in this small part of the world-wide Great Game for power, it is not just tourists Turkey is keen to attract, but gas and oil.
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