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Kazakh Language

How Social Media Is Turning Kazakh Language Into A Form Of Self-Expression for Gen Z

Not long ago, for many of Kazakhstan's urban teenagers, the Kazakh language sounded like something between a school subject, a family obligation, and an official norm. They studied it, took tests in it, heard it in classrooms, in the news, and in the speech of older generations. But on TikTok, Instagram, and Threads, Kazakh is increasingly living a different life: as the language of memes, stories, self-irony, flirting, debates, local humor, and personal expression. It is no longer only a question of: “Do you know Kazakh?” For Generation Z, another question is becoming more important: “Can you be yourself in Kazakh?” Social media, fast, visual, and sometimes chaotic, has become the space where the Kazakh language stops being merely a symbol of “correctness” and turns into a tool for self-expression. According to DataReportal’s Digital 2026: Kazakhstan report, Instagram in Kazakhstan had an advertising reach of 13.1 million users in late 2025, while TikTok reached 16.9 million users aged 18 and older. TikTok’s ad reach was equivalent to 86.5% of the local internet audience. These figures do not equal the exact number of active users, but they show the scale of the platforms where young people today see, hear, and produce language. From “I have to know it” to “I want to speak it” The Kazakh language in Kazakhstan has long been growing both demographically and symbolically. According to the 2021 census, more than 13 million people, or around 80% of the population over the age of five, know the state language, while almost half of the population uses it daily. But there is a large gap between “knowing a language” and using it in one’s personal digital life. Social media is helping to close that gap. On Instagram, a teenager can follow a page with memes about grammar. On Threads, they can write a post about feeling shy speaking Kazakh in Almaty, and suddenly see hundreds of similar stories. This is where the shift lies. In the digital environment, Kazakh is no longer only a language of assessment. It is becoming a language of process: living, not always perfect, but personal. Instagram: grammar as visual style One of the most visible examples is Qazaq Grammar. The project grew around Instagram and has done something that once seemed almost impossible: turning linguistic rules and nuances into visual, meme-like content. Its Instagram page has quickly amassed more than 89,900 followers. Qazaq Grammar matters precisely because of its digital format. It does not try to replace a textbook, but it makes the language part of the everyday feed. A user may not sit down specifically to “study Kazakh,” but they may come across a post about a common mistake, send it to a friend, or remember the rule while texting. In this way, grammar stops feeling like a chore and becomes a small fragment of daily content. The project’s feed includes explanations of common mistakes, word usage, Kazakh orthography, humorous observations about mixed speech, and posts about how the language is changing in...

UFO Files

Pentagon UFO Files Add CIA Report on Kazakhstan’s Sary Shagan Range

On May 22, the Pentagon released the second tranche of U.S. Department of War records on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), the official term now often used for what are commonly called UFOs, through the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, known as PURSUE. The first batch, published on May 8, included a 1994 State Department cable about a Tajik Air crew’s report of an unidentified object over Kazakhstan. The new PURSUE release includes a CIA intelligence report describing a 1973 sighting at the Soviet Union’s Sary Shagan weapons testing range in Kazakhstan. The report itself is not new to the public record. The CIA first released it in 1978 in a heavily redacted version, leaving the brief UAP account as the only section that remained substantially readable. A fuller copy was cleared for release in the agency’s December 19, 2019 response to a Mandatory Declassification Review request filed by John Greenewald, founder of The Black Vault, a website that publishes declassified U.S. government records obtained through public-records requests. Much of the document deals with missile systems and warhead handling. It also refers to “rumored laser research” and includes a brief account of what the report calls an “unidentified phenomenon.” The CIA describes the source as a “former Soviet citizen who served…,” with the rest of the line obscured. Given the report’s detailed references to Sary Shagan sites and facility layouts, the file appears to rely on someone with firsthand knowledge of the range, though the released copy does not clarify the nature of the source’s connection to it. According to the report, on “one evening in late summer 1973,” the source stepped outside at Site 7 during a Canada-USSR sports broadcast and saw “an unidentified sharp (bright) green circular object or mass in the sky.” The object was west of the site at an estimated 70-degree angle, though its altitude was “undeterminable.” After 10 to 15 seconds, the “green circle widened” and “several green concentric circles formed around the mass.” There was no sound, and the object disappeared within minutes. Sary Shagan, near Lake Balkhash in central Kazakhstan, was established by the Soviet Union in 1956 for anti-ballistic missile testing and was the site of what is widely described as the world’s first successful interception of a ballistic missile warhead on March 4, 1961. Russia still leases parts of the range, while Kazakhstan controls other areas. The file also refers to the System-75, or SA-2, a Soviet surface-to-air missile system, and to the System-300/Aldan, which a CIA field comment identifies as the ABM-1 Galosh anti-ballistic missile. “According to hearsay,” the report says, experiments involving laser weapons were being conducted somewhere at the range and “supposedly” involved “powerful antennas,” though the file gives “no further details.” A better-known Soviet-era UAP case is the Petrozavodsk phenomenon of September 20, 1977, named for the city in Karelia in northwestern Russia, where the most widely publicized sighting was reported. Accounts of unusual lights also came from locations in northern Europe and further...

