Nursultan Nazarbayev
Kazakhstan Changes Capital’s Name in Snub to Former Leader
Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev announced on Tuesday that he had approved a proposal to rename Kazakhstan’s capital city to Astana, its original name from 1998 until 2019, as part of...
Can ‘Kazakhstan 2.0’ Win the Fight Against Corruption?
On June 5, Kazakhstan held a referendum to end super-presidencies and limit the powers of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Kazakhstan, which experienced massive protests in January of this year, will...
Kazakhstan and CSTO Intervention: Geopolitics or Intra-Elite Struggle?
Protests initiated by the raising of liquified petroleum gas prices in western Kazakhstan on January 2-3 precipitated a week of nationwide unrest and violence that resulted in the deaths of...
Kazakhstan’s Crisis Calls for a Central Asia Policy Reboot
The recent crisis in Kazakhstan took many by surprise. Long considered the most prosperous and stable in Central Asia, it now suddenly appears fragile and weak. To draw lessons from...
How Will Sanctions Impact Kazakhstan’s Foreign Policy?
The protests and violence in early January in Kazakhstan that resulted in at least 225 deaths—civilians and security forces—more than 4,000 injured, some 6,000 arrested, and concluded with a short-lived...
Kazakhstan’s Next Political Crisis
In June 2018, the speaker of Kazakhstan’s parliament, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, “dropped a political bombshell” in an interview with the BBC. He said that the country’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev—who is seventy-eight...