ULI453U-RUSSIA, CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASIA
Chapter 4: Contemporary Politics in Central Asia
Introduction
One of the main events in world politics at the end of the 20th century was the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the republics’ independence that made up it. However, contrary to popular belief, the independence process had been surprisingly strange in Central Asia. In this sense, the difference between the Central Asian states and any other sovereign country is the incredible weakness of pro- independence movements throughout the region.
At the March 1991 referendum on the union’s future, while the voters in Baltics and Georgia supported their countries’ independence, nine out of ten voters in Central Asia indicated their desire to preserve the union. In this sense, due to the lack of both popular and elite support, Central Asian states were the last states to declare independence. Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan declared their independence in the fall of 1991. Kazakhstan announced its independence only a week after the Soviet Union officially disbanded on December 8th.
After proclaiming independence in 1991, the Central Asian republics have followed the process of social, political, and economic transformation specific to each country. For instance, while Kyrgyzstan was striving towards rapid democratization in the 1990s, over time, the country showed a tendency towards authoritarianism. After the revolutions that took place in the country in 2005 and 2010, hopes for a return to the path of democratization have bloomed twice. Another feature that distinguishes Kyrgyzstan from other Central Asian countries is that it was the first country to initiate structural reforms to facilitate the free market economy’s development.
Political Transformations and Regimes
With the completion of the independence process, the newly independent Central Asian republics entered a period of the transformation process, which had been started to a large extent by the political elites of the former Soviet Union. This process, which is also called ‘transition process,’ in the newly independent Central Asian republics, has proceeded in democratization, marketization, and state-building/nation-building. Central Asia stands out as a prolonged transforming region compared to other former Soviet regions. The fact that most former leaders of the republican structures of the Communist Party of Soviet Union became presidents of the newly independent republics and stayed in power for an extended period and that the Soviet state tradition could not be abandoned at once were the main reasons why this process proceeded at a slow pace and produced such results.
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, known as the most reformist and liberal countries, had made in the early 1990s significant strides in terms of creating a constitution based on the separation of powers, forming a democratic government, holding free elections, and creating an
independent judiciary, a functioning parliament and a civilized society at modern and international standards. However, afterward, Kazakhstan had made no effort in this direction, instead moved towards authoritarian rule.
Due to the country’s gradual movement to an authoritarian system and failure to fix the moribund economy, Kyrgyzstan entered a difficult period during which two revolutions took place in 2005 and 2010, respectively. After the second Tulip revolution, the country continued on the path of democratization. It showed slow but positive dynamics in this direction. The country is in the group of emerging democracies with the structures and the potential to develop over time into full democracies.
Throughout the whole period of independence, the smallest political change was observed in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
In the case of Tajikistan, although hopes for political reforms rose in the post-Soviet period, the country has faced so many obstacles in its democratization path both in the short and long term. For instance, the civil war between 1992 and 1997 caused a decline in the pro- democratic changes and an emergence of non-democratic institutions. The country currently remains in the hybrid regimes group that combines elements of both democratic and autocratic political systems.
Political Systems-Forms of Government
In the first years of independence, Kazakhstan had a political system that included elements of both parliamentary and presidential systems. However, in 1995, the country adopted its new constitution, which provided the basis of the authoritarian presidential system that is still valid in the country. Currently, Kazakhstan is governed by a powerful presidential system. The president and the government exercise executive power, legislative power by the government and the parliament, and judicial power exercised by the Supreme Court, whose chairperson and the Senate elects judges at the president’s proposal. The president has the authority to appoint and dismiss the prime minister and members of the government. He/she is elected by the people for five years and serves for at most two five-year terms. However, this restriction had not been applied to the country’s first president.
In Kyrgyzstan, the first constitution adopted in 1993 had led to the formation of a presidential system that granted important powers to the parliament. After the second Tulip revolution, the provisional government in the country held a referendum on a new constitution, which transferred most of the presidential powers to an expanded parliament and established limits to prevent a single party from dominating the political system. Thus, the 2010 constitution laid the basis of a parliamentary system. The current political system in the country is shaped within this framework. When evaluated in terms of conventional classification, the new government form would be mixed presidential-parliamentary or semi-presidential. However,
most experts define it as a parliamentary system as the president’s powers shifted to parliament. In this sense, Kyrgyzstan is the only country that has a parliamentary system as a form of governance.
