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.
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.
While the country's Religious Affairs Committee claims positive results, international organisations denounce violations against radical Islam, but also against minorities such as the Ismailites, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Bahai.
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.
‘There are no serious problems between our countries,’ assures Dushanbe, and in regional organisations, Tajiks are the first to support the Russians' arguments. But in the meantime, disappointment is growing over the Russian authorities' relations with migrants who have suffered outrage and violent forms of discrimination since the Krokus City Hall bombing.
In view of the growing difficulties in Russia, it is becoming increasingly important to find effective alternatives, considering that money from working abroad constitutes a very important slice of the GDP of Central Asian countries, ranging from 10% in Uzbekistan to 40% in Tajikistan. An issue that is intertwined with the question of Afghans in Germany.
The region's main river flows through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and finally empties into the languishing Aral Sea. Its flow is steadily decreasing due to climate change but also due to intensive exploitation for agricultural purposes, aggravated by competition between individual countries. But according to experts, with bottom-up initiatives it would still be possible to snatch it from its decline.
On trial behind closed doors are the leaders of the opposition movement Group 24, Sukhrob Zafare and Nasimdžon Šarifov. Having disappeared from Istanbul where they had been living in exile for ten years, the Prosecutor General announced last August that they were in a prison in the capital of Tajikistan. Banned as an ‘extremist association’ the organisation is not allowed to participate in any way in the political and social life of the country.
After a recent renovation, it attracts thousands of tourists from all over the world to Khudžand, the country's second largest city. It testifies not only to local traditions, but is also a landmark of a still faltering economy that wants to find its way back to regional and global trade.
Today's news: About 8,000 Rohingya have left Myanmar in recent months and taken refuge in Bangladesh; Thai king approved new government presented by PM Paetongtarn Shinawatra; Former governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon Riad Salameh arrested; Fumio Kishida in Seoul Nov. 6-7 to revive alliance with South Korea.
A controversial regulation - which in theory is supposed to prevent excesses during weddings, funerals and other ceremonies - actually translates into a series of bureaucratic burdens with serious financial burdens for citizens. In the first six months of the year alone, the police carried out thousands of checks, collecting fines of hundreds of thousands of euro
Subscribe to the newsletter to receive verified news, analysis and insights from Asian countries every week.
Subscribeto the newsletter
