Transforming Discourses of Kazakhness and State Identity in President Tokayev’s New Kazakhstan

Flag of Kazakhstan. May 4, 2014. Photo by Radosław Drożdżewski. View license here.

By Emma Larson

Abstract: This article considers the extent to which official discourses of “Kazakhness” have changed in Kazakhstan’s official state identity since Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped down from the presidency in 2019. According to Marlene Laruelle, the Nazarbayev regime propagated a hybrid state identity that balanced understandings of Kazakhstan being “Kazakh” (a political entity for ethnically Kazakh people), Kazakhstani (a multiethnic nation at the crossroads of the Eurasian continent), and transnational (an outward-looking state interested in integrating into an increasingly globalized world). However, recent years have seen an intensification of popular discourses concerned with rooting Kazakhstan’s state identity more soundly into a singularly ethnonational paradigm that emphasizes the ethnically Kazakh underpinnings of the state.

The article uses three case studies (language politics, historical memory, and the state’s relationship to Islam) to consider the extent to which President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s post-Nazarbayev government has answered popular calls to increase the weight and importance given to ethnic Kazakhness in official discourses of Kazakhstan’s state identity. Each case study includes an exploration of relevant Nazarbayev-era policies and rhetoric before delving into the changes—or lack thereof—made by the Tokayev regime. The article finds that overall Tokayev has continued many of the same approaches adopted by Nazarbayev, despite slight changes towards ethnicization vis-à-vis language politics and historical memory, and away from ethnicization regarding the state’s relationship to Islam. The article’s sources include speeches given by Nazarbayev and Tokayev; governmental policies presented by the two presidents; monuments, memorials, and buildings constructed under each president; recent census data from Kazakhstan; and secondary-source articles that illustrate popular discourse surrounding notions of Kazakhness in Kazakhstan’s state identity.

Keywords: Kazakhstan, national identity, language politics, historical memory, Islamization

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On March 16, 2022, just months after the “Bloody January” events during which the Kazakhstani state violently repressed hundreds of anti-regime protestors who had mobilized in cities across the country, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev delivered his annual State of the Nation address to the people of Kazakhstan. On the one hand, Tokayev paid credence to the significant achievements that Kazakhstan has made in its thirty years of independence from the Soviet Union and thanked his presidential predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev for all that he had done to set the country on a positive post-independence path. On the other, he spoke directly to the way that the Bloody January protests “shook society” and demonstrated “the lasting value of independence and how important peace, stability, and harmony are.” Tokayev called for “unity,” stressing that only by coming together can the state move towards a new political order that Tokayev, in a symbolic break with the past, dubbed “the New Kazakhstan.”^[1]

The emphasis on unity in this State of the Nation speech—and in many other speeches given by Tokayev in recent years—is significant for it raises the question: unity around what? And for whom? Though Kazakhstan may be becoming more demographically unified, with census data from 2021 showing that ethnic Kazakhs make up 70.4 percent of the country’s population compared to 63.1 percent in 2009 and just 39.7 percent in 1991, there is yet no consensus as to the norms, values, and identifiers that signify what this increased “Kazakhness” means for the country’s state identity.^[2] As Marlene Laruelle explained in “The Three Discursive Paradigms of State Identity in Kazakhstan,” ethnic Kazakhness is only one aspect of the narrative that Kazakhstan’s post-Soviet governments have disseminated as they balance ethnic and civic attributes of nationhood.^[3] Yet, recent events, including former president Nursultan Nazarbayev’s 2019 resignation, the aforementioned 2022 Bloody January demonstrations, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, have spurred an intensification of popular discourse concerned with rooting Kazakhstan’s state identity more soundly in an ethnonational paradigm that emphasizes the ethnic Kazakh underpinnings of the state and uses decolonial frameworks to reimagine state identity.^[4]

To discern what the Tokayev regime means by its increasing references to Kazakhstan’s “unity” in light of these demographic and social changes, this article considers the extent to which official discourses of Kazakhstan’s state identity have changed since Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped down from the presidency in 2019. Using language politics, historical memory, and the state’s relationship towards Islam as three case studies, it compares the policies and rhetoric employed by both of independent Kazakhstan’s presidents to uncover the current state’s understanding of the identity that underlies Tokayev’s “New Kazakhstan.” It argues that although the Tokayev regime has made small shifts to emphasize ethnic Kazakhness in official discourses of state identity, especially regarding the Latinization of the Kazakh alphabet and reevaluations of Kazakhstan’s Soviet history, continuity with the previous regime and an emphasis on the non-ethnic underpinnings of the state remain the dominant forces driving the state identity of the Tokayev administration.

Language Politics

The rhetoric and policies surrounding language politics in Kazakhstan are particularly good means to track if and how the Tokayev regime’s state identity for Kazakhstan has diverged from that of its predecessor. As Michael Billig argued in Banal Nationalism, “language plays a vital role in the operation of ideology and in the framing of ideological consciousness” on both an individual and communal level.^[5] The official languages spoken in a state, especially a multiethnic and multilingual one, can thus be a “prime determinant of nationalist identity” due to the fact that “those speaking the same language are liable to claim a sense of national bond.”^[6]

Nazarbayev Era

Engaging with the potential for nationalist mobilization inherent to language use, political leaders in Kazakhstan have made changes to the country’s linguistic landscape in an attempt to construct a state identity that includes aspects of ethnic Kazakhness. These efforts began even before Kazakhstan gained independence when, in 1989, the Kazakh Communist Party passed a resolution declaring Kazakh the state language of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. After breaking from the Soviet Union in 1991, the Nazarbayev regime continued to use language to build a state identity that included attributes of ethnic Kazakhness by instituting policies that aimed to both increase the status of the Kazakh language and motivate more Kazakhstani citizens to become fluent in the constitutional language of the state. These policies, which included making Kazakh fluency a requirement for entering the civil service, legally increasing the proportion of public media broadcasted in Kazakh, and instituting Kazakh as an obligatory subject in all primary and secondary schools, have undoubtedly caused a rise in the number of Kazakhstani citizens fluent in Kazakh.^[7] Indeed, recent census data suggests that the number of Kazakh speakers in Kazakhstan has doubled since 1989, with 80.1 percent of Kazakhstan’s population claiming fluency in 2021.^[8] In as early as 2000, President Nazarbayev celebrated the increasing role that Kazakh played in the country’s language landscape by calling Kazakhstan a “Turkophone” country and deeming the language problem in Kazakhstan to be “resolved.”^[9]

