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FIDE Chess Olympiad

Samarkand Chess Olympiad Hosts FIDE Election as Timur Turlov Outlines His Plans

The 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, brings national teams together from September 15 to 27. Alongside the competition, delegates will elect the next leadership of FIDE, the International Chess Federation. Three presidential tickets have been approved for the September 26 election. Entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner, co-founder of Freestyle Chess with Magnus Carlsen, is running with Malcolm Pein for deputy president. WR Chess founder and WR Group chairman Wadim Rosenstein is standing with Gordon Tang. Freedom Holding Corp. founder and CEO Timur Turlov, who also heads the Kazakhstan Chess Federation, is running with Viswanathan Anand. The Times of Central Asia spoke with Turlov about his experience of chess within his family and his proposals for managing the international federation. TCA: Before we talk about professional chess and FIDE, let’s start at the beginning. What is your personal history with chess? Turlov: I learned to play chess as a kid; my grandfather taught me. He saw it as a parenting tool, and it just became part of the family. Over time I drifted away from the game, but I eventually came back. What brought me back wasn't nostalgia or any urge to win; it was my kids, and the sense that real relationships are built on substance, on actually connecting with and sharing with people. Having six children has been one of the great blessings of my life, and when they started playing and asked me to join them, I had good reason to pick the game back up, this time as a parent, and not as a student. It's a small thing, but it reminded me how much family life keeps you grounded, thinking about someone other than yourself. Chess is one way for people to develop relationships and grow in virtue. TCA: You describe chess as a parenting tool as much as a sport. How does that work in practice? Turlov: With six children, finding one consistent way to connect with all of them isn't easy. They're each unique, of different ages, and with different personalities. Chess turned out to be that common ground for us that could be cultivated year after year. Sitting across the board from your child is different from a conversation at dinner. It's slower, calmer, and it opens the door to talking about things that usually don't come up otherwise. Honestly, some of my favorite moments as a parent have happened over a chessboard, not in spite of the game but because of it. TCA: Can you give an example of what a chess game actually teaches a child that a normal conversation can't? Turlov: Beyond strategic thinking- call it looking ahead- there's something in chess that matters even more: learning how to win, and especially how to lose. Chess is one of the few structured experiences where a child loses clearly, sees exactly why, and has to sit with that calmly, without a tantrum, without blaming anyone else. As a parent, that's also a moment for reflection. You can talk through the...

Chess

Kyrgyzstan Opens National Chess Academy in Bishkek

Kyrgyzstan is linking school chess programs with advanced training as it seeks greater success internationally. The National Chess Academy opened in Bishkek on September 13, while a pilot program is introducing chess clubs for students in grades three to five at 500 schools across the country. The academy, established under the Kyrgyz Chess Union, will identify and train promising young players. It will also organize competitions and provide a permanent base where they can prepare for national and international tournaments. The academy is part of a national chess development program for 2026–2030. The program also provides for teacher training to support the school clubs and annual presidential awards for the country’s best player and coach. At the opening ceremony, Adylbek Kasymaliyev, chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers, said he expected the academy to train talented players and develop a new generation capable of representing Kyrgyzstan internationally. Aida Salyanova, president of the Kyrgyz Chess Union, has said the longer-term goal is to build a system that allows players to progress from school programs to international competition. Creating that system will take longer than opening an academy or launching hundreds of clubs. Young players need years of coaching and regular competition before they can reach that level. Kyrgyzstan already has young players competing at a high level. At the 2025 national championship, International Master Eldiyar Orozbaev won the open event, while Begimai Zairbek Kyzy won the women’s title. Five of the top 10 finishers in the open event were under 20. International Master is the second-highest open title awarded by the International Chess Federation (FIDE), below Grandmaster. Kyrgyzstan has produced one grandmaster, Leonid Yurtaev, who received the title in 1996. No player representing the country has since followed him. This expansion comes at a time of growing chess success across Central Asia. Uzbek grandmaster Nodirbek Abdusattorov won the Tata Steel Chess Masters in the Netherlands in early 2026, one of the world’s most prestigious annual tournaments. Abdusattorov later won the Prague International Chess Festival Masters and rose to fourth in FIDE’s world rankings. Uzbekistan is also hosting the 2026 Chess Olympiad in Samarkand. The event opened on September 15, and play began the following day. The Olympiad is FIDE’s flagship international team competition. Kazakhstan is pursuing a similar approach to chess education. Its Chess in Education program now covers 1,500 schools, while KazChessLab trains future chess teachers and develops teaching methods.

