[Analysts expect Nazarbayev, who also will continue to hold the title of “Leader of the Nation,” to remain the most powerful person in Kazakhstan even after he steps down. His effort to do so will be watched closely in the region, not least by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is constitutionally required to leave his post in 2024.]
By
Anton Troianovski
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Kazakhstan's
president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, seen in Brussels on
Oct.
19, 2018. (Olivier Matthys/AP)
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Nazarbayev has ruled Kazakhstan, Central
Asia’s largest country, since it became an independent state with the collapse
of the Soviet Union. On Tuesday, he said in a nationally televised address that
after nearly 30 years in power, it was time to leave the presidency.
But Nazarbayev, 78, said he would remain head
of the country’s security council, leaving him with broad influence over
Kazakhstan’s security apparatus. Senate Chairman Kassym-Jomart Tokayev will
take over as president until the next election, currently scheduled for 2020.
“I’ll remain with you,” Nazarbayev said. “The
concerns of the country and the people will remain my concerns.”
Kazakh Deputy Foreign Minister Roman
Vasilenko, in a phone interview from the capital, Astana, said: “The now-former
president wants to ensure the smoothest transition of power. The main principles of his domestic and foreign policy will remain intact.”
Analysts expect Nazarbayev, who also will
continue to hold the title of “Leader of the Nation,” to remain the most
powerful person in Kazakhstan even after he steps down. His effort to do so
will be watched closely in the region, not least by Russian President Vladimir
Putin, who is constitutionally required to leave his post in 2024.
“What happened here is essentially a change
in the signage,” said Talgat Mamyrayimov, a political scientist based in the
Kazakh city of Almaty. Nazarbayev “will continue to rule the country.”
But Nazarbayev’s resignation comes at a time
of flux in Central Asia, adding more political uncertainty to the demographic
and geopolitical change sweeping the region’s former Soviet republics. Russian officials
have voiced concerns about what they describe as growing nationalism and
Western influence in Kazakhstan, stoking speculation about the possibility of
pro-Kremlin separatist movements in Kazakhstan’s more ethnically Russian north.
China has been expanding its political and economic influence across Central
Asia, seeing Kazakhstan as pivotal to its massive One Belt, One Road global
infrastructure program.
Underscoring that geopolitical balancing act,
Nazarbayev noted in his speech Tuesday that Tokayev had studied in Moscow and
spoke good English and Chinese.
Nazarbayev talked to Putin by phone Tuesday,
the Kremlin said, illustrating their close personal relationship. But
Nazarbayev also has sought to balance Russia’s longtime dominance by drawing in
Chinese investment and building ties with the West. In 2017, he ordered the
official script of the Kazakh language to be switched from Cyrillic to Latin,
an expensive undertaking that infuriated some Russian officials.
Nazarbayev has sought to modernize his
oil-and-gas-rich nation’s economy, even building Astana virtually from scratch
in the northern Kazakh steppe. But his domestic leadership has been decidedly
authoritarian, with political dissent and media freedoms severely limited.
“On the ruins of the U.S.S.R., we managed to
build a successful Kazakh state with a modern market economy, and to create
peace and stability inside multiethnic and multireligious Kazakhstan,”
Nazarbayev said in his speech.
Analysts expect Nazarbayev to pick a
successor who would then win a tightly controlled election. Mamyrayimov, the
political scientist, said he viewed Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter, Dariga
Nazarbayeva, as a favorite to take over as president.
But with Kazakhstan’s demographics rapidly
changing, more nationalist, religious or pro-Western groups could pose a
challenge to Nazarbayev’s succession plan. The number of ethnic Kazakhs, whose
language is related to Turkish and who are largely Muslim, has rapidly grown.
The share of ethnic Russians, whose numbers roughly equaled those of the
Kazakhs when the Soviet Union fell in 1991, has sharply fallen.
“Total state control in our country will most
likely strengthen in order to clear the political field of potential
competitors,” Mamyrayimov said.
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