Central\nAsia\u2019s \u201cStans\u201d – Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan –\nthe west had looked upon them expectantly when the Soviet Union crashed, had\nhoped to welcome new members to the club of eventually well-founded\ndemocracies. The expectation, or rather, the hope was that they would develop\nin the same way as the Baltic states had. Fast forward to thirty years after\nthe Soviet sphere of influence started to crumble, and none of these countries\nare considered \u201cfree\u201d by Freedom House\u2019s \u201cfreedom in the world\u201d ranking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In most of the countries, former Communist Party functionaries took over after independence and have been ruling since (as is the case in Kazakhstan with Nursultan Nazarbayev), and Turkmenistan is only rivaled by North Korea and Eritrea in terms of lacking press freedom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course,\nthe region doesn\u2019t present the best environment for democracies to prosper.\nThough especially Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan possess large natural resources,\nthe area\u2019s proximity to conflicts and countries which terrorist organizations\noperate out of (such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and the broader Middle East)\nmeans that, when presented the choice, the central Asian republics will\ncommonly decide to put security first and move civil liberties further down the\nlist of priorities. Turkmenistan, for instance, decided to outlaw beards in an\neffort to fight Islamic extremism. To what extent this measure was effective\nis, to put it mildly, up to debate. However, despite Islamic terrorism ravaging\nin many of the neighboring regions, the central Asian -stans have, in fact,\nmanaged to stay largely peaceful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not so\npeaceful was the response of the Kazakh government to a 2011 strike of the\nstate-owned oil company\u2019s oil workers in Zhanaozen \u2013 which came to an end when\nstate security forces opened fire and killed at least 14 protesters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In\nTurkmenistan, former longtime leader Saparmurat Niyazov created a crazy cult of\npersonality around himself, insisting on being referred to as \u201cTurkmenbashi\u201d\n(leader of the Turkmen) and erecting golden statues of himself which turn with\nthe sun. He also published the \u201cRuhnama\u201d – a wild mixture of autobiography,\nrevisionist history, glorification of the Turkmen and their past, as well as\nspiritual and moral guidance. It was placed on the same level with the Quran,\nwas included in the school curriculum, distributed to all libraries,\nuniversities and government organizations, and Niyazov even went so far as to\ninclude tests on the book into the process of receiving one\u2019s driver\u2019s license.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Uzbekistan,\ntoo, ranks extremely lowly on freedom indices, with authoritarian governing\nstyles perfected in Soviet times and censorship being omnipresent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their\ndistance from the European Union and geographical as well as historical\ncloseness to Russia certainly also play a role in the difficult development of\nthe region. The only one of the countries that has any real foundation of\ndemocratic structures is Kyrgystan, the other nations remain autocratic, their\nrulers largely having taken over the structures of repression that were in\nexistence before the fall of the Soviet Union, while cutting back on social\nprograms as the redistribution within the Union had funded these social\nsecurity systems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After\nRussia regained strength following its relative weakness in the \u201890s and early\n2000s, it has been playing a significantly more assertive role in central Asia,\nserving as a very important trade partner to the republics, and exerting\npolitical influence over the region as well. Russia sees any right to do so, as\nit views the region as its own backyard. Furthermore, due to their historical\nconnection, it is more likely the central Asian republics are more open to\ncooperation with Russia than with other, more distant powers, and that Russia\nhas a higher interest in maintaining a pro-Russian attitude within these\ncountries than in Eastern Europe, which had been under Russian influence for\nshorter time and additionally was, and is, more exposed to the European Union\nand the West. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A new major\nplayer has emerged in the region, though: China, who, with their \u201cnew silk\nroad\u201d (belt and road initiative) has invested heavily into central Asia and in\nparticular the -stans\u2019 infrastructural development. However, for the same\nreasons that the West has faced difficulties implementing its interests, the\nRepublics of the region are cautious about China\u2019s involvement and sense it\nmore as a threat than a business opportunity, as is the case with Russia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the\nBaltic states have made a full economic recovery after breaking away from the\nUSSR and have now joined the EU, as have many of the eastern European countries\nformerly in the Soviet sphere of influence, central Asia remains an area\ntroubled by economic hardship, poverty and lack of democracy. The systems have\nmade a turnaround from \u201creally existing socialism\u201d to fully capitalist\nsocieties (and some of the former communist leaders now are some of the most\ndetermined capitalists), but the westerners\u2019 hope that this would go hand in\nhand with the development of democratic structures proved incorrect. In part,\nthis can be linked to the distance (physically and mentality-wise) of the west\nand democratic forms of government; the United States is pretty much on the\nother side of the world from Turkmenistan, Europe isn\u2019t exactly close either\nand historically didn\u2019t hold such power and ties with the region as did Russia.\nIn part, it can be attributed to the fact that while the Eastern European\ncountries had had experiences as independent states, the central Asian\nrepublics hadn\u2019t, and in part it can be attributed to pre-existing structures\nand norms within society and leadership which allowed for the transition from\nSoviet authoritarianism to nationalist authoritarianism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, the\ncountries grapple with dictators and face the risk of sliding into third-world\ncapitalism as it is common in many African countries, with an impoverished\npopulation and rampant corruption. It is evident that the West\u2019s approach to\nthe republics of central Asia following the collapse of the USSR was an\nincorrect one, as a quarter of a century later, the desired outcomes are yet to\narise. Maybe it\u2019s time to re-think. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eastern Europe has caught up with the west in terms of democracy and economy. But central Asia hasn’t, despite both coming out of the same Soviet system. Why is that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[117,8,54,22,9,118,10],"tags":[109,116,119,108,115,110,112,113,114],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-asia","category-china","category-dictatorship","category-europe","category-human-rights","category-international-relations","category-oppression","tag-asia","tag-censorship","tag-central-asia","tag-democracy","tag-freeom","tag-kazakhstan","tag-kyrgystan","tag-tadjikitstan","tag-turkmenistan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":708,"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-uncensored.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}