Kazakhstan’s recent “Turkification” steps …
Nursultan Nazarbayev has sought to break the Russian presence since Kazakhstan’s independence, according to Turanians. But it had to be with deep, quiet and really rational strategies. According to researcher Burak Chalishkan, population, economy and nuclear weapons were the main problems. It diversified its economy, made the Turks the dominant power in terms of population, and rented the Soviet military bases for certain periods.
Many changes it has made in recent years has made it the leading country of Turkification in Central Asia.
In 2017, it suspended Russian TV due to problems reflected in the media as a wage dispute. In the same year, he took steps to switch from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabet. The alphabet of 31 letters has already been published. In 2018, the name of the South Kazakhstan province, where the tomb of Hodja Ahmet Yesevi and Ahmet Yesevi Turkish-Kazakh University, was changed to “Turkistan”. In 2019, the decree on printing banknotes and coins using both Kazakh and Russian in their design was signed by Nazarbayev. Important names of Kazakh and Turkish history were included in the coins. In the same year, China allowed ethnic Kazakhs from the Muslim population, who were detained in camps under the name of “re-education,” to leave their Chinese citizenship and migrate to Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan is carrying out many studies to return to its essence. In doing so, it does not neglect to appear “neutral”, does not say that there is a massacre in East Turkistan, does not stand against Russia, does not criticize the United States, and does not take a direct attitude as a country in Azerbaijan-Armenia conflicts. The state builds its policy entirely on this.
For Turanists, Nazarbayev is a leader who strives to create the Turkish Union. This is a subject for discussion, of course, but what appears to be; Nazarbayev first tries to ensure the independence of his own lands and Turks his own lands. After his resignation in 2019, it is unknown if the 80-year-old leader’s life span is enough, even though he still controls everything.