AI in Education

AI in Kazakh Universities: Institutions Are Not Ready for the ChatGPT Era

AI in Kazakh universities is rapidly transforming higher education, but many institutions appear unprepared for how quickly such tools are becoming normalized in the academic process. While authorities increasingly urge educators to treat AI as a professional tool for the future workforce, universities continue spending tens of thousands of dollars on systems designed to detect texts generated by ChatGPT and similar AI models. By the spring of 2026, the use of generative AI in Kazakh universities had effectively become a new academic norm. Students now routinely use AI systems to write coursework, dissertations, and analytical papers. However, instead of fundamentally reconsidering how knowledge and competencies are assessed, universities are attempting to fit new technologies into an outdated, control-based educational model. Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Science and Higher Education has officially rejected the idea of banning generative AI outright. The ministry states that AI usage is acceptable as long as students adhere to principles of academic integrity and transparency. “Conceptually, the Ministry does not advocate for a complete ban on generative neural networks,” the Committee for Higher and Postgraduate Education said in its official position. This approach was formalized through the “Inter-University Standard for the Use of AI,” adopted in 2024. In 2025, authorities further reaffirmed their commitment to integrating AI into the education system, emphasizing that AI tools should be viewed primarily as instruments rather than threats. Universities Spend Tens of Thousands of Dollars on AI Detectors Despite the ministry’s position, universities across Kazakhstan have begun purchasing AI-detection systems. In the spring of 2025, the company Antiplagiat.Kazakhstan introduced an algorithm designed to detect AI-generated text, which state and national universities have subsequently begun to acquire on a large scale. According to Kazakhstan’s public procurement portal, Kazakh National Medical University signed a contract worth approximately $27,000, while Toraighyrov University conducted several procurements totaling around $19,000. Most contracts were awarded through single-source procurement procedures, strengthening the market position of one dominant supplier in the field of academic verification systems. At the same time, AI detectors do not produce definitive results and instead operate on probabilistic models. Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Education has separately stated that such tools cannot serve as indisputable proof of academic misconduct. “The development of artificial intelligence requires not a mechanical prohibition of AI, but an improvement of assessment systems,” the ministry noted. [caption id="attachment_49352" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] A talk on AI at Al-Farabi University. Image: Joe Luc Barnes[/caption] University Regulations Lag Behind Technological Reality The problem is compounded by outdated university regulations. Many rules and academic policies were written before the mass adoption of generative AI. Documents from Yessenov University and Narxoz University, for example, contain no references to terms such as “AI,” “neural networks,” or “text generation.” Even recently updated regulations often preserve the old logic of evaluation through text originality percentages. In the “Academic Policy of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University for 2025-2026”, AI usage is now formally regulated, yet the university simultaneously retains a requirement that diploma theses maintain a minimum originality level of 75%. This creates a legal contradiction:...

