After the January 2022 events, the Kazakhstanis demand to rename Nur-Sultan as Astana and return former names of streets.
After the stabilisation of the situation in Kazakhstan, there were discussions in society about the restoration of former names of the capital, various avenues and streets. Once they were renamed after Nazarbayev. Streets, parks, universities, school networks and the international airport of the capital are named after the first president of Kazakhstan. On January 11, after Tokayev’s speech to the deputies of the lower chamber of parliament (Mazhilis), the Kazakhstanis launched a petition on egov.press about the renaming of the capital of Kazakhstan, Nur-Sultan, as Astana. On the first day, the petition was signed by over 100,000 people. As of January 26, the petition was signed by 224,271 people.
The author of the petition, Daniyar Burkutbaev, said that the idea of petition occurred to him all of a sudden, when he was listening to the speech of President Tokayev.
“I saw positive signals from him, like the promise to cope with the recycling fee collected by Operator ROP, hints of forthcoming full-scale redesign of the work of our state. I saw that the president can hear us, we just have to articulate society’s needs clearly and explicitly. This work is being done by many public figures, and I, being an ordinary citizen of my country, am just trying to help as much as I can. My motto is “Do what you need to do and come what may,” the Kazakhstani said.
The petition is available in two options. The second option was published on the international online service Avaaz – it was a desperate measure due to regular DDoS attacks on the Kazakhstan-based website egov.press from the moment of petition publication.
“Unfortunately, we also see the desire of some forces to sabotage the process of collecting signatures and disseminating the idea. There are a lot of speculations going on right now that renaming is going to cost a lot of money. It’s obviously a hardball question. For some reason, all these speakers did not raise this question when Kazakhstan spent a lot of money on useless image projects, such as Expo, Olympics, etc.,” Burkutbaev said.
How rumours about Nur-Sultan became real
On March 20, 2019, at the initiative of the Government of the Republic, the novice President Tokayev at a joint session of the lower and upper houses of Parliament proposed to name the Republic’s capital in honour of the first president of the country, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who had ruled the country for almost 30 years. On the same day, the renaming of Astana was approved by the parliament and the maslikhat (city council) of Astana. On Saturday, March 23, Tokayev signed a decree to rename the capital. Thus, the residents of Kazakhstan had their capital renamed within a few days.
According to political analyst Kazbek Beisebaev, Tokayev was not the original initiator of the renaming, he was probably “asked” to do it.
“In addition to the renaming, the airport code of the capital city was renamed. However, it is a complicated process. When Astana was renamed as Nur-Sultan, the whole world was laughing at us, but we kept saying that this was our right and thus we paid the tribute to the leader of the nation. Now the world will be laughing at us again,” Beisebaev said.
Public activist Nasima Korganbekova, referring to the law “On administrative and territorial division of the Republic of Kazakhstan” said that the name “Astana” was renamed illegally.
According to the law, there are certain procedures of renaming. There are rules of taking into account the views of the population of the given territory when naming and renaming administrative and territorial units. It states that the executive authorities should submit the necessary material for the consideration of maslikhats.
“This is quite a long and serious process that requires public involvement, participation of MPs, establishment of onomastic commission, placement of necessary documents and materials on the media, and only then the president must sign it. But it was done in one day with the capital. These rumours seemed absurd and no one took them seriously before,” Korganbekova said.
Civil activist Aslan Kabegenov suggested that the reason why state-controlled media and the authorities did not call the capital either Nur-Sultan or Astana during the January events was that the authorities understood the tensions in the society and decided not to provoke people; they could also understand that the reins of power were handed over to the president in office, or the state-owned media decided to demonstrate their objection to the 2019 decision.
However, currently, both state and private media continue to call the capital of Kazakhstan Nur-Sultan. Officials, representatives of state structures keep to the old order in public speeches and statements. However, during the early January events both the president and state structures, and state-controlled media did not mention the name of Nur-Sultan, preferring the neutral synonym “capital.”
Nari Shelekpaev, PhD, Associate Professor of the European University of Saint Petersburg, said that the current initiative on the return of the previous name of the capital comes from the civil society, not the president.
