Uzbekistan

In his speech at the inauguration of the new parliament, the president of Uzbekistan calls for ‘a healthy confrontation between opposing views’ and rules for the representation of minor parties, in a country where groups truly opposed to the government are excluded from electoral competitions. Women and young people are on the rise among local MPs.

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.

In recent days, Tashkent too celebrated its parliamentary elections, equally dividing the votes between the 42.7% of President Šavkat Mirziyoyev's liberal-democratic party and those of the other ‘alternative’ parties, but in reality all loyal to the current regime. While freedom of expression and of the press continues to shrink year by year.

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.

The trials of Tashkent's most notorious criminals go on in a blur between reports of torture in prison and incredibly mild sentences. With other prominent figures, fugitives abroad, appearing together with local politicians in the stands of major sporting events.

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.

The removal of billboards covering the traditional mosaics on the facades of buildings in the Uzbek capital has become a popular event at publicity festivals. While the Council of Ministers approved a decree to include them in the list of monumental art objects to be preserved.

Two thousand participants from 80 countries attended the fourth edition of the international platform that brings together creatives, entrepreneurs and political authorities for dialogue, problem solving and the search for new development possibilities for a global creative economy, an initiative that was first proposed in Indonesia in 2018.

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.

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.