The other three republics, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan, embrace presidential systems varying degrees similar to that of Kazakhstan. In Uzbekistan, the first constitution adopted in 1992 created a separation of powers among a strong presidency, the parliament, and the judiciary.
Turkmenistan has a pure presidential system in which the president holds absolute power. This is evidenced by the fact that the president serves as a head of state and acts through a directly subordinate Cabinet of Ministers and exercises the legislative initiative and right to issue decrees and orders. Besides, the legislature’s constitutional amendments in 2016 permit the current president to remain in office indefinitely if he continues to win the elections.
In Tajikistan, the president also has broad appointment and dismissal powers, and decree making authority. A popular vote directly elects the president for a 7-year term for a maximum of two terms. However, like in Turkmenistan, changes to the constitution in 2016 allows the current president, as the ‘Leader of the Nation,’ to run for an unlimited number of terms.
Parliaments
Currently, in Kazakhstan, parliament consists of two chambers; a lower house, the Majlis, is composed of 107 deputies, 98 of whom are elected based on territorial constituencies with a single region %7 threshold and nine by the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan, which is composed of the representatives of ethnic groups living in the country; an upper house, the Senate, consists of 49 members; 2 senators from each region, the major cities of Almaty and Shymkent and the capital city of Nursultan. Moreover, each chamber has exclusive and independent competences. Parliament already has some instruments available to control executive power, including granting consent for key officials’ appointments, including the prime minister, and approving all legislation initiated by the government or the president.
Like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan’s Oliy Majlis consists of a lower house, the legislative chamber-Qonunchilik Palatasy, and an upper house, the Senate. The Qonunchilik Palatasy is composed of 150 deputies elected based on territorial constituencies. The Senate has 100 members; 6 senators are elected from each territorial subdivision by the deputies of local representative bodies of provinces, the capital city, and Karakalpakstan, and the president appoints 16 among highly respective citizens with remarkable achievements and extensive experiences in science, art, literature, industry and other state and social fields. In the process of forming a government, the parliament has the authority to consider and approve, upon
the nomination of the president, nominee of the prime minister. However, upon the nomination of the prime minister, the president can approve members of the Cabinet of Ministers.
In Tajikistan, the Assembly of Representative – the Majlisi Namoyandagon and the National Assembly-the Majlisi Milli form bicameral Majlisi Oli. Of the 63 members of the Majlisi Namoyandagon, 22 are elected under a proportional closed-list system within a single nationwide constituency. The remaining 41 deputies are elected in single-mandate constituencies under a majoritarian system, with a %5 electoral threshold. The Majlisi Milli is composed of 33 members. The deputies of local majlises elect 25 and 8 are appointed directly by the president. The laws are adopted by the Majlisi Namoyandagon and presented to the Majlisi Milli for approval; only the Majlisi Namoyandagon has the power to adopt the state budget and control over its execution.
Unlike these three republics, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan have unicameral parliaments. Turkmenistan’s parliament, the Mejlis, comprises Turkmenistan’s parliament, the Mejlis, comprises 125 deputies who are elected based on territorial constituencies of rough parity of electors. In Turkmenistan, there is no prime minister position. The president serves as the head of government and acts through a directly subordinate Cabinet of Ministers.
In Kyrgyzstan, the parliament, the Jogorku Kenesh, is composed of 120 deputies elected under a proportional basis with a %7 threshold. No party is allowed to hold more than 65 seats. The Jogorku Kenesh plays a crucial role in the government’s formation process, which is the executive body’s highest body and headed by the prime minister.
Political Parties
In Kazakhstan, the Socialist Party, formed by the communist nomenklatura, attempted to redirect the country towards social democratic values. In Kyrgyzstan, the Democratic Movement of Kyrgyzstan (DMK), formed in 1990, set itself to develop a democratic society and consolidate its independence. The opposition parties were outlawed, the representatives were harassed, and the government exiled their leaders.
