Hi all,

I’ve been working as a journalist for over a decade and before that I was an NGO worker, and a student in several different countries. In all of them, left-wing movements, activists, including Marxist groups, were presents in different shapes and forms. I met them regularly during protests, conferences and they were part of my social circles. This is not the case in Central Asia.

When I moved to Tashkent in 2018, I wondered where the radical youth is today and why they are not visible. Not as registered groups of course, because we all know how strictly controlled politics in places like Uzbekistan is, but as informal, semi-underground gatherings. I wondered, does Central Asia not need left-wing politics?

To talk about Marxism and the left in Central Asia, I am joined by Georgy Mamedov, an independent curator, writer, and activist originally from Dushanbe. His work focuses on critical reinterpretation of Soviet socialism in Central Asia and the broader post-Soviet space.

Georgy co-authored and co-edited several books, including A Book on Happiness for Young (and not so) LGBT (and not only) People (Bishkek, 2020), Queer Communism is Ethics (Moscow, 2016), Concepts of the Soviet in Central Asia (Bishkek, 2016), and Bishkek Utopian (Bishkek, 2015). Until recently, Georgy served as an assistant professor of film and media arts at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek.

In 2025, he joined the University of Melbourne’s Research Initiative on Post-Soviet Space (RIPSS) as a graduate scholar. In this role, he is working on the research project “Towards a Communist Ideal: Marxism and Marxists under Soviet Socialism.”

I hope you will enjoy this one as much as I did.

Have a lovely end of the week,

— Agnieszka

Hi all,

Central Asia is undergoing rapid social and economic transformation. Digitalisation and internet access are expanding, while new infrastructure and development investments are growing across the region.

But despite this progress, many areas remain overlooked by local governments and international institutions supporting development programmes. And the rapid pace of change itself brings new challenges and raises important questions about who benefits from development – and who might be left behind.

To talk about development in Central Asia, we’re joined by Akmaral Sman, a Kazakhstani gender and development specialist. Born and raised in Kazakhstan, she earned a Master of Public Administration from Queen Mary University of London in 2018. Over the past decade, she has worked with NGOs, international financial institutions, and UN agencies, providing technical support on gender mainstreaming in energy, climate change, and natural resource management policies. She was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list and was a receipient of the prestigeous Chevening scholarship.

I hope you will enjoy this one!

Have a lovely end of the week,

— Agnieszka

Hi all,

In academia, in journalism and sometimes in activist circles we can still hear about the “post-Soviet space”. Things and places are described as post-Soviet if they had any connection with the Soviet Union or the vast territory that gained independence after its collapse, from Brest to Vladivostok and from Arkhangelsk to the northern border of Iran.

Thirty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is there anything that these places still have in common? Is the post-Soviet label still relevant? Or is it used to mark territories that, in Russia’s view, and should remain under its influence?

What can we replace the post-Soviet label with? And, importantly, should we?

This week, we’re talking about the much-maligned but also much-overused concept of the “post-Soviet”. To unpack this term, we are joined by Erica Marat, a Washington DC-based academic, originally from Kyrgyzstan. Her research focuses on organised crime, violence, mobilisation, and security institutions in Central Asia, North Asia, and Europe. She is the author of several books, most recently Decolonial Disruptions in Central Asia: Discussion, Practