Kazakhstan Local Politics - The Times Of Central Asia

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Political Parties

Kazakhstan’s Party Landscape Enters a Decisive Week

Kazakhstan’s party system may be approaching one of its most consequential turning points in years. With Amanat scheduled to hold a party congress on June 12 and the newly registered Adilet party planning its own gathering on June 14, speculation is growing that the country’s dominant political organization could be reshaped, merged, or rebranded ahead of elections to the new unicameral Kurultai. The immediate question is whether Amanat, the successor to the party originally created around Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, will remain the major pro-presidential force or whether its extensive organizational resources will be drawn into Adilet, a new party aligned with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s political agenda and reform program. For now, no merger has been officially announced, but the timing of the two congresses has made the possibility central to Kazakhstan’s political debate. Adilet held its founding congress on May 7, and was officially registered by the Ministry of Justice on June 1. It is led by Aibek Dadebay, the former head of Tokayev’s administration, and presents itself as a pro-presidential force built around the language of justice, responsibility, and reform. Its emergence adds an eighth officially registered party to Kazakhstan’s system, but its political importance lies less in the number of parties than in the possibility that it could become the new vehicle for the president’s loyalist coalition. That makes Adilet’s appearance significant in a regional context. For many years, Kyrgyzstan was often regarded as Central Asia’s most advanced state in terms of party development and political pluralism. Today, however, Kazakhstan has become a more influential reference point for party-building, one that is attracting attention in Tashkent and Dushanbe, while Kyrgyzstan has largely moved away from party-centered politics. Kazakhstan has developed a multi-party model in which several major political organizations are represented in parliament. The system seeks to balance the interests of the state with those of various social groups and constituencies. Individual elements of this model can be adjusted or transformed as political demands evolve. For example, as public nostalgia for communism began to fade, the Communist People’s Party of Kazakhstan quietly dropped the word “Communist” from its public identity. Ironically, when the party was originally established, the word “People’s” had been added to distinguish it from the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, from which many of its founders had emerged. Through such splits, mergers, and rebrandings, Kazakhstan has gradually constructed a party system that encompasses organizations representing a broad spectrum of society, from state officials and business interests to rural communities. In both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, five political parties are officially registered. Their political spectrum broadly mirrors that of Kazakhstan: a dominant ruling party, a socialist or communist party, and organizations positioning themselves as democratic, people’s, agrarian, or environmental movements. Kyrgyzstan, by contrast, has taken a markedly different path. In 2025, the country completed its transition from a party-centered political system to one in which parties play a secondary role. Elections to the Jogorku Kenesh are now conducted primarily through a majoritarian model that emphasizes individual...

Parliamentary Elections

Kazakhstan’s August Elections: Who Will Enter the New Parliament?

On July 1, Kazakhstan’s new Constitution will come into force, triggering the dissolution of the current bicameral parliament. According to political observers, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is expected to sign a decree in early July calling elections to a new unicameral legislature, to be known as the Kurultai. No date has yet been formally announced, but analysts expect the vote to take place in the second half of August, most likely on either August 16 or August 23. On June 1, Kazakhstan officially registered a new political party, Adilet, meaning “Justice,” led by Aybek Dadebay, the former head of Tokayev’s presidential administration. As a result, eight political parties are now officially registered ahead of the election campaign, six of which are currently represented in the lower house of parliament. So far, however, none of the parties has shown significant signs of gearing up for the campaign. “Kazakhstan’s political parties know perfectly well that parliamentary elections will take place in the second half of August, that they will be conducted under a proportional representation system, and that skipping the election is not advisable because it could affect party financing,” political analyst Gaziz Abishev wrote on his Telegram channel. “They could already be actively working to revive their party brands and promote the public figures who will become the faces of the campaign. Yet the passivity is obvious.” In his view, internal party, inter-party, and broader elite-level processes are currently underway, suggesting that some form of political transformation is taking place behind the scenes. The emergence of Adilet appears to have influenced the calculations of Kazakhstan’s political class. The arrival of a second openly pro-presidential party introduces a significant element of uncertainty into a system long dominated by Amanat. Amanat traces its roots to former President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s political machine. Originally known as Otan, or “Fatherland,” it became Nur Otan in 2006 before being rebranded as Amanat following the January 2022 unrest. Former presidential candidate Amirzhan Kosanov believes the creation of Adilet reflects Tokayev’s desire to create political competition within the ruling elite while presenting it internationally as evidence of political pluralism. “Given the executive branch’s influence over election commissions and the largely artificial nature of the party system, the campaign beginning in July will most likely resemble a controlled competition between two principal actors: the ruling Amanat party and the new Adilet party,” Kosanov argued. For critics of the system, the upcoming elections increasingly resemble a contest between two pro-presidential forces. Organizationally, Amanat remains a formidable political machine. It inherited from the Nur Otan era an extensive nationwide network of regional branches and primary organizations embedded in large workplaces and institutions. Adilet, meanwhile, has already secured backing from a wide range of business associations, professional groups, technology organizations, creative-industry bodies, and civic initiatives. Its political council also includes senior executives from some of Kazakhstan’s largest companies, including Qarmet, Kazakhtelecom, and Allur Auto. Despite this, few analysts believe Kazakhstan is moving toward an American-style two-party system. Amanat and Adilet share broadly similar political...