Many Kazakhs, however, would vehemently disagree with Nazarbayev’s bold claim that language politics are no longer relevant in Kazakhstan, for in an attempt to avoid alienating the significant population of ethnic Russians living in the country, the Nazarbayev regime never failed to emphasize equality, multilingualism, and balance in both its policy and rhetoric regarding language use in Kazakhstan. Though efforts were made to increase the status and use of the Kazakh language, language politics writ large were understood by Nazarbayev’s government as a means to manifest civic attributes of state identity rather than ethnic Kazakh ones.^[10] Accordingly, Russian remains legally enshrined in Kazakhstan’s constitution as holding equal linguistic status in the state’s public and administrative affairs.^[11] It has furthermore been rhetorically legitimized as Kazakhstan’s language of interethnic communication, both in speeches delivered by Nazarbayev throughout his tenure as president and through policy efforts such as the 2012 “Trinity of Languages” project, which expressly demarcates Kazakh as the state language, Russian as the language of interethnic communication, and English as the language of the global economy.^[12] As current events such as Nazarbayev’s 2019 resignation, the 2022 Bloody January demonstrations in Kazakhstan, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 spur calls for an official state identity that more clearly relies upon an ethnonational paradigm of Kazakhness, many Kazakhs are beginning to view official legitimations of the Russian language in Kazakhstan as unacceptable and see the abandonment of Russian in favour of Kazakh as a means to unite the country around an ethnic Kazakh state identity that rejects the linguistic Russification of the past.^[13]

Tokayev Era

Despite demands to reject the use of Russian in Kazakhstan, the Tokayev regime has not made any significant changes to the state’s approach to language use in Kazakhstan, maintaining continuity with the prior regime’s aim to, as Tokayev said in 2023, “implement a balanced language policy” that “creates favorable conditions for representatives of various ethnic groups to use their mother tongues.”^[14] This balance is seen in the varying nature of the policies regarding language use in Kazakhstan that Tokayev has passed since entering office. For example, although a December 2021 amendment to the Law on Visual Information decreed that Russian translations no longer need to be provided in product advertising, Tokayev in October 2023 established an organization under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) that aims to promote the development of Russian in all CIS countries.^[15] The most symbolic manifestation of the Tokayev government’s balanced approach to language policy in Kazakhstan is a new law that would increase the legally mandated share of Kazakh-language media in television and radio programs from 50 to 70 percent that has remained stalled in parliament since being introduced by lawmakers in October 2023.^[16]

Given that official policies regarding language use in Kazakhstan have remained balanced, the Tokayev regime has used rhetorical shifts to signal an increased privileging of the Kazakh language and the ethnic Kazakh state identity associated with its use. For example, Tokayev has distanced himself from Nazarbayev’s practice of labeling Russian the language of interethnic communication and instead chooses to highlight the potential that Kazakh has to become the default language used between different ethnic groups. “I believe that the role of the Kazakh language as a state language will grow and the time will come when it becomes the language of interethnic communication,” Tokayev claimed in his first State of the Nation Address in 2019.^[17] Tokayev also tends to favor speaking and writing in Kazakh while propagating his own political messaging, marking a shift towards a Kazakh-only norm.^[18] Instituting this change domestically in speeches, Tokayev has also highlighted his preference for the Kazakh language abroad: at a routine meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in November 2023, Tokayev chose to use Kazakh instead of the customary Russian to deliver his opening remarks, signifying a desire to associate the Kazakh language with an official identity for Kazakhstan on an international stage.^[19]

Though these rhetorical moves suggest Tokayev’s interest in using language politics in Kazakhstan to highlight the ethnic Kazakh underpinnings of the state, he has never strayed from his firm belief that, as he said in an October 2022 speech, “it is unacceptable to use the Kazakh language for political games” and that “a balanced language policy is the only way we can achieve our goals.”^[20] The continuous attending to the need to find balance in language politics and the explicit aim to keep Kazakh outside of “political games” makes clear that Tokayev, like his predecessor, is wary of using language to institute a state identity that emphasizes ethnic Kazakhness and prefers to see language as means to push forward civic ideals in which the languages of all ethnic groups are recognized and supported by the state.

The Tokayev regime has, however, been slightly more forward in implementing a state identity for Kazakhstan that highlights ethnic Kazakh demands in its policies and rhetoric surrounding the Kazakh language’s written script. Historically an oral language, Kazakh was written in Arabic and Latin until 1940, when the Cyrillic alphabet was introduced as part of the Soviet Union’s shift towards Russification.^[21] Soviet leaders considered the use of the Cyrillic script for Kazakh to be a way to help Kazakhs learn Russian, a critical aspect of Soviet colonial incursions, and create symbolic coherence amongst the ethnically and linguistically diverse populations living throughout the Union Republics.^[22] In the post-Soviet space, many Kazakhs have begun to view replacing the Cyrillic script with a Latin one as a tangible means to not only shift away from Soviet-era policies, but also move towards an official state identity for Kazakhstan that highlights ethnic Kazakhs’ Turkic heritage over their Russified past by bringing the country’s language in line with the script used by most the Turkophone world.^[23]

Concrete moves to Latinize Kazakh first began under former president Nazarbayev, with a 2017 decree that provided an official version of a Latin alphabet for Kazakh and called for the transition to the new script to be completed by 2025.^[24] However, rather than emphasizing Latinization as a break with the Soviet past and a means to highlight Turkic attributes within Kazakhstan state’s identity, Nazarbayev described a Latin script for Kazakh as a modernizing force that would integrate the country into the world economy. “For the sake of our children we must make this decision [to Latinize Kazakh],” he said in 2012, “[as it will] encourage the modernization of the Kazakh language.”^[25] Furthermore, Nazarbayev’s discussions of Kazakh’s Latinization maintained the importance that Russian and its alphabet should continue to play in Kazakhstan, as he insisted that the country should “treat the Russian language and Cyrillic as carefully as the Kazakh language [for] it is known that mastering Russian is a historical advantage for our nation.”^[26]

