ASTANA (TCA) — The airport in Kazakhstan’s capital city, Astana, has been renamed after President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakh state media have reported.
According to the directive published in the state-owned Kazakhstanskaya Pravda newspaper on June 21, the government resolution to change the name of Astana International Airport is effective immediately.
As Kazakhstan looks to project itself as a regional economic success story, the apparent personality cult surrounding Nazarbayev has reached new heights during the second half of his near 30 years in power, RFE/RL reported.
Nazarbayev already has a national university and a series of schools for high-achieving Kazakh youth named after him.
He is also celebrated by several statues.
Proposals to name the capital’s airport in his honor date back to at least 2009.
Earlier this year, another Central Asian country, Uzbekistan, named its airport after late President Islam Karimov, who largely eschewed a personality cult during his rule of more than a quarter of a century.
Karimov died of a reported stroke last year, leaving Nazarbayev, who has been running Kazakhstan since 1989, as the only leader of an ex-Soviet country to have been in charge both before and after independence from Moscow in 1991.
In 2010, the country’s bicameral parliament granted Nazarbayev the status of Leader of the Nation, which guarantees him immunity from prosecution and a role in policymaking if he decides to retire.
Rights groups regularly accuse Nazarbayev of cracking down on political opposition, independent journalists, nongovernmental organizations, and labor unions.