Law and Order

Tokayev Criticizes Lawmakers Over “Penaltystan” Label for Kazakhstan

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has criticized lawmakers who have referred to Kazakhstan as “Penaltystan,” or “Aiyppulstan” in Kazakh, over what critics describe as the state’s excessive reliance on fines and administrative penalties. Speaking at a meeting on the development of Alatau City, Kazakhstan’s planned smart city near Almaty, Tokayev argued that maintaining public order and security is essential at a time of growing international instability and military conflicts around the world. “In today’s turbulent environment, amid military conflicts around the world, peace and stability are vital for our country,” Tokayev said. “Without them, there can be no reforms or positive changes. Therefore, law-enforcement agencies must apply strict measures and penalties for violations.” The president then took aim at critics of the government’s law-and-order policies. “Some individuals who dislike and hold our country in contempt, and unfortunately there are members of parliament among them, call our legal measures ‘Penaltystan’ or ‘Aiyppulstan,’” Tokayev said. “Let them continue to demonstrate the limitations of their judgment. Our people need public order and security. We will not deviate from this path and will continue to pursue the policy of ‘Law and Order’ with determination. This is what our citizens demand.” The term “Penaltystan” is widely associated with Azat Peruashev, a member of the Mazhilis, the lower house of Kazakhstan’s parliament, and leader of the Ak Zhol faction. Peruashev used the phrase in 2024 during debates over amendments to Kazakhstan’s Administrative Offenses Code. At the time, he criticized what he described as disproportionately high penalties imposed on businesses for relatively minor violations. “I am ashamed of you, gentlemen officials,” Peruashev said at the time. “Leave your comfortable offices at least once and put yourselves in the position of an entrepreneur or even a consumer. You are building some kind of ‘Penaltystan.’ The Ak Zhol faction wants to build a normal and balanced market economy.” Earlier this year, Peruashev acknowledged that he had used an unfortunate term. Following Tokayev’s remarks, he again distanced himself from the expression, saying his characterization had been incorrect. The exchange comes during a period of political change in Kazakhstan. As The Times of Central Asia previously reported, voters approved constitutional reforms in March that will replace the current bicameral parliament with a single-chamber Kurultai. Elections to the new body are scheduled for August. Tokayev’s comments underline a continuing debate in Kazakhstan over law-and-order enforcement, and whether heavy administrative penalties place an undue burden on citizens and entrepreneurs.