Since coming to power, the Tokayev regime has made a series of changes to the policies and rhetoric surrounding Nazarbayev’s Latinization plans that illustrate how a Latin alphabet for Kazakh can be used to increase attributes of Kazakhness in official discourses of Kazakhstan’s state identity. For example, in 2021, Tokayev formally rejected the alphabet instituted by Nazarbayev’s 2017 policy and presented a new version of a Latinized script for Kazakh.^[27] Critically, this new script brings Kazakh in line with the Common Turkic Alphabet used by other Turkophone countries, suggesting that the Tokayev government is engaging with the potential for Latinization to signal a broader rapprochement with the rest of the Turkic world.^[28] Tokayev has further distanced himself from Nazarbayev’s Latinization by rhetorically emphasizing how Latinization will preserve Kazakhstan’s cultural past.^[29] Tokayev’s new connection between the Latinization of the Kazakh alphabet and the preservation of Kazakh heritage may be a response to the fact that Latinization in general in Kazakhstan is becoming more ethnically oriented among a population aiming to push forward a state identity towards attributes of ethnic Kazakhness.^[30]

Another change that Tokayev has made to Nazarbayev’s Latinization has been to push back the end date for the full transition to a Latin alphabet to 2031, saying in a speech in 2023 that the Nazarbayev regime “made many serious mistakes trying to solve [the problem of Latinization] as quickly as possible.”^[31] On the one hand, slowing down the transition to a Latin script may hint at hesitancy on the part of the Tokayev regime to follow through with a Latinization that is increasingly perceived as emphasizing ethnic Kazakh demands. However, that this Latinization is now being done with the intent to preserve Kazakh culture and highlight Kazakhstan’s connection to the Turkophone world does demonstrate that the Tokayev government understands and is utilizing the potential of Latinization to move the country away from its Russified past and towards an ethnically Kazakh paradigm of state identity.

Still, the contradictory nature of his policies and rhetoric makes it difficult to determine whether Tokayev has used language politics in Kazakhstan to move the state’s identity either towards or away from ethnic Kazakhness. Like Nazarbayev before him, Tokayev and his government continue to be aware of the potential that language has for nationalist mobilization yet remain hesitant to threaten the existing balance between civic and ethnic markers of state identity found in Kazakhstan’s current approach to language politics. While answering public calls to rhetorically legitimize the Kazakh language on both the domestic and international stage, Tokayev continues to maintain, as he said in 2021, that “the widespread use of the Kazakh language does not mean any restriction on the use of other languages, especially Russian.”^[32]

Historical Memory

Language politics seems to be a means through which Tokayev has aimed to balance ethnic and civic attributes of nationhood in official discourses of Kazakhstan’s state identity. In other areas, however, he has been even bolder in rewriting state-sanctioned narratives of Kazakhstan’s identity to highlight the ethnically Kazakh underpinnings of the state. One of the most pertinent examples is the Tokayev government’s use of historical memory. As Jack Eller explains in From Culture to Ethnicity in Conflict, a sense of shared history is a critical part of the group identity shared by members of a given nation, suggesting that the norms and constraints placed on historical memory can directly influence the kind of nation that states claim to represent.^[33] Fully aware of the important role that historical memory plays in nation-building, the Nazarbayev regime, in the ideological vacuum left behind by the absence of Soviet ideology, went to great lengths to craft a history for Kazakhstan that legitimized the country’s independence by pushing forward an inclusive state identity that recognized the right of all ethnic groups in Kazakhstan to find a place in the state’s shared past.

Nazarbayev Era

As a result, the history employed by Nazarbayev in the construction of this historical memory was an overwhelmingly ancient one that stayed away from the potential that more recent political history has to sow divisions between different ethnic groups living in Kazakhstan. For example, in his 2018 essay “Seven Facets of the Great Steppe,” Nazarbayev harkened back to the Scythian Empire that existed across the Eurasian steppe from the seventh to third centuries BCE to assert a primordial connection between contemporary Kazakhstan and the great and powerful nomadic societies that once occupied the country’s territory.^[34] Another example of how the Nazarbayev regime used distant history in its construction of Kazakhstan’s historical memory is a speech from 2015 meant to honor the 550^th anniversary of the founding of the Kazakh Khanate.^[35] In the speech, Nazarbayev claims that “the spirits of our brave ancestors, who left a vast homeland to their descendants, have since [1465] inspired a major patriotic revival among our people…and filled their hearts with a sense of pride for their national history.”^[36]

Comfortable speaking to Kazakhstan’s ancient past, Nazarbayev tread much more carefully in discussions surrounding the country’s more recent Soviet history. He specifically aimed to not frame Soviet power as an ethnically Russian colonizing force that oppressed an ethnically Kazakh nation in a way that would suggest the right of ethnic Kazakhs to claim primacy within the state identity of a now independent Kazakhstan. The Nazarbayev regime thus instituted what the political scientist James Richter has called a strategy of “abnegation” and largely ignored the repressive elements of the Soviet regime.^[37] When discussing the Soviet past, Nazarbayev instead chose to highlight how the multiethnic makeup of Kazakhstan, which he described as “a way of life, a moral imperative, an invaluable wealth, and an asset of our state,” resulted from Soviet policies.^[38] In moments where repressive aspects of Kazakhstan’s Soviet history were brought into official state discourse, such as in the 1997 decree to make May 31 a Day of Remembrance for Victims of Repression or the 2017 unveiling of a monument to the victims of Soviet-era famines, the Nazarbayev regime made efforts to emphasize how the Soviet Union’s policies affected all Kazakhstani citizens equally and were never meant to intentionally harm a specifically Kazakh ethnic group.^[39]

