According to the OECD’s plenary session on fundamental freedoms, repression is taking on new forms in all five countries in the region, extending increasingly into the digital sphere and beyond national borders.
After lengthy debates, the Žogorku Keneš has approved at first reading a measure that, in the name of the fight against extremism, has aroused not a few perplexities within the religious communities. Among the new provisions is a ban on missionaries of any denomination going around preaching in homes according to their own inspiration. And in religious training institutes, students who have not completed 11 classes of compulsory schooling may not be accepted.
From Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan former leading politicians are on trial on charges of high treason just because they were identified as possible alternatives to ‘dynastic’ successions. While in Kazakhstan on trial is a group that allegedly ‘menacingly’ planned to storm the presidential palace with a tractor and a cannon loaded with potato fragments.
The gigantic Manas logistic-commercial centre in the village of Leninskoe, which the Chinese are building not far from Biškek, is a candidate to become a fundamental junction (and alternative to the Russian route) for trade between East and West. With Kyrgyz Prime Minister Žaparov having already dubbed it the ‘great seaport’ of a landlocked country.
Public schools at all levels, from kindergartens to universities, are growing in the countries of the region. And in several cases it is the state itself that is stimulating investors with the aim of modernising the education and training system.
Istanbul presses for the strengthening of the ‘Turkic world’, rejecting ‘Eurocentric’ descriptions of the region. But Tajik historian Kamoluddin Abdulloev objects: ‘Iran would have just as many arguments to assert its historical influence. In a land where the phases of Mongol domination and the spread of Islam have led to divisions and recompositions between Shiites and Sunnis.
From Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan, new regulations are lengthening the time it takes to obtain citizenship, with tough tests of knowledge of the local language to discourage Russian relokanty. In Turklmenistan, citizenship is almost impossible to obtain without Turkmen kinship, but ‘ius soli’ is still in force for children of foreign parents.
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkemnistan are also awaiting the outcome of the confrontation between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris with interest, considering the disruptive effects of world events on the region's prospects. Also hanging in the balance is the future of the ‘5+1’ contact format through which the White House has tried to gain footholds in the former Soviet area in recent years.
Fathers and sons, brothers and sisters, mothers and daughters, not to mention broader levels of kinship and friendship, make Žogorku Keneš - the local parliament that will be renewed in the 17 November vote - a big family. With almost forty parties that are all more or less pro-government.
In Tashkent, Salim Abduvaliev, a boss who was sentenced to six years in prison in his homeland to avoid heavier sentences in Kyrgyzstan. Powerful figures with dangerous entanglements with the world of politics and sport. So much so that even the excellent arrests raise more questions than certainties about the investigations against them.
Despite being officially prohibited in Bishkek polygamous marriages proliferate, facilitated by shadow agencies that function on Islamic principles. Their activities are also supported by celebrities. But human rights activists also tell the other side: the increase in appeals from women who have fallen into this trap.
From education to foreign policy, the cooperation activities of the Organisation of Turkic States are growing. In the former Soviet countries of Central Asia, Erdogan is increasingly popular. While the project - already begun in Kazakhstan under Nazarbayev - to replace the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin one, closer to Turkish phonetics, remains in force.
The Keremet Bank, the country's main financial institution, has been sold to bankers from Kazakhstan, with a total turnover of management staff, many members of which have been arrested on charges that have yet to be clarified. According to many sources, it laundered illegal money from the family of Kurmanbek Bakiev, president of Kyrgyzstan from 2005 to 2010.New buyers shrouded in mystery.
Subscribe to the newsletter to receive verified news, analysis and insights from Asian countries every week.
Subscribeto the newsletter