National Identity

Kazakhstan Reclaims the Golden Horde

Kazakhstan’s symposium on the Golden Horde opens, in formal institutional terms, the question of where the country locates its statehood. Held in Astana on May 19–20 under UNESCO patronage, it brought together more than 300 scholars and experts, including 120 foreign researchers from more than 20 countries. Its title was “The Golden Horde as a Model of Steppe Civilization,” with history, archaeology, culture, and identity named as focal points of inquiry. The initiative places Kazakhstan’s history outside the narrow frame of post-Soviet chronology, treating the medieval past as a problem in the formation of Central Eurasia. Kazakhstan’s turn to the Golden Horde is not a decorative appeal to the medieval past, but a claim about statehood. It seeks to place Kazakhstan’s sovereignty within older Eurasian traditions of exchange, law, political authority, and movement across the steppe. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has put the claim in explicit form. In 2024, he described Kazakhstan as a successor to the nomadic civilization of the Great Steppe and called the Ulus of Jochi, known internationally as the Golden Horde, a pinnacle of state-building in Central Eurasia. At the Astana symposium, he returned to the same line, presenting the Golden Horde as an empire connecting East and West and influencing the development of civilizations and states. The point is not identitarian but genealogical: the recovery of a statehood tradition, not the retroactive conversion of a medieval formation into the present-day republic. The Golden Horde’s significance is as a political form whose relevance lies in rule, exchange, law, and mobility: this is where steppe history becomes state history. The symposium’s official framing emphasized the political, economic, cultural, and spiritual heritage of the Ulus of Jochi. Its final resolution was more specific, identifying the Golden Horde’s role in political traditions, international trade and diplomacy, legal institutions, numismatics, craft production, and the interaction of nomadic and urban societies. The Golden Horde thereby moves out of the narrow category of conquest and into the practical grammar of political and social order: administration, circulation, law, and exchange. The inherited Russian imperial and Soviet frame did not simply neglect the Golden Horde; it organized the question from outside Kazakhstan’s own statehood. A recent study in Nationalities Papers identifies a Soviet paradigm in which the Golden Horde was treated as foreign, destructive, and external to the emergence of the Kazakh Khanate, while the Ak Orda was favored as the more acceptable predecessor. This view did not disappear with independence. Under Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Golden Horde remained comparatively marginal in official historical narrative, even as Kazakhstan celebrated the Kazakh Khanate and the broader nomadic past. Ideological categories narrowed the possible interpretations of the past. The issue today is not reinvention but reordering. Presidential declarations provide the catalyst, not the machinery. The machinery is supplied by historians, institutes, universities, and conferences. The Nationalities Papers study describes historians as memory actors helping to move the Golden Horde from contested or marginal status toward official endorsement. It also identifies a dispute between older and newer schools of...

National Identity

Kazakhstan Looks to the Golden Horde for a Deeper National Narrative

A major international symposium dedicated to the Golden Horde opened this week in Kazakhstan’s capital, underscoring the country’s growing effort to redefine its historical narrative and national identity through the legacy of the Great Steppe. The symposium, held under the patronage of UNESCO and titled “The Golden Horde as a Model of Steppe Civilization: History, Archaeology, Culture and Identity,” brought together more than 300 scholars, including 120 foreign researchers from over 20 countries. The event reflects Kazakhstan’s effort to align its national narrative with a growing body of scholarship that treats nomadic societies not as a “backward” alternative to sedentary civilizations, but as a distinct and highly sophisticated model of statehood shaped by the economic realities of the Eurasian steppe. Opening the symposium, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev declared that “no historian today questions the power of the Golden Horde, the empire that ruled the Great Steppe and occupied vast expanses of Eurasia. The empire that connected East and West and exerted a profound influence on the development of civilizations and the formation of states was unquestionably one of the largest political structures in history,” Tokayev said. [caption id="attachment_49194" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] Image: Akorda[/caption] The Legacy of the Great Steppe The Golden Horde, also known as the Ulus of Jochi, emerged from the empire created by Genghis Khan across the Eurasian steppe. The wider Eurasian steppe stretched from Eastern Europe toward Mongolia, while the Golden Horde controlled a vast western portion of that world. The region long served as home to Indo-European, Turkic and Mongol nomadic peoples. Its open geography, largely free of impassable mountain barriers, enabled the large-scale movement of herds of horses, sheep and cattle in search of pastures and water sources. It was in this region, on the territory of present-day northern Kazakhstan, that horses were first domesticated about 5,500 years ago near the settlement of Botai. The archaeological Botai culture dates back to roughly 3700-3100 BCE. The Golden Horde itself traces directly to Jochi, the eldest son of Genghis Khan, whose descendants ruled the Ulus of Jochi across a vast territory from the Irtysh to the Danube. Over time, the Ulus of Jochi was divided between Jochi’s sons into western and eastern wings known respectively as the White Horde (Ak-Orda) and the Blue Horde (Kok-Orda). By the middle of the 15th century, the Ulus of Jochi had fragmented into successor polities, including the Siberian, Uzbek, Kazan, Crimean, and Kazakh khanates, as well as the Nogai Horde. Moscow’s rise also unfolded in the shadow of this post-Horde order before it later became the core of the Russian Empire. [caption id="attachment_49193" align="aligncenter" width="2560"] Image: Akorda[/caption] Between Myth and Statehood Because written sources on the Golden Horde remain fragmented, much of its legacy survived through oral traditions, epics, myths, and legends. In Kazakh tradition, for example, khans continued to be chosen from among the Chinggisids, direct descendants of Genghis Khan, and elevated on a white felt carpet during coronation ceremonies. The period also produced oral epics preserved through the tradition of the...