Tokayev Era

Rejecting Nazarbayev’s abnegation of the crimes of the Soviet past, bottom-up efforts to re-remember the parts of Soviet history that the previous regime deemed unsuitable for official discourse have increased dramatically in recent years.^[40] This aim is directly connected to broader desires to reshape Kazakhstan’s state identity in ways that recognize the harm that ethnic Kazakhs suffered at the hands of the Soviet Union and highlight the ethnically Kazakh nation’s capacity to survive.^[41] Tokayev, driven by a belief that “each nation must write its own history without succumbing to the influence of alien ideology,” has made concrete steps towards reconsidering Kazakhstan’s Soviet past in ways that answer calls for the construction of a new historical memory for Kazakhstan.^[42] Indeed, he has lamented that Nazarbayev made “balanced decisions” when considering Kazakhstan’s history and says that it is time for a “history written from the perspective of national interests [that will] contribute to the awakening of national self-awareness.”^[43]

The best example of the Tokayev regime’s use of Soviet history to increase attributes of ethnic Kazakhness within Kazakhstan’s state identity is the 2020 formation of the State Commission for the Full Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions. In a clear move away from Nazarbayev’s glossing over of the traumas of the Soviet past, the commission consists of eleven working groups tasked with reevaluating Soviet archives, declassifying previously unavailable documents, and rehabilitating various Kazakh figures repressed, deported, or executed by Soviet forces.^[44] As of December 2023, the commission had rehabilitated 311,000 victims and declassified 2.6 million archival records.^[45]

Tokayev’s use of history to highlight Kazakhness in official discourses of Kazakhstan’s state identity is also seen in specific rhetorical moments in which Tokayev speaks about historical events through the lens of Kazakh consciousness. One relevant example is how Tokayev has incorporated the history of the early twentieth-century independence movement Alash Orda into reflections of what he calls the “consolidation of our statehood.”^[46] Aiming to disband Russian colonial forces and institute an autonomous Kazakh government, Alash Orda perpetuated a Kazakh state identity rooted in an ethnonational paradigm that expressly rejected both Russian political power and the Russification inherent to the Russian Empire’s and Soviet Union’s imperial projects.^[47] Tokayev has labeled the leaders of Alash Orda “outstanding people” who “worked hard to promote the idea of ​​independence,” lauding the expressly anti-colonial historical figures and pushing forward a state identity for Kazakhstan that finds legitimacy in the ethnically Kazakh underpinnings of the state.^[48]

Another historical event that Tokayev has instituted as part of a more ethnically Kazakh state identity is the Jeltoqsan protest of 1986, during which hundreds of Kazakh students were violently repressed by Soviet forces after demonstrating against Moscow’s decision to replace the Kazakh Republic’s Communist Party leader with an ethnic Russian.^[49] Asking his government to “appreciate and popularize the courage and feat of Jeltoqsan’s heroes in every possible way,” Tokayev has endorsed an understanding of Kazakhstan’s Soviet history that celebrates the Jeltoqsan protesters’ efforts to fight for ethnic Kazakh sovereignty within the identity of the state.^[50]

Despite making changes to his treatment of Kazakhstan’s Soviet history that emphasize the primacy of ethnic Kazakhness within the country’s state identity, Tokayev also maintains continuity with how the Nazarbayev regime related to the Soviet past in certain critical ways. For example, Tokayev remains deeply concerned with the need to depoliticize history and view tumultuous historical events with thoughtful consideration. In a speech celebrating thirty years of Kazakhstan’s independence, Tokayev said that “history should be studied by historians, not politicians” and warned against the divisions that occur when history is accompanied by “loud slogans and populism.”^[51] Tokayev’s desire to keep his treatment of the past unpolitical is seen in his continuation of the Nazarbayev norm to refuse to highlight how ethnic Kazakhs may have been specifically targeted by the Soviet Union’s most destructive policies. Tokayev has not, for example, labeled the Kazakh famine of 1930 to 1933 a genocide, even though 1.3 of the 1.5 million people it killed were ethnic Kazakhs.^[52]

The State’s Relationship to Islam

Despite aiming to do so without inciting divisions among the ethnically diverse population that makes up Kazakhstan, the Tokayev regime has clearly made new and conscious efforts to reconsider the country’s Soviet history in a way that emphasizes ethnic Kazakhness in official discourses of state identity. The same cannot be said for the regime’s relationship to the grassroots Islamic movements that have become an increasingly popular means through which Kazakhs are connecting to a pre-Soviet religious identity rooted in ethnic Kazakhness. Repressed by the Soviet government for most of the twentieth century, Islam in Kazakhstan has witnessed a large resurgence in popularity since the country gained independence in 1991. The number of mosques in the country has risen from 59 in 1989 to 2,693 in 2022, and census data from 2021 shows that 69.3 percent of Kazakhstani citizens identify as Muslim compared to just 47 percent in 1993.^[53]

Nazarbayev Era

Part of this increase in religiosity may be attributed to Nazarbayev-era efforts to use Kazakhstan’s Islamic heritage as part of the creation and consolidation of a state identity for Kazakhstan in the years immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Though Kazakhs’ nomadic lifestyle meant that the Islam they practiced was uniquely blended with elements of pre-Islamic rituals, Islam has been part of Kazakh cultural life since the seventh century.^[54] When the Soviet Union collapsed, nation-builders in Kazakhstan understood Kazakhs’ Islamic heritage as a means through which to both legitimize the existence of their independent country and reject secular, Soviet-era frameworks of Kazakhstan’s state identity.^[55] Taking advantage of religion’s nation-building potential, the Nazarbayev government embraced both the Kazakh Sufi and Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, adopting Islamic symbols in state monuments and architecture, endorsing an independent Kazakh muftiate, joining the Organization of Islamic Conference (which brands itself as the collective voice of the Muslim world), and accepting financial and educational resources from other Muslim countries like Turkey, Egypt, and Kuwait to open religious institutions and send Kazakhs on the hajj pilgrimage.^[56]

