As leaders from Turkey, Central Asia and the Caucasus gathered in Istanbul today for a round of fraternal backslapping, the irony of a summit devoted to Turkic brotherhood in the wake of ethnic violence between two Turkic peoples seems to have passed them by.
“We are one people living in six countries,” Turkish President Abdullah Gul said in florid prose carried by the Kazinform news agency in Russian translation. “We are proud of this. The hearts of your Turkish brothers will beat in unison with your hearts, in both sorrow and joy.”
Leaders of Turkic-speaking former Soviet states even managed to keep straight faces as Gul waxed lyrical about Turkic peace and unity: “The solidarity of the Turkic-speaking peoples is very important for our region. Our goal is to unite our peoples even further and create new opportunities for cooperation, but on the other hand also to impart the peace, stability and prosperity for our region that will emanate from this synergy.”
In recent times that solidarity hasn’t been much in evidence in southern Kyrgyzstan, where violent clashes between the ethnic Kyrgyz and minority Uzbek communities left hundreds dead in June. The atmosphere in and around Osh, the epicenter of the violence, remains poisonous, with each side blaming the other for the carnage and Kyrgyz politicians playing the nationalist card with gusto ahead of parliamentary elections next month.
As Kazakhstan prepares to host an OSCE summit in December, it is facing criticism of its record on press freedom. One watchdog group is contending that Astana’s restrictive policies risk undermining the organization’s credibility.
Some observers have spotted an unlikely rapprochement between two Central Asian rivals for regional supremacy: Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his Uzbek counterpart Islam Karimov, who have a longstanding tradition of prickly relations.
In the latest step that appears designed to curry favor with the notoriously repressive regime in Uzbekistan to promote a regional security agenda, Astana has disappointed the human rights community by extraditing an ethnic Uzbek Kyrgyz citizen to Uzbekistan to face terrorism and extremism charges.
Khurshid Kamilov was rounded up on June 9 – just as ethnic violence was breaking out in southern Kyrgyzstan, in an apparent coincidence – as part of what police billed as an operation to catch illegal immigrants. That sweep also led to the arrest in Almaty of 29 ethnic Uzbeks who are still in detention, fearing extradition to Uzbekistan on what their relatives say are trumped-up charges. At the time, one of their wives spoke to EurasiaNet of her fears that they could be extradited, tortured and “come out of jail as corpses.”
Relatives of the detained men – some of whom are reportedly on hunger strike – gathered at the Almaty Prosecutor’s Office on September 13 to demand their release, the independent Internet-based Stan TV station reported, adding that “in all human rights documents Uzbekistan takes a confident lead as a state which uses torture.” In 2007 the UN Committee against Torture expressed concern about “consistent allegations concerning routine use of torture” in Uzbekistan, which denies systematic abuse.
Kazakhstan's most prominent human rights activist, Yevgeniy Zhovtis, has marked his first year behind bars. Zhovtis, a tireless campaigner who has stood up to the Kazakh authorities for years, was given a four-year prison sentence on September 3, 2009 on charges of vehicular manslaughter he denied, after a trial widely criticized for procedural violations.
To mark the anniversary, the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and the Rule of Law -- which Zhovtis heads -- issued a stinging statement pointing to the “bias, political prejudice and political order” that it says is inherent in the case. The authorities have consistently denied any political motivation behind Zhovtis's jailing and insisted they followed the law to the letter.
At the trial and subsequent failed appeals, Zhovtis's defense acknowledged that a pedestrian died while he was at the wheel but contended that the death was unavoidable due to the pedestrian's behavior. The case was pursued despite a clause in Kazakh law that should have allowed Zhovtis to remain free after he reached reconciliation with the victim's family and paid compensation.
Zhovtis’s organization suggested in its statement that Kazakhstan’s chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) this year -- which some observers had hoped would promote democracy, liberalization and a less restrictive climate for human rights activists -- had brought no changes for the better, either for Zhovtis or for Kazakhstan’s political process.
A new opinion poll offers good news for Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev: his approval ratings remain in the stratosphere as the country’s economy perks up after two years of doom and gloom.
It’s not very often that sprats have their day in court. But after becoming embroiled in a row over language rights in Kazakhstan, the oily little fish is to play a central role in legal arguments in the oil city of Aktobe.
It’s not the sprats that’ll be in the dock, true – that place will be occupied by the owner of a store that proved unable to provide a customer with details about sprats in the Kazakh language, the Novosti-Kazakhstan news agency reports.
The disgruntled customer went racing to his lawyer after the shop couldn’t produce information in Kazakh about the tin of fish he’d purchased for 80 cents.
