If you're an ethnic Kazakh or a Kazakh citizen in northwest China, you can face detention on espionage and extremism charges. RU
Authoritarian states are using all-too familiar constitutional mechanisms to consolidate power.
Post-independence Kazakhstan has seen a revival in Kazakh genealogies, sub-ethnic lineages and identities.
This new book provides a comprehensive overview of Kazakhstan’s oil business, but skips over the uncomfortable truth of privatisation deals.
Kyrgyz women still tend to live and work in traditionally female occupations. RU
In this highly isolated Central Asian state, “Turkish schools” guaranteed good education and a relationship with the outside world. But now, they’re the target of attention and repression from the authorities.
In the former capital city of Almaty, the move to catalogue Soviet buildings is an attempt to create an alternative history of one’s own.
With flat-rate taxes and sky-high growth rates, some call Nagorno-Karabakh a “Caucasian Tiger”. Meanwhile, money from abroad funds a generous but militaristic social welfare system — maintaining border villages and swelling the army’s ranks.
In 2011, a seven-month-long strike in a Kazakh oil town came to tragic end. Six months after I reported on the Zhanaozen massacre, I returned to a city where silence had won.
While Turkmens are told they’re living in a “golden age”, food shortages, labour unrest and unemployment are on the rise. Unless president Berdymukhamedov changes things fast, his days could be numbered.
Tajikistan is trying to persecute what was once Central Asia’s only legal Islamist party out of existence. But is this really about countering terrorism, or just cracking down on dissent in any form?