Education Reform

Kazakhstan Reshapes Education System to Meet Industrial and Labor Market Needs

Kazakhstan has begun a large-scale restructuring of its education system in 2025-2026 as authorities attempt to address labor shortages, overloaded school infrastructure, and the growing mismatch between graduates’ qualifications and the needs of the economy. While previous reforms focused primarily on expanding access to education, the government is now shifting toward tighter administrative management of student enrollment, stronger support for technical and vocational training, and the integration of digital technologies into schools. As previously reported by The Times of Central Asia, the reforms are unfolding amid growing pressure on Kazakhstan’s labor market. One of the most pressing issues remains the condition of the country’s school infrastructure. Rapid urbanization and internal migration have created chronic shortages of school places in major cities and southern regions. To address the problem, authorities launched the “Comfortable School” national project, which envisioned the construction of 369 schools with capacity for 740,000 students during 2023-2024. However, implementation has faced delays caused by contractor failures and rising construction material costs. According to project operator Samruk-Kazyna Construction, by the end of 2025 authorities had commissioned 208 schools, creating more than 217,000 new student places. Most of the facilities were built in Astana, Almaty, and Turkistan Region. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev previously warned that even accelerated school construction would only temporarily alleviate the problem, since at current population growth rates the shortage of school places could reach 400,000 in the medium term. Against this backdrop, authorities are increasingly turning to technological solutions. In May 2026, Tokayev signed a decree introducing artificial intelligence into the secondary education system. Under the initiative, AI technologies are expected to serve as auxiliary tools for personalized learning, identifying gaps in student knowledge, and reducing teachers’ workloads. By August 1, schools participating in the pilot program are expected to be equipped with high-speed internet access, while by September 1 authorities plan to approve national standards governing the use of AI in education. At the same time, Kazakhstan is strengthening support for technical and vocational education. For the 2025-2026 academic year, around 70% of state-funded grants in the technical and vocational education system were allocated to engineering and technical specialties, including metallurgy, mechanical engineering, energy, construction, and information technology. Authorities are also attempting to expand elements of dual education programs involving private businesses. According to official data, more than 4,000 enterprises have established partnerships with colleges. However, full-scale implementation remains largely confined to major industrial regions, while small and medium-sized businesses in other areas remain reluctant to participate in organizing practical training for students. Significant changes are also affecting higher education. Minister of Science and Higher Education Sayasat Nurbek announced a redistribution of state grants toward professions facing the most acute labor shortages, including thermal power engineering, industrial engineering, water management, and materials science. University financing will now depend directly on institutions’ positions in national rankings and on graduate employment rates. For weaker regional universities, this could effectively mean automatic reductions in state funding. Leading universities have also been granted the right to independently raise admission thresholds...