Central Asia's “presidential children” and social activism

The accounts of Mirziyoyev's daughters offer a glimpse into the private lives of their families, demonstrating the leaders' closeness to the people, an important element of today's “political technology”. The counter-current case of Nazarbayev's grandson who - having fallen into disgrace due to drug addiction - accused all his relatives of being “greedy and insatiable”.

Tashkent (AsiaNews) - The family members of Central Asian presidents, many of whom already hold various positions of power, carry out a very topical propaganda task with their activity on social networks, although not all of them do so on a particularly regular basis.

Their accounts not only talk about issues of power, but also open windows into the private lives of their families, partly to demonstrate the leaders' closeness to the people, an important element of the ‘political technology’ of the present day.

One of the most active is Shakhnoza Mirziyoyeva, the 39-year-old daughter of the President of Uzbekistan, wife of senior official Otabek Umarov and mother of three daughters.

On Instagram, she shows her idyllic life in a large house, with golden furniture and a large New Year tree in the hall between the columns, surrounded by parcels and boxes of gifts, a luxury kitchen where the whole family gathers around the large table, with a big blue-eyed cat reigning supreme among the charming young women and the muscular father and husband, a sportsman co-opted into the ranks of power.

Šakhnoza is deputy director of the National Agency for Social Defence, and her family serves as a reference point for the entire country.

Of course, her older sister Saida, head of the presidential administration and very active in state politics, has an even greater influence on public opinion. She publishes many photos and videos of meetings at home and abroad, without forgetting family snapshots, where her son Shavkat Jr. often appears.

The boy also appears in several videos, where he talks about his “mother's mission”, and all of Mirziyoyev's children and grandchildren regularly sit in the front row at concerts by stars invited from all over the world.

The social activism of relatives is not always a guaranteed success, as demonstrated by the case of Ajsultan Nazarbaev, grandson of Nursultan, the first president of Kazakhstan. The son of the disgraced heiress Dariga Nazarbaeva and a graduate of the British Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, he could have built a brilliant career for himself, but instead ended up addicted to drugs, dealing a tremendous blow to the image of the Nazarbaev dynasty, already in crisis due to the political upheavals of recent years.

On Facebook, Ajsultan accused all his relatives of being “greedy and insatiable” and of having set up numerous corruption schemes, also posting strange messages about magic and witchcraft, subjects that his mother Dariga is passionate about and with which she “kept her grandfather on a leash”. He was eventually found dead in a London park, with the police assuring that it was a “natural death”, with a high concentration of cocaine in his blood.

The current president of Kazakhstan, Kasym-Žomart Tokaev, is known from official websites to have a single son named Timur, who graduated in political science and diplomacy in Moscow and is careful not to show himself on the digital stage.

In other countries in the region, relatives are more restrained than the large Kazakh and Uzbek families, but they are still very present on internet platforms. Ozoda Rakhmon, daughter of Tajikistan's President Emomali and head of his administration, has her own Instagram page, where she limits herself to posting photos of meetings with her father and brother Rustam, deputy prime minister and mayor of Dushanbe, the designated heir to the “father of the nation” who has been in power for over thirty years.

For the New Year, Ozoda showed Emomali and the rest of the family on a quiet holiday in the mountains.

On the other hand, there are no social media accounts for the children of Kyrgyzstan's president, Sadyr Žaparov, who has repeatedly assured that he wants to keep them “out of politics”, and the only photographs of Rustam and Nurdoolota Žaparov are those of the commercial companies where they work “without recommendations”.

In 2025, Oguldžakhan Atabaeva, the sister of Turkmenistan's president, Serdar Berdymukhamedov, appeared in public as vice-president of the charitable foundation named after her father, former president Gurbanguly. She has attended various events and conferences, travelling abroad and meeting important figures, but without any presence on social media.