Almaty Museum of Arts

Almaty Museum of Arts Begins Centre Pompidou Partnership With The Clock

A year after opening, Almaty Museum of Arts (ALMA) has brought one of contemporary art’s best-known works to Kazakhstan: Christian Marclay’s The Clock, a 24-hour artwork assembled from thousands of film and television clips. The installation, jointly owned by Centre Pompidou, Tate, and the Israel Museum, marks the beginning of a long-term partnership between the Almaty museum and its Paris counterpart. The Clock opened to the public on September 12 and will run through October 12. The work is being shown in Central Asia for the first time. Marclay created it in 2010 from thousands of fragments of films and television programs showing clocks or referring to time. Together, they form exactly 24 hours of screen time synchronized with the real world. If a visitor watches The Clock in Almaty at 3:42 p.m., it is also 3:42 p.m. on screen. In 2011, the work won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. A year later, it was jointly acquired by Centre Pompidou, Tate in London, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The Clock has since been shown at major museums around the world. Four 24-hour screenings are scheduled in Almaty, on September 19 and 26, and October 3 and 10. “Cooperation with Centre Pompidou is not a one-off event, but the beginning of a long story,” museum founder Nurlan Smagulov said in the museum’s announcement of the exhibition. ALMA opened on September 12, 2025. At its core is Smagulov’s collection of more than 700 works of modern Kazakh art, assembled over the past three decades. It includes works by Salikhitdin Aitbayev, Sergey Kalmykov, Yerbossyn Meldibekov, and other leading Kazakh and Kazakhstan-based artists. According to the museum, more than 460,000 people visited ALMA during its first year. The museum staged four major exhibition projects, including a solo exhibition by video art pioneer Bill Viola. For its first anniversary, it opened Müsinder, an exhibition spanning seven decades of Kazakh sculpture. More than 110 other events included lectures, discussions, concerts, and film screenings. The museum also published three books. The arrival of The Clock marks a new stage in the young museum’s international ambitions. Centre Pompidou has been expanding its presence beyond Paris for more than a decade. Its Paris building is closed for renovation until 2030, giving added scope to its international exhibition program. Málaga opened in 2015, and a project in Shanghai followed in 2019. Centre Pompidou Hanwha opened in Seoul in June 2026, while KANAL–Centre Pompidou is due to open in Brussels in November. Another site is planned for Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, in 2028. The model varies between locations, with Centre Pompidou providing works from its collection, expertise, and jointly developed programs rather than simply reproducing its Paris museum abroad. Almaty is pursuing a different model again. There will be no Pompidou branch here: ALMA remains an independent private museum. For now, the partnership can be seen quite literally – in a darkened gallery where Marclay’s screen keeps Almaty time. The museum says its international network will expand again...

Podcast

Pannier and Hillard’s Spotlight on Central Asia: New Episode Out Now

As Managing Editor of The Times of Central Asia, I’m delighted that, in partnership with the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs, we are the home of the Spotlight on Central Asia podcast. Chaired by seasoned broadcasters Bruce Pannier of RFE/RL’s long-running Majlis podcast and Michael Hillard of The Red Line, each fortnightly instalment will take you on a deep dive into the latest news, developments, security issues, and social trends across an increasingly pivotal region. This week, the team covers world leaders arriving in Bishkek for the SCO summit, one Central Asian state proposing new martial-law amendments that could concentrate enormous power in just a handful of institutions during a national crisis, Tashiev's charges being amended yet again as questions continue to grow over his political future, a Central Asian state striking an unusual military deal with a European partner, the Turkmen Border Service holding talks with its Afghan counterparts, the completion of a major new railway line in Kazakhstan, and plans to build what could become the tallest tower in the region. Before turning to our main story this week, where we look at the World Nomad Games in Kyrgyzstan and what the event tells us about the country, the region, and the way Central Asia is presenting itself to the wider world. - Jonathan Campion (British Alysh Competitor) - Stephen M. Bland (The Times of Central Asia) - K. Krombie (The Times of Central Asia) Special guests: Stephen M. Bland, Managing Editor at TCA; K. Krombie, Senior Editor at TCA, both of whom covered the event on the ground; and Jonathan Campion, who competed for Team GB in the Alysh Wrestling.