In Turkmenistan, the Communist Party changed its name to the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan (DPT), and the Peasant’s Justice Party, a government-sponsored party, was established. Others were banned.
Like in other Central Asian countries, in Tajikistan, political parties’ creation began in the late 1980s. However, opposition parties’ appeal to extreme and radical forms of political struggle for power led to the country’s civil war. The activities of political parties, which were accused of forcible capture of power, were suspended by a court’s decision. New political parties and
movements soon started to appear, and the prohibition on the parties’ activities was removed.
By the end of the first decade of independence, all the leaders, except Saparmurat Niyazov, had embarked upon forming their reliable parties backing them. Niyazov supported this idea from the start. While Askar Akayev and Nursultan Nazarbayev tried to achieve this by getting their daughters to organize pro-governmental parties, Islam Karimov formed four avowedly pro-governmental parties.
Elites and Elite Transformation
Once the Soviet Union dissolved, all the former First Secretaries of the Communist Parties, with the exception of Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan, became the new presidents of newly independent Central Asian republics. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, Uzbek President Islam Karimov, and Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov had remained helm for 28 years, for 14 years, for 25 years, and 15 years respectively.
In Tajıkistan, following the first president Rahmon Nabiyev was ousted in 1992, Emamoli Rahmon was elected to the post in 1994 and has remained president of the country ever since.
In terms of economic reforms, while Nazarbayev, Akayev, and to some extent Rahmon had liberalized prices and trade policy and moved much further on privatization, Karimov and Niyazov resisted market transformation for much longer and had tried to retain many of the instruments of a command economy.
The power transition in the Central Asian republics followed three different paths. First, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan experienced opaque power transition processes during which two countries witnessed their presidents’ sudden death and their substitution by regime insiders. Second, Kazakhstan experienced a different but similar handover. The president resigned and was substituted by the former government’s member. In this sense, the third way of power transition occurred after the political unrest in Kyrgyzstan in 2010 represents a different case.
Cultural and Language Policies
The Central Asian republics carry out several different cultural and language policies through the nation-building process. The purpose of these cultural and language policies is to breakaway with Soviet identity as a priority. To this end, the leaders focus on three issues; history, new alphabet and language policies, and national feelings of pride and legends.
Concerning the alphabet, while Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan acted very quickly and replaced their alphabet with the Latin alphabet in 1993, the issue had not come to the fore in Kyrgyzstan’s state policy Kazakhstan. Large number of the Russian population in Kyrgyzstan and
Kazakhstan and the fact that Russian is the (second) official language and its active use in social life made it difficult to change the alphabet. However, the first President of Kazakhstan, Nazarbayev, announced in his speech to the nation in December 2012 that he had instructed the government to switch to the Latin alphabet by 2025.
As for language, each country in Central Asia follows a different policy. According to Kazakhstan’s constitution, Kazakh is established as the state language. Russian is officially on equal grounds with the Kazakh language in state institutions and local-self administrative bodies. In Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyz is the state language, and Russian is the official language. Moreover, the constitution guarantees linguistic rights to the representatives of all nationalities living in Kyrgyzstan. In Uzbekistan, Uzbek is the state language, and the constitution ensures a respectful attitude toward other languages. In Turkmenistan, Turkmen is the official language, and the native language is guaranteed to all citizens of Turkmenistan. In the case of Tajikistan, the constitution defines Tajik as the state language and Russian as the language of communication between the nationalities.
In 2010, the ethnic conflict broke out between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in 2010 in south Kyrgyzstan, a country known as the most liberal and most vigorous democracy in Central Asia. The conflict cost several hundred human lives, displaced thousands of people, and caused thousands of Uzbeks to flee their homes. The very recent (February 2020) inter-ethnic violence between the Kazakhs and the Dungans in Kazakhstan has also cost peoples’ lives and caused a large number of Dungans to flee to Kyrgyzstan.