Despite attempts to incorporate Islam into official discourses of Kazakhstan’s state identity, the threat of Islamic extremism loomed large and the Nazarbayev regime remained wary of directly conflating Islam, and by association Kazakhness, with the state.^[57] As a result, Nazarbayev consistently stressed the role of religious values in general as a source of a unified state identity for Kazakhstan, and made statements and instituted policies that presented the country as a symbol of multireligious and multiethnic harmony rather than an expressly Muslim and Kazakh state.^[58] In a speech from 2006, for example, Nazarbayev praised Kazakhstan’s “consistent policy of ensuring tolerance [and] interreligious and interethnic unity for representatives of all groups who live in our country and make up the people of Kazakhstan” and celebrated how the country is able to “respect and nurture the best traditions of Islam and of other world and traditional religions while building a modern secular state.”^[59]

The clearest example of Nazarbayev’s desire to push forward an official identity for Kazakhstan that emphasized multireligious and multiethnic attributes over Islamic and Kazakh ones is the creation of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions. Held for the first time in 2003 and every three years thereafter in the aptly named Palace of Peace and Accord in Kazakhstan’s capital city, the Congress brings together representatives from seventeen of the world’s major religions to “search for common human landmarks in world and traditional forms of religion” and “achieve mutual respect and tolerance between religions, confessions, nations, and ethnic groups.”^[60] In a speech he delivered after being elected chairman of the Congress, Nazarbayev spoke to the unique and aspirational role that Kazakhstan could play in the pursuit of these goals due to the “unity of the people of our country, within which representatives of over one hundred and twenty nationalities and more than forty religious confessions live and work in peace and harmony.”^[61]

Tokayev Era

Despite the government’s efforts to craft an official state identity for Kazakhstan that paints the country as a haven for multi-religious harmony, calls to shift towards an ethnically Kazakh state identity are finding salience in Islamization, signifying an increasingly widespread connection between a religious Islamic identity and an ethnic Kazakh one.^[62] Indeed, public opinion polls show that the vast majority of ethnic Kazakhs in Kazakhstan identify as Muslim, and an increasing number explicitly want religion to play a larger role in the country’s political life, with public opinion surveys showing some Kazakhs going as far as to claim that it is “very important” for their government to adopt policies in line with Islamic Shari’a law.^[63]

Though the connection between an Islamic and Kazakh identity demonstrates the increased potential for Islam to be part of official state identity discourses that highlight ethnic Kazakhness, the Tokayev regime has maintained Nazarbayev’s attempts to depoliticize Islam and continues to understand the harmony of Kazakhstan’s diverse population as being one of the most—if not the singular most—important aspects of the state’s identity. Tokayev’s speech opening the 2022 Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, for example, explained that the success of a future Kazakhstan “largely depends on the solidarity of our multiethnic and multiconfessional nation and the peace and harmony in our land.”^[64] Even instances of Tokayev’s symbolic support for Islam, such as his widely covered pilgrimage to Mecca and public celebrations of the fast-breaking Ramadan meal, keep actual discussions of the Islamic faith far from considerations of Kazakhstan’s identity as a state, as the government continues to use religion as a means through which to institute an ethnically diverse and multi-religious state identity rather than an exclusively Kazakh and Islamic one.^[65]

In the past two years, Tokayev seems to be taking an even harder line against attempts to associate Islam with Kazakhstan’s state identity. For example, in October 2023, the government announced a ban on hijabs in schools, explicitly stating the need for Kazakhstan to remain a secular state.^[66] Tokayev’s moves away from an Islamic state identity for Kazakhstan are also seen in his response to the 2022 Bloody January protests. Blaming the violence on Islamic “radicals,” “bandits,” and “terrorists,” even though the demonstrations involved no signs of radical Islam, Tokayev explicitly associated Islam with the division of national unity and delegitimized the role that Islam has to play in a state identity rooted in harmonious diversity.^[67] “It is our duty to bring to justice all the bandits and terrorists involved in these bloody crimes,” Tokayev said in an address after the protests took place, and to “never again allow the peace and tranquility in our country to be disrupted.”^[68] By construing Islamic actors as outside forces working to divide and disarray the unanimity of an otherwise peaceful state, Tokayev is distancing Islam from Kazakhstan’s state identity and disregarding the potential for Islam to be a part of the state’s official identity discourses.

In addition to symbolizing how the Tokayev regime maintains continuity with the Nazarbayev era by remaining hesitant to emphasize Islam in official discourses of Kazakhstan’s state identity, the government’s response to the Bloody January protests more broadly serves as an apt representation of how Tokayev has continued with much of the political rhetoric and policy instituted by his predecessor. For example, Tokayev’s decision to call in troops from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) during the protests has widely been regarded as a sign of just how dependent Kazakhstan remains on its neighbour to the north, a relationship that Nazarbayev went to great lengths to foster.^[69] Additionally, much of the impetus behind the January protests stemmed from Tokayev’s failure to institute political reforms to limit the corruption that had become so synonymous with the regime constructed by the Nazarbayev government. Indeed, when the protests broke out, Nazarbayev both remained the unelected chair of Kazakhstan’s National Security Council and was enjoying—alongside many of his closest family members—lifetime immunity from prosecution. ^[70]

Bloody January, however, forced Tokayev to reconsider his affinities with the Nazarbayev system and demonstrated the need for a reevaluation of many aspects of Kazakhstan’s political life.^[71] Indeed, it is clear that the protests and their aftermath have uncovered a huge number of public calls for official discourses of state identity in Kazakhstan to begin to emphasize the ethnic Kazakh underpinnings of the state and leave behind the non-ethnic attributes that have thus far defined the country’s conception of itself.

