With Russia's doors increasingly closed, many workers from the region have left for South Korea. But Central Asians seeking prospects in Western countries are also increasing, often ending up as victims of unscrupulous exploiters. Turkey as an intermediate destination where they stay for a few years hoping then to reach Europe or America.

In the city of Idlib alone, there are around 400 Tajiks, as well as an unknown number of Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and Kazakhs. Beyond the ‘moderate’ cover of who will form the new government, there is widespread fear in the Central Asian capitals that,Damascus could become the new centre of attraction for all forms of radical Islamism.

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.

At Cop29, President Rakhmon presented his plan for the country's complete transition to a green economy by 2037. A challenge for a reality where fields facing long periods of drought, reduced harvests even in dryland farming, and many livestock losses are putting a strain not only on workers in the agricultural sector, but on the entire population.

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.