Elena Rybakina

Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina Wins US Open Ahead of World No. 1 Debut

Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina has won the US Open women’s singles title, defeating Aryna Sabalenka 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 in New York to claim the third Grand Slam championship of her career. Rybakina entered the final having already secured the world No. 1 ranking following her quarterfinal victory over Zheng Qinwen. She will officially take the top position when the new WTA rankings are published on Monday, becoming the first player representing Kazakhstan to reach No. 1 in singles. The US Open title adds to her Wimbledon championship in 2022 and Australian Open victory earlier this year. She has now won three of the four Grand Slam tournaments. Sabalenka entered the final as world No. 1 and two-time defending US Open champion. The match was also a rematch of this year’s Australian Open final, which Rybakina won. Rybakina has become one of Kazakhstan’s most prominent international athletes. Her run in New York included victories over Naomi Osaka, Zheng and Coco Gauff before the final. Speaking during the tournament, Rybakina said she was “very proud representing Kazakhstan” and noted growing interest in tennis among children in the country. Her success has marked a series of firsts for Kazakhstan. She became the first player representing the country to win a Grand Slam singles title at Wimbledon and is now the first to reach the top of the world rankings.

Architectural Heritage

Ashgabat’s Postwar Architecture Is Disappearing One Building at a Time

In July, UNESCO added ten examples of Tashkent’s modernist architecture to the World Heritage List, recognizing the buildings and urban complexes that helped reshape the Uzbek capital after the devastating 1966 earthquake. In neighboring Kazakhstan, prominent Soviet-era buildings in Almaty are protected through national and local heritage registers. Turkmenistan has also gained international recognition for ancient sites such as Merv and Nisa, along with traditions of carpet weaving and horse breeding. Yet Ashgabat’s 20th-century architecture remains largely absent from this system of recognition. This has taken on added urgency because some of the buildings that tell the story of modern Ashgabat are already disappearing. [caption id="attachment_56051" align="aligncenter" width="1774"] Image: TCA, Stephen M. Bland[/caption] In August 2026, turkmen.news reported the demolition of several buildings near Ashgabat’s 30th microdistrict. Some were residential blocks. Although some occupants received replacement apartments, other families objected to the relocation terms. In February, the former building of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography on Azadi Street was also demolished. At different times, it had housed a court and the Cultural Heritage Center. An additional floor and marble cladding had already changed its appearance, although some neoclassical elements survived. Once a building has been demolished, its architecture can be studied only through archives and photographs. For Ashgabat, this is particularly significant because much of the city visible today emerged from one of the worst disasters in its history. The City After the Earthquake The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake struck on the night of October 6, destroying or severely damaging much of the city. The capital had to be largely rebuilt. Architectural historian Ruslan Muradov writes that postwar reconstruction began with two-story brick apartment buildings designed to meet higher seismic standards. Their facades featured decorative plasterwork and carved wooden elements on the loggias, or recessed balconies. New residential blocks were organized around shared courtyards and greenery. In the 1950s, the Academy of Sciences, the railway station, Turkmen State University, theaters, administrative buildings, and new housing transformed the city center. From the 1960s through the 1980s, hotels, public buildings, and residential districts added another architectural layer. Behind this architecture was the everyday life of several generations. Courtyards became extensions of apartments, while institutions and shops occupied the ground floors. The postwar city gradually became an ordinary, lived-in urban environment. Its surviving buildings still offer clues to how Ashgabat recovered after 1948. They show how seismic risk changed construction, how the climate influenced housing design, and how planners used the spaces between buildings. But unlike some neighboring capitals, Ashgabat has no publicly available inventory identifying the most significant examples of its postwar architecture. The time available to document them is shrinking. [caption id="attachment_56053" align="alignnone" width="1774"] Image: TCA, Stephen M. Bland[/caption] Turkmenistan’s Heritage Focus Turkmenistan has five properties on the World Heritage List. Ancient Merv, Kunya-Urgench, and the Parthian Fortresses of Nisa make up three of them. The other two are transnational properties, the Silk Roads: Zarafshan-Karakum Corridor and the Cold Winter Deserts of Turan. Another nine sites are on the country’s Tentative...