Conclusion

Tokayev remains wary of taking up these calls too quickly. Though his government has shifted towards an ethnicization of Kazakhstan’s state identity regarding the Latinization of the Kazakh script and a reevaluation of historical memory, it has moved further away potentially ethnicizing state discourse on Islam in wake of Kazakhs’ increasing religiosity. The varied nature of Tokayev’s approach to Kazakhstan’s state identity signals a quiet continuation of the Nazarbayev-era proclivity for balance. Like Nazarbayev, Tokayev has addressed, to an extent, some of his population’s most ardent demands for ethnicization while abstaining from a complete rejection of civic markers of state identity. Indeed, the Latinization of the Kazakh script and honest conversations about Soviet crimes against Kazakh citizens are the two areas in which bottom-up discussions of Kazakhstan’s state identity have gained the most salience in recent years, and it is noteworthy that it is in these realms that Tokayev has made moves towards ethnicization, as rhetorical and cursory as these capitulations may be. By contrast, the potential for ethnicization in the state’s relationship to Islam continues to be an avenue that Tokayev’s regime is hesitant to actualize, likely due to security risks connected to the rising threat of Islamic extremism throughout Central Asia.^[72]

It is interesting to consider the possibility that the balanced nature of the Tokayev regime’s approach to Kazakhstan’s state identity may be predicated on security interests, especially when considering the precarious position that Kazakhstan occupies as a neighbour to an ever-more aggressive and expansionary Russia. To be sure, Tokayev is likely aware that an extreme shift towards Kazakhness in his country’s state identity would be perceived as a slight by both the ethnic Russians living in Kazakhstan and the Russian state writ large. He has thus chosen to stick to the status quo rather than risk burning bridges with one of his most powerful economic and political partners. To be sure, ties between Russia and Kazakhstan have only strengthened in recent years, with energy dependence between the countries rising, 2022 and 2023 showing record levels of economic cooperation, and Tokayev taking pages from Putin’s authoritarian playbook by imposing new rules on unauthorized assembly and running practically unopposed in a snap presidential election in November 2022.^[73]

Unwilling to threaten his relationship with Russia, Tokayev has made relatively few substantial changes to the way that ethnic Kazakhness fits into official discourses of Kazakhstan’s state identity in both his rhetoric and policies regarding language politics, historical memory, and the state’s relationship to Islam. Though there have been small shifts to move official state discourses of Kazakhstan away from the Russification of the country’s past and towards an ethnically Kazakh future, especially regarding the Latinization of the Kazakh alphabet and reevaluations of Kazakhstan’s Soviet history, cautious continuity is the name of the game in Tokayev’s “New Kazakhstan.” Only time will tell how long such a delicately balanced stasis is likely to hold.

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Endnotes

[1] “State-of-the-Nation Address by President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev,” Official website of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, https://www.akorda.kz/en/state-of-the-nation-address-by-president-of-the-republic-of-kazakhstan-kassym-jomart-tokayev-17293

[2] “Zhalyktyn Ulttyk kuramy,” Kyskasha korytyndylar Kratke itogi (Kazakhstan Respyblikasy Strategiailyk zhosparlau zhane reformalar agenttigi Ulttyk statistika biurocy, 2021), 11; Bhavna Dave, Minorities and Participation in Public Life: Kazakhstan (United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2004).

[3] Laruelle, “The Three Discursive Paradigms of State Identity in Kazakhstan.”

[4] Mihra Rittmann, “The Kazakhstan elections and the transition that wasn’t,” Human Rights Watch, June 5, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/06/05/kazakhstan-elections-and-transition-wasnt; Diana T. Kudaibergenova and Marlene Laruelle, “Making Sense of the January 2022 Protests in Kazakhstan: Failing Legitimacy, Culture of Protests, and Elite Readjustments,” Post-Soviet Affairs 38, no. 6 (2022), 441-459; Talgat Aralkhan, “The War in Ukraine Is Changing Kazakhstani Identity,” Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, October 8, 2023, https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/50365

[5] Michael Billig, “Nations and Language,” from Banal Nationalism (SAGE Publications, 2010), 4.

[6] Billig, “Nations and Language,” 12.

[7] Laruelle, “The Three Discursive Paradigms of State Identity in Kazakhstan,” 6.

[8] William Fierman, “Language and Identity in Kazakhstan,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 31, no. 2 (1998), 171–186; “Ana tili,” Kyskasha korytyndylar Kratke itogi (Kazakhstan Respyblikasy Strategiailyk zhosparlau zhane reformalar agenttigi Ulttyk statistika biurocy, 2021), 23.

[9] Bhavna Dave, Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, Language, and Power (Routledge, 2007).

[10] Diana Kudaibergenova, “The Archaeology of Nationalizing Regimes in the Post-Soviet Space: Narratives, Elites, and Minorities,” Problems of Post-Communism 64, no. 6 (2017): 350.

[11] Ainur Kulzhanova, “Language Policy of Kazakhstan: An Analysis,” (MA Thesis, Central European University, 2012), 10.

[12] “Address by the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev to the People of Kazakhstan, January 27, 2012,” Official website of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, https://www.akorda.kz/en/addresses/addresses_of_president/address-by-the-president-of-the-republic-of-kazakhstan-nursultan-nazarbayev-to-the-people-of-kazakhstan-27-01-2012_1341926486; Zhazira Bekzhanova and Tsediso Michael Makoelle, “Latinization of the Kazakh Alphabet: Implications for Education, Inclusion, and Social Cohesion in Kazakhstan,” SAGE Open (2022): 1.

[13] Aralkhan, “The War in Ukraine Is Changing Kazakhstani Identity.” For more on how Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine is changing public opinion on Russia in Kazakhstan, see Central Asia Barometer’s “Central Asia Barometer Survey Wave 12,” https://ca-barometer.org/en/cab-database

[14] “Vystuplenie Glavy gocudarstva Kasym-Zhomarta Tokaeva na vtorom zacedanii Natsionalnogo kuraltaia ‘Adileti Qazaqstan – Adal azamat’,” Ofistialnyi sait Prezidenta Respubliki Kazakstan, June 17, 2023, https://www.akorda.kz/ru/vystuplenie-glavy-gosudarstva-kasym-zhomarta-tokaeva-na-vtorom-zasedanii-nacionalnogo-kurultayaadiletti-kazakstan-adal-azamat-175233

[15] “Tokaev odobril proekt dogovora o mezhdunarodnoi organizatsii po russkomu iazyku,” RadioAzattyk, October 18, 2023, https://rus.azattyq.org/a/32642612.html

[16] Agence France-Presse in Astana, “Kazakhstan drafts media law to increase use of Kazakh language over Russian,” The Guardian, October 6, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/06/kazakhstan-drafts-media-law-to-increase-use-of-kazakh-language-over-russian

[17] “President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s State of the Nation Address, September 2, 2019,” Official website of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, https://www.akorda.kz/en/addresses/addressesofpresident/president-of-kazakhstan-kassym-jomart-tokayevs-state-of-the-nation-address-september-2-2019

[18] Bekzhanova and Makoelle, “Latinization of the Kazakh Alphabet,” 9.