Myths

Kazakhstan’s Haunted Steppe: Myths, Cold War Ruins, and Unexplained Phenomena

Kazakhstan’s vast steppes, deserts, mountains, and abandoned Soviet sites have produced a mythology of their own. Some stories are folklore. Others grew from real geography, ecological disaster, nuclear testing, secretive institutions, and the long shadow of the Cold War. That mix helps explain why tales of lost islands, strange stones, atomic ghosts, and unidentified flying objects still circulate across the country. The most interesting stories are not necessarily the ones that prove anything paranormal. They are the ones that show how history and landscape can turn into legend. You Will Go But Never Return One of Kazakhstan’s best-known mysterious places is Barsakelmes, whose name is usually translated from Kazakh as “You Will Go But Never Return.” The former island, once located in the Aral Sea, was less than 20 kilometers long, but it acquired an outsized reputation during the Soviet period. [caption id="attachment_49303" align="aligncenter" width="2560"] Barsakelmes[/caption] Today, Barsakelmes is no longer technically an island. The Aral Sea has largely dried up after one of the world’s major ecological disasters, and the surrounding landscape has changed almost beyond recognition. The island’s name did much of the work. So did Soviet-era popular culture. Russian science-fiction writer Sergei Lukyanenko, who was born in Kazakhstan, helped deepen its mystique through a story published in the Soviet magazine Tekhnika Molodezhi. In that fictional version, Barsakelmes became a deadly place linked to secret laboratories, biological experiments, and mutant soldiers. The confirmed history is less lurid, but still striking. Local accounts and researchers have linked the name to earlier tragedies, including stories of herders who died while trying to cross the frozen Aral Sea. Over time, those disappearances became part of the island’s reputation as a place from which people did not return. The mystery deepened in the 2000s, when archaeologists found burial grounds and remains of ancient settlements on the dried seabed near Barsakelmes. The finds, dated to the 11th-14th centuries, included religious structures and evidence of trade links that may have extended toward China. Some homes reportedly contained jars still filled with grain, suggesting that residents left suddenly. Whether they fled a flood, conflict, or another disaster is less certain. But it is easy to see how the physical evidence of abrupt abandonment fed older stories about a cursed landscape. Even the island’s natural features became part of the legend. Fishermen once avoided the area after seeing what they thought were huge bones along the shore. They were, in fact, large gypsum formations glinting in the sun. Today, Barsakelmes is also a protected area and a refuge for rare wildlife, showing how a place associated with loss can also become a site of recovery. The Stone Spheres of Mangystau Another of Kazakhstan’s strange landscapes lies on the Mangystau Peninsula in the west of the country, about 150 kilometers from Aktau. There, in a valley that resembles a Martian plain, hundreds of large stone spheres are scattered across the ground. Some are several meters in diameter. Visitors have compared them to giant balls, prehistoric eggs, or...

