Honorary nepotism in Central Asia

President Emomali Rakhmon recently awarded his daughter Ozoda the honorary title of ‘Exemplary Worker of Tajikistan’. This is yet another example of the habit of Central Asian satraps to generously bestow high honours, medals and awards of all kinds on members of their own families.

Astana (AsiaNews) - In Central Asia, it is common practice to appoint children, grandchildren and relatives to state positions and presidential successions, but nepotism is not limited to the careers of favourites: it also takes care of other family members who are unable to position themselves at the top.

To console all the others and make the careers of all family members shine, the satraps of power also generously distribute high honours, medals and awards of all kinds. The master of this exaltation of lineage was the first post-Soviet “eternal president”, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled Kazakhstan for thirty years, but there is no shortage of examples of patriarchal generosity in other countries in the region.

One of the main honorary heirs is 46-year-old Ozoda Rakhmon, daughter of Tajikistan's President Emomali, who combines a dazzling career with a number of titles that are the envy of powerful women around the world.

After studying in the US and working at the Tajik embassy in Washington, Ozoda immediately became deputy foreign minister, then director of the presidential administration, with an important banker husband, Džamoliddin Nuraliev, and proudly displays the Order of Šaraf, 1st class, awarded to particularly successful state officials, which was completed a few days ago with the honorary title of “Exemplary Worker of Tajikistan”, which, strangely, had not yet been awarded to her.

Her father, the President of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, who handed over the presidency to his son Serdar in 2022 after 15 years at the helm, having showered him with every possible medal of honour, including one named after his grandfather, Mjalikkuli Berdymukhamedov, a veteran of the country's internal police forces.

Serdar was then promoted to the rank of general, despite having only pursued a career in the civil sphere, and as a sign of gratitude, he awarded his father the jubilee medal commemorating 300 years of Makhtumkuli Fragi, the great Turkmen poet and philosopher. To enrich the family picture, he awarded his sister Oguldžakhan Atabaeva the Arkadag medal, established for the supreme honour of the patriarch Gurbanguly.

However, the largest collection remains that of the Nazarbayev family in Kazakhstan, with dozens of medals and honorary titles distributed to all senior and junior members. Nursultan's daughter, Dariga, who failed to become heir to the throne due to the events of the last decade, received the first Astana medal in 1998 when the capital was renamed from Akmola (previously Tselinograd, then Nur-Sultan, before returning to Astana with the patriarch's decline).

Dariga had also collected honours for “10 years of Astana” and “20 years of Astana” in 2008 and 2018, before disappearing from the political stage, managing to win the last Parasat medal in 2020 for “her great contribution to the development of the country's spiritual potential”.

Dariga's husband, Rakhat Aliev, had also accumulated several titles while working in law enforcement and diplomacy, but after his divorce from the president's daughter, all his awards were cancelled and withdrawn, as he was no longer part of the family.

Nursultan's second daughter, Dinara Kulibaeva, has not held any positions in state bodies, but together with her husband Timur, she still controls Kazakhstan's main commercial bank and is included in the Forbes list of billionaires, an honour she shares with the Parasat and Barys titles of the third degree, also awarded to her husband in the first degree.

His youngest daughter, Alija, was not awarded any state titles, but in 2018 her father managed to present her with an award in the field of art and literature for her participation in the making of the film “The Road to Mother”, which honours the family values of the Kazakhs and all the peoples of Central Asia.