[19] Justin Burke, “Kazakh president uses language to deliver a surprising message to Russia,” EurasiaNet, November 10, 2023, https://eurasianet.org/kazakh-president-uses-language-to-deliver-a-surprising-message-to-russia

[20] “Kazakhstan to pursue balanced language policy – president Tokayev,” Interfax, October 19, 2022, https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/84038/

[21] Olivier Roy, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations (New York University Press, 2005), 76.

[22] Bekzhanova and Makoelle, “Latinization of the Kazakh Alphabet,” 2; Andrew Warner, “Alpha. Bravo. Cyrillic.,” JSTOR DAILY, December 7, 2022.

[23] Henry Spencer, “Reading between the Lines: The Latinization of Kazakh,” The Cambridge Language Collective, https://www.thecambridgelanguagecollective.com/politics-and-society/qjfcs8r9pdd9yklf7kh5h03pr9dz8a; Aralkhan, “The War in Ukraine Is Changing Kazakhstani Identity.”

[24] “O perevode alfavita kazakhskovo iazyka s kirillitsy na latinskuiu grafiku,” Official website of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, October 16, 2017, https://www.akorda.kz/ru/legal_acts/decrees/o-perevode-alfavita-kazahskogo-yazyka-s-kirillicy-na-latinskuyu-grafiku

[25] Bekzhanova and Makoelle, ““Latinization of the Kazakh Alphabet,” 7.

[26] Bekzhanova and Makoelle, ““Latinization of the Kazakh Alphabet,” 7.

[27] Assel Satubaldina, “Kazakhstan Presents New Latin Alphabet, Plans Gradual Transition Through 2031,” The Astana Times, February 1, 2021, https://astanatimes.com/2021/02/kazakhstan-presents-new-latin-alphabet-plans-gradual-transition-through-2031/

[28] Spencer, “Reading between the Lines: The Latinization of Kazakh.”

[29] “Tokaev predlozhil ne speshit’ s perekhodom s kirillitsy na latinistu,” Kommersant’, February 17, 2022, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5218961.

[30] Bekzhanova and Makoelle, “Latinization of the Kazakh Alphabet,” 1.

[31] “Tokaev o perezhode kazakhskogo alfavita na latinistu: My dopystili mnogo grubyzh oshibok,” Tengri News, April 12, 2023, https://tengrinews.kz/kazakhstan_news/tokaev-perehode-kazahskogo-alfavita-latinitsu-dopustili-496250/

[32] “Polnyi tekct stat’i K. Tokaeva ‘Nezavisimost’ prevyshe vsevo’,” 24kz, January 6, 2021,

24.https://kazpravda.kz/n/polnyy-tekst-stati-tokaeva-nezavisimost-prevyshe-vsego/

[33] Jack David Eller, From Culture to Ethnicity: An Anthropological Perspective on International Ethnic Conflict (University of Michigan Press, 1999), 19.

[34] Nursultan Nazarbayev, “Seven Facets of the Great Steppe,” Official website of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, November 21, 2018, https://www.akorda.kz/en/events/akorda_news/press_conferences/article-of-the-president-of-the-republic-of-kazakhstan-nursultan-nazarbayev-seven-facets-of-the-great-steppe

[35] G.M. Yemelianova, “Islam, national identity and politics in contemporary Kazakhstan,” Asian Ethnicity 15, no. 3 (2014): 287.

[36] Galiaskar Seitzhan, “Let Our Ancestors Inspire Us, Nazarbayev Says on 550th Anniversary of Kazakh Khanate,” The Astana Times, September 14, 2015, https://astanatimes.com/2015/09/let-our-ancestors-inspire-us-nazarbayev-says-on-550th-anniversary-of-kazakh-khanate/

[37] James Richter, “Famine, Memory, and Politics in the Post-Soviet Space: Contrasting Echoes of Collectivization in Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” Nationalities Papers 48, no. 3 (2022): 483.

[38] Assel Satubaldina, “Kazakhstan’s Diversity is Its Greatest Strength, Says Kazakhstan’s First President Nursultan Nazarbayev,” The Astana Times, April 29, 2021, https://astanatimes.com/2021/04/kazakhstans-diversity-is-its-greatest-strength-says-kazakhstans-first-president-nursultan-nazarbayev/

[39] Richter, “Famine, Memory, and Politics in the Post-Soviet Space,” 484; RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service, “Kazakhstan Unveils Monument to Victims of Soviet-Era Famine,” RFE/RL, May 31, 2017, https://www.rferl.org/a/kazakhstan-unveils-monument-victims-soviet-era-famine/28520523.html

[40] Kamila Smagulova, “Decolonial Debates on Identity Within Kazakh Postcolonial Reality,” [Dis]Solutions: Decolonial Encounters (Goethe-Institut, 2023), 5.

[41] Aralkhan, “The War in Ukraine Is Changing Kazakhstani Identity.”

[42] “Polnyi tekct stat’i K. Tokaeva ‘Nezavisimost’ prevyshe vsevo’,” 24kz.

[43] “Polnyi tekct stat’i K. Tokaeva ‘Nezavisimost’ prevyshe vsevo’.”

[44] “O Gosudarstvennoi komissii po polnoi reabilitastii zhertv politicheskizh repressii,” Informastionno-pravovaya Sistema hormativnykh pravovykh aktov Respubliki Kazakhstan, November 24, 2020, https://adilet.zan.kz/rus/docs/U2000000456

[45] “Gosudarstvennaia komissiia po polnoi reabilitastii zhertv politicheskizh repressii zavepshila svoiu rabotu,” Ofistial’nyi sait Prezidenta Respubliki Kazakhstan, https://www.akorda.kz/ru/gosudarstvennaya-komissiya-po-polnoy-reabilitacii-zhertv-politicheskih-repressiy-zavershila-svoyu-rabotu-2611356

[46] “Polnyi tekct stat’i K. Tokaeva ‘Nezavisimost’ prevyshe vsevo’.”

