Paper short abstract:

This paper is an attempt to understand the Kazakh diaspora’s activism during and before January of 2022 events called ‘Bloody January’, and the overall diaspora’s attitude towards political development of homeland. The paper uses observations of Kazakh diaspora activism in Europe and Turkey cases.

Paper long abstract:

Diaspora is believed to have a certain capacity to impact political processes in their original homelands through diaspora activism, mobilization, and bring democracy. The literature that looks at diaspora political activism perceived it as diaspora actions related to their country or place of origin, which are non-democracies or there is a struggle for independence, sovereignty. Brutal events, revolutions, uprisings, emergencies play the role of triggers of diaspora mobilization.

The beginning of January of 2022 for Kazakhstan became one of the darkest pages in the history of independence. The peaceful rallies against the policy of the ruling authorities turned to violence and looting that kept people in fear and feeling of helplessness. Demands expressed during rallies included social-economic, as well as political claims. However, the reasons and nature of the January events are still in debate and discussion.

In this period of turbulence in Kazakhstan, the Kazakh diaspora mobilized and tried to help and support their co-ethnics. In this sense, this paper is an attempt to better understand the Kazakh diaspora’s activism during and before January of 2022 events called ‘Bloody January’, and the overall diaspora’s attitude towards political development of homeland. It seeks to understand the factors of mobilization, the types, the motivation, and the barriers for the diaspora’s activism. Moreover, one of the aims of this study is to advance understanding of the complexity of the relations between Kazakhstan and its diaspora and make input to broaden the literature on diaspora issues in the Central Asia region as interaction between post-socialist states in Central Asia and their diasporas remain understudied.

The paper uses observations from the cases of Kazakh diaspora activism in Europe and Turkey. The study is mostly based on a qualitative method of data analysis. Using media publications and social media of diaspora organizations and influencers the article tents to answer the main research question of the study: how and why did Kazakh diaspora mobilize during the January events in Kazakhstan?

Paper short abstract:

This study examines the content analyze of COVID-19 ‘Fakes’ on Social Media in Kazakhstan. 149 fact-check materials will provide analysis of the characteristics of COVID-19 ‘fakes’ in comparison to other news materials in terms of format, distribution channels, and distribution frequency.

Paper long abstract:

This study examines the content analyze of COVID-19 ‘Fakes’ on Social Media in Kazakhstan. For analysis, selected 149 fact-check materials on the Factcheck.kz website, of which every third was, selected for content analysis. In total, analyzed 149 fact-check materials on the Factcheck.kz website, of which every third was selected for content analysis. 48 materials in total were included in the sample.

The website Factcheck.kz implemented in Kazakhstan in 2017 by the International Journalism Center MediaNet with the support of the Soros Kazakhstan Foundation. Factcheck.kz is a fundamentally independent fact-checking project, not related to from political and other «parties». Priority in the work is always given to preservation of objectivity and impartiality. Any person, media and organizations can check the reliability of published information. The object of the research is only the voiced facts, but not the judgments, assumptions and forecasts. The research will provide analysis of the characteristics of COVID-19 ‘fakes’ in comparison to other news materials in terms of format, distribution channels, and distribution frequency.

Keywords: Kazakhstan, fact checking, journalism, COVID-19, Factcheck.kz

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on a database of protest events and government responses to them in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, this paper explores why the regimes sometimes chose to respond to protests with concessions and why protests in Uzbekistan were the most likely to win concessions.

Paper long abstract:

The assumption that nondemocratic governments are unresponsive to protest remains widely held, but rarely investigated. My doctoral research challenges prevailing assumptions through an investigation of the response of Central Asian governments to street protest and seeks to understand why these governments sometimes respond to protest with concessions.

Using Protest Event Analysis (PEA), I have constructed a dataset of protest events and government responses to them in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, between 2015 and 2019. This data generates two key findings. Firstly, protests were sometimes met with concessions in all three cases. Whilst these concessions were almost always minor and never involved significant systemic reform, protestors could secure real, tangible benefits from their governments. Secondly, whilst protest events were less frequent in Uzbekistan, when they did occur, they were substantially more likely to win concessions than protests in either Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan.

My research tests the plausibility of a novel theoretical framework to account for these findings. When responding to protests, governments consider two timeframes simultaneously. In the short term, protests are a potential crisis that need to be brought to an end as quickly as possible, either through repression or the granting of concessions or a combination of the two. In the long term, governments seek to generate and maintain support from both the political elite and the population in general. Concessions can be a means to achieve this whilst open repression risks creating the appearance of incompetence (Guriev and Treisman, 2019).

With a long timeframe, protests can function as a mechanism of communication between state and society, allowing the government to identify and respond to popular demands as part of a long-term survival strategy. I hypothesise that Uzbekistan was more likely to offer concessions because it had fewer alternative information mechanisms. This echoes the findings of work on the response to rural protest in mainland China (Lorentzen, 2013).

Popular mobilisation has the potential to bring down presidents, as it has three times in Kyrgyzstan, but it also presents them with an opportunity to monitor and respond to popular opinion. Protest may thus, somewhat paradoxically, play a stabilising function whilst representing an immediate crisis.

Paper short abstract:

Kazakhstan is facing the challenges that could be addressed only if there is political stability. The events in January 2022 urged President Tokayev to propose political, economic and societal reforms. Will those reforms help to build a “dynamic” mode of political stability of the “New Kazakhstan”?

Paper long abstract:

Three decades after gaining its independence Kazakhstan is at the crossroads again. The post-Soviet era is finally ending: there are generational changes both within the political elite and throughout entire society; there is a particular international environment raising structure-agency question; there are the tasks to be fulfilled and the problems inherited from the recent past none of which could be tackled effectively without political stability. The events in Kazakhstan in January 2022 actualized all these even more.

The case of Kazakhstan after January 2022 shall help us to problematize the notion of ‘political stability’ as the absence of changes rather than the capacity of a system to withstand internal and external shocks. It shall help to explain the circumstances of and the rationale behind the particular mode of political stability maintained in Kazakhstan so far.

The paper then discusses how the events of January 2022 and their causes are seen in Kazakhstan, what kind of discourses they emanating and, most importantly, what the response of the system is. The author examines the reforms in political, economic and social spheres initiated by President Tokayev. As such reforms may be sustainable and successful only if they will result in transformation of a “static” mode i.e., that of prevention of internal shocks from emerging into a “dynamic” one, i.e. management of the shocks when they emerge, the author evaluates critically each step of the reforms in terms of its “transformative” capacity.

Keywords: political stability, “dynamic” stability, “static” stability, Kazakhstan’s political reforms, January 2022 in Kazakhstan