World Table Tennis Championships

Astana to Host 2027 World Table Tennis Championships

The ITTF World Table Tennis Championships Finals Astana 2027 will take place in Kazakhstan’s capital from May 22 to May 30, 2027, becoming the first world table tennis championship ever held in Central Asia. The tournament was officially presented at the ADD Table Tennis Center Astana. According to Kazakhstan’s Vice Minister of Tourism and Sports Serik Zharasbayev, the country will host seven international Olympic sports tournaments in 2027, with the World Table Tennis Championships expected to become one of the year’s largest sporting events. Representatives from more than 100 countries are expected to participate. The main venue will be Barys Arena, which has a capacity of approximately 8,000 spectators. Additional matches will be hosted at the Qazaqstan Athletics Sports Complex, which can accommodate around 6,800 people. “Our capital was selected to host the World Championships for several reasons, one of the main ones being the availability of major sports facilities that fully meet international requirements,” Zharasbayev told journalists during a briefing. According to the vice minister, a technical delegation from the International Table Tennis Federation has already inspected the venues and gave the tournament infrastructure high marks. “The entire infrastructure is being evaluated from the airport to the sports facilities. At this point, Kazakhstan, and Astana in particular, possess all the necessary resources to host competitions of this level,” he said. Zharasbayev also noted that table tennis remains one of the fastest-growing sports in Kazakhstan. Organizers expect approximately 1,000 athletes to take part in the championships. The tournament will also serve as one of the key ranking qualification stages for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games. Medals will be awarded in five categories: men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles. Asiya Ilyasova, the tournament’s marketing and commercial director, said organizers are hopeful for a strong performance by Kazakhstan’s national team. “We have a strong national team that has consistently delivered high-level results in recent years. For example, Kirill Gerassimenko and Alan Kurmangaliyev are ranked among the world’s top 30 players. They will represent Kazakhstan at the World Championships, and we have high expectations for them,” Ilyasova said. According to organizers, Astana is expected to welcome large numbers of foreign visitors, including fans and official delegations, particularly from Southeast Asian countries where table tennis enjoys enormous popularity. In the coming months, organizers plan to launch competitions among souvenir manufacturers to create products featuring Kazakh national motifs, as well as contests for fashion designers to develop uniforms for volunteers, staff, and official tournament merchandise. An open competition will also be announced to design the official mascot of the championships. The Times of Central Asia previously reported that Astana will also host the 2026 Future Games, an international tournament combining traditional sports and esports disciplines.

Art and Culture

Japanese Spring Festival Celebrates Central Asia Through Manga

A new cultural bridge between Japan and Kazakhstan was celebrated at the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan, where internationally acclaimed Japanese manga artist Kaoru Mori opened her exhibition, Central Asian Cuisine, as part of the international “Japanese Spring” arts festival. The project was organized by the Degdar Humanitarian Foundation with the support of JTI Kazakhstan. The exhibition introduces visitors to the culinary traditions and cultural heritage of the five Central Asian countries through the visual storytelling style of Japanese manga. The Central Asian Cuisine manga project was originally created to mark the 10th anniversary of the “Japan + Central Asia” dialogue, established in 2004 between the Government of Japan and the five Central Asian nations. According to Akmaral Ibrayeva, deputy director of the National Museum, the exhibition is one of the most distinctive cultural projects combining culinary art with national customs and traditions, while also reflecting the unique aesthetics of each country. [caption id="attachment_49172" align="aligncenter" width="624"] Photo: National Museum of Kazakhstan[/caption] Speaking at the opening ceremony, Yasumasa Iijima, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to Kazakhstan, emphasized that the “Japanese Spring” festival represents “diplomacy through art,” strengthening friendship and mutual understanding between nations. The ambassador also noted that this is the second exhibition in Astana featuring Kaoru Mori’s manga works at the National Museum. “Manga is read throughout Japan from schoolchildren to the Prime Minister,” the ambassador said. “It has become one of the symbols of modern Japanese culture, and today this genre has conquered the world.” The manga tells the story of young women from the countries participating in the dialogue who introduce their Japanese friend to their national cuisines and traditional dishes. Through vivid illustrations and detailed depictions of cooking methods, the manga serves not only as an artistic work but also as a culinary guide to Central Asian food culture. According to Timur Kurmanchiyev, artistic director of the festival, a renowned musician and Honored Worker of Kazakhstan, the “Japanese Spring” festivals have become the largest and longest-running events dedicated to Japanese culture in Kazakhstan and across Central Asia. [caption id="attachment_49173" align="aligncenter" width="624"] Photo: National Museum of Kazakhstan[/caption] Guests attending the opening ceremony also enjoyed performances featuring traditional dance and choral music, adding a festive atmosphere to the exhibition. The exhibition highlights how art, cuisine, and cultural dialogue can bring nations closer together, offering visitors a unique opportunity to explore Central Asian traditions through the lens of Japanese manga artistry.