[47] Gulnar Kendirbai, “Challenging Colonial Power: Kazakh Cadres and Native Strategies,” Inner Asia 10, no. 1 (2008), 65-85.

[48] “Polnyi tekct stat’i K. Tokaeva ‘Nezavisimost’ prevyshe vsevo’.”

[49] Joanna Lillis, “Kazakhstan: A Look Back at the Zheltoksan Protest a Quarter-Century Ago,” EurasiaNet, December 16, 2011, https://eurasianet.org/kazakhstan-a-look-back-at-the-zheltoksan-protest-a-quarter-century-ago

[50] “Polnyi tekct stat’i K. Tokaeva ‘Nezavisimost’ prevyshe vsevo’.”

[51] “Polnyi tekct stat’i K. Tokaeva ‘Nezavisimost’ prevyshe vsevo’.”

[52] Richter, “Famine, Memory, and Politics in the Post-Soviet Space,” 476.

[53] A. Mustafayeva, “Islamskoe Vozrozhdenie V Kazahstane V 90-e Gody ХХ Veka,” Vestnik KazNU, 2013; Aibarshyn Akhmetkali, “Evolution of Islam in Kazakhstan: How Modern Kazakh Muslims Balance Their Religious Identity, the Soviet Legacy and National Traditions,” The Astana Times, August 15, 2022, https://astanatimes.com/2022/08/evolution-of-islam-in-kazakhstan-how-modern-kazakh-muslims-balance-their-religious-identity-the-soviet-legacy-and-national-traditions/; “Dini senimi boiynsha zhalik,” Kyskasha korytyndylar Kratke itogi (Kazakhstan Respyblikasy Strategiailyk zhosparlau zhane reformalar agenttigi Ulttyk statistika biurocy, 2021), 35; “Kazakhstan: People,” The 1993 CIA World Factbook (The Project Gutenberg eBook, 2021).

[54] Yemelianova, “Islam, national identity and politics in contemporary Kazakhstan,” 287.

[55] Bilal Ahmad Malik, “Islam and Nationalist Mobilization in Kazakhstan: Post-Soviet Cultural (Re)framing and Identity (Re)making,” Qudus International Journal of Islamic Studies 11, no. 2 (2023), 383-426.

[56] Yemelianova, “Islam, national identity and politics in contemporary Kazakhstan,” 286, 292-293.

[57] Adilet Beisenov, “State-Mandated Muslimness in Kazakhstan,” Central Asia Program at George Washington University, June 30, 2023, https://centralasiaprogram.org/state-mandated-muslimness-kazakhstan/.

[58] Laruelle, “The Three Discursive Paradigms of State Identity in Kazakhstan,” 5.

[59] “Address of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, to the People of Kazakhstan, March 1, 2006,” Official website of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, https://www.akorda.kz/en/addresses/addresses_of_president/address-of-the-president-of-the-republic-of-kazakhstan-nursultan-nazarbayev-to-the-people-of-kazakhstan-march-1-2006

[60] “About the Congress,” Congress, https://religions-congress.org/en/page/o-sezde

[61] “N. Nazarbayev’s Speech After Being Elected Chairman of the Congress,” Congress, https://religions-congress.org/en/news/vystupleniya-I/25

[62] Dina Sharipova, “Perceptions of National Identity in Kazakhstan: Pride, Language, and Religion,” The Muslim World 110 (2020), 89-106.

[63] Azamat Junisbai, Barbara Junisbai, and Baurzhan Zhussupov, “Two Countries, Five Years: Islam in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan through the Lens of Public Opinion Surveys,” Central Asian Affairs 4 (2017): 1, 10.

[64] “President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s speech at the opening ceremony of the VII Congress of the Leaders of World and Traditional Religions,” Official website of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, https://www.akorda.kz/en/president-kassym-jomart-tokayevs-speech-at-the-opening-ceremony-of-the-vii-congress-of-the-leaders-of-world-and-traditional-religions-1481411

[65] Akhmetkali, “Evolution of Islam in Kazakhstan.”

[66] Anatolij Weisskopf, “Kazakhstan announces ban on hijabs in schools,” DW, October 22, 2023, https://www.dw.com/en/kazakhstan-announces-ban-on-hijabs-in-schools/a-67175196

[67] Kudaibergenova and Laruelle, “Making Sense of the January 2022 Protests in Kazakhstan,” 452.

[68] “State-of-the-Nation Address by President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.”

[69] Kudaibergenova and Laruelle, “Making Sense of the January 2022 Protests in Kazakhstan,” 454.

[70] Leonie Brassat and Florian Kriener, “Quashing Protests Abroad: The CSTO’s Intervention in Kazakhstan,” Journal on the Use of Force and International Law 10, no. 2 (2023): 275; RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service, “Kazakhstan’s Constitutional Court Nixes Law On First President-Leader Of Nation,” RFE/RL, January 11, 2023, http://www.rferl.org/a/kazakhstan-nazarbaev-law-annulled/32218636.html.

[71] Kudaibergenova and Laruelle, “Making Sense of the January 2022 Protests in Kazakhstan.”

[72] For more on the rising threat of Islamic extremism in Central Asia and the responses of various Central Asian countries, see Bruce Pannier, “Countering a ‘Great Jihad’ in Central Asia,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, November 19, 2024; Alison Milofsky and Barmak Pazhwak, “Amid Central Asia’s Struggle with Extremism, Uzbekistan Promotes Pluralism,” United States Institute of Peace, July 30, 2024; and Noah Tucker and Edward Lemon, “A ‘Hotbed’ or a Slow, Painful Burn? Explaining Central Asia’s Role in Global Terrorism,” Combating Terrorist Center Sentinel 17, no. 7 (2024).

[73] Kate Mallinson, “Russia’s influence in Kazakhstan is increasing despite the war in Ukraine,” Chatham House, February 29, 2024, https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/02/russias-influence-kazakhstan-increasing-despite-war-ukraine

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