“The number of signatories is increasing every day. It is politically unreasonable to ignore this request now. The parliament, the supreme legislative body of Kazakhstan, which supported the renaming in 2019, can initiate the return of the place-name “Astana”. It would be a good way to resolve the situation by holding a referendum at a local or even national level,” Nari Shelekpaev said to CABAR.asia.
The draft law on receiving and considering petitions in Kazakhstan is not adopted yet. It means that the juridical weight of the petition is zero; nevertheless, Kazakhstanis do not give up and keep on creating petitions, including the one dedicated to the cancellation of the law of the Republic of Kazakhstan “On the first president”, which guarantees full immunity to the first president and his family.
According to Daniyar Burkutbaev, the author of the petition demanding to return the former name of the capital, no matter how “great” a person is, everyone should know when enough is enough.
“Otherwise, the management would fall into their made-up world and lose touch with reality and feedback from people. This is what happened in Kazakhstan. We paid so much for this mistake. I am sure that state bodies know about the initiative. They take timid steps to dismantle the personality cult,” the petition author said.
He also calls on all concerned citizens to print out the petition, attach it to their reports to the akimat, and demand the authorities to give well-deserved names to the streets.
“Let’s start with streets and parks now. Akimats can refuse at first. They will refuse once, then again, but they will have to listen to the public opinion for the hundredth time. These are legitimate actions. This is how I will act,” Burkutbaev said.
According to political analyst Dauren Aben, despite the public expectations, the authorities will not take radical measures on the short-term horizon to fully remove the manifestations of the personality cult of Nazarbayev. First, the authorities are still the people who were the integral part of the system built by the former president. Second, we do not know the details of the deals reached between the former and sitting presidents regarding the “heritage” and perpetuation of the personality of Nazarbayev, who still counts on being a positive character in the memory of the people. There will be renaming, but it’s hard to predict the extent of it.
“It all will depend on how the domestic political and socioeconomic situation develops in the country, and if the public pressure increases, Tokayev may revise the deals to please the environment. Anyway, I think Kazakhstan should hold a kind of the twentieth assembly, but not as a closed event, but as a wide public discussion, which should determine the role and place of Nazarbayev in the history of Kazakhstan,” said Dauren Aben to CABAR.asia.
On January 2, protests started in Kazakhstan because of the rise in liquefied gas prices, which turned into clashes. On January 5, the sitting president of Kazakhstan Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev said that he would lead the Security Council of the country, which had been previously under control of Nursultan Nazarbayev for life. From the beginning of protests, Nazarbayev was not seen in public and made no statements. On January 18, ex-president of Kazakhstan appeared in public for the first time in three weeks. He said that “he left nowhere” and noted that there is no struggle within the elite as all power belongs to Tokayev and all must unite around the sitting president.
On January 19, the Mazhilis of the Republic of Kazakhstan adopted amendments to laws on cancellation of life chair of the First President of Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev in the People’s Assembly of Kazakhstan and Security Council.
According to political analyst Dauren Aben, the name of Nazarbayev causes much irritation, if not rejection, in most of the Kazakhstani society, as he is deemed responsible for the failure of the state to build a transparent state in 30 years of independence, the failure to meet obligations imposed on the state, to fairly distribute natural resources for the benefit of all citizens.
“Nazarbayev clearly achieved some successes, but they were all neutralised by excesses in domestic policy designed to establish the personal rule regime and disproportions in economy caused by the prevalence of family clan interests. Therefore, the key demand of public protests across the country was the final exit of Nazarbayev from politics and their slogan “Shal, ket!” the expert said to CABAR.asia.
There is an objective request in Kazakhstan to rename avenues and other public places named after the former president. But to ensure that it does not become a vigorous campaign, local authorities and representatives of civil society could organise public hearings and take appropriate decisions from the people’s viewpoint, the experts said.
Currently, the question of returning the former name to the capital remains open. The same is with numerous streets and avenues, which were named after Nazarbayev. Some experts believe that the authorities would listen to the public opinion and rename them, others think this is a “costly affair” that is not worth the effort. There are opinions voiced in the Kazakhstan segment of internet that no matter how many times previous decisions are cancelled and former names are given back, the history will have its blind spot from the current name for decades.