This consumer rights pioneer is now suing the shop in the Aktobe City Court for breaking laws which guarantee that all information should be available in Kazakh – in this case details about the manufacturer, the manufacturing date, and “recommendations for use” of the sprats.
It’s pretty unlikely that the customer really didn’t know what the sprats were for, but he probably wants to score a legal point about enforcing the use of Kazakh in the public sphere, where Russian often dominates. Legally, Kazakh has the status of the state language, while Russian is “used officially on an equal level with the Kazakh language in state organizations and bodies of local self-government” – a confusing division that fudges the controversy over language in Kazakhstan.
The use of Kazakh in public life has grown in recent years, but many ethnic Kazakhs still feel it is drowned out by the domination of Russian in the media, in public discourse and on the streets of many towns.
It seems that Kazakhstan has finally learned to laugh at Borat, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's comic character whose oafish antics amused western moviegoers when he hit the big screen in 2006. Kazakh director Erkin Rakishev says he’s going to ride the wave of success enjoyed by Cohen’s mock-umentary, Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, and make his own movie that might just have the last laugh on Borat.
“We want to ride on the success of Borat,” Rakishev told the state-owned broadsheet Kazakhstanskaya Pravda. “Using the popularity of the movie in the West, on this wave [of success] we’ll show the foreign audience the true Kazakhstan, not the one dreamed up by Sacha Baron Cohen.”
The new film, My Brother Borat, will show a more flattering picture of the Kazakhs than that portrayed by Cohen, who went around the United States in the guise of a Kazakh journalist shocking people with his outrageous behavior.
The movie’s ironic intent passed most Kazakhs by. Not many were amused by the comedian’s lampooning of them as a bunch of ignorant, racist, sexist peasants. The people of Kazakhstan, from government officials down to the man in the street, were disgusted at being singled out as the butt of Cohen’s sometimes downright crude humor.
Not that many people in Kazakhstan had actually seen Cultural Learnings -- distributors refused to show the movie in the country on grounds of taste.
Now Rakishev’s going to set the record straight with My Brother Borat, due for release next spring. The plot centers on an “average American” called John finding Cohen’s film so hilarious that he decides to pay a visit to Borat’s homeland to see it with his own eyes.
An escalating row between a Kazakh gold company’s old and new owners has tarnished the image of one of the country’s most dazzling commercial prizes. The scandal is casting doubt over the company’s future and has sent foreign investors into a tailspin.
Kazakhstan is facing a bleak grain harvest this year after over three quarters of crops were ravaged by drought in the West. The heat wave has hit wheat-growing areas in the North, too, and Kazakhstan’s wheat harvest is now expected to be a third down on last year’s bumper crop of 21 million tons.
This week, as the drought devastated crops, Astana cut this year’s grain harvest forecast to 13.5 million tons from its previous prediction of 14.5-15.5 million tons, the Agriculture Ministry says. In the western Aktobe Region 72 percent of crops have been destroyed.
This year’s harvest will fall far below 2009’s bumper harvest of 21 million tons, though Agriculture Minister Arman Yevniyev brushed aside concerns by pointing out that “records, as is known, are not repeated every year.”
Indeed, it’s not only the drought that’s reduced the harvest, but also less sowing of grain as farmers turn to other crops such as oilseeds.
The 2010 crop will be worse than 2008’s disappointing harvest, when drought also caused a slump in yields. Astana reacted sharply that year, slapping a four-month ban on exports amid concerns about food security at home as bread prices rose 12 percent.
Leader of the Nation: Chilling at your local bookstore. (From the Museum of the First President, Astana.)
A new Kazakh magazine featuring legendary figures hit the newsstands in July, and there are no prizes for guessing who graces the inaugural issue. Yes, that’s right, it’s the Leader of the Nation himself, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, smiling down at readers from the front cover.
The picture, showing a young, handsome Nazarbayev with a jaunty air, was snapped when he was starting out in his career as a steelworker in Soviet Kazakhstan. “How did a guy who was an ordinary steelworker become president?” asks the caption.
Naturally, the magazine, which is called Legendary Person and has no online version, goes on to explain Nazarbayev’s rise to the dizzy heights of power. There are plenty of personal reminiscences, including one by his brother Bolat Nazarbayev, along with commentaries by politicians and cultural luminaries. One highlight is an article tracing Nazarbayev’s genealogy to the famous 17th-century warrior Karasay Batyr.
The Kazakh-language magazine is lavishly illustrated with photos showing the president in different lights. On a serious note, there he is being sworn in as president and shaking hands with world leaders. But he’s also a family man – a proud father at the graduation of his daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva, or playing with his grandchildren in a field. He enjoys the lighter side of life, too – the pictures show him wielding a fishing rod, a tennis racket and a traditional dombyra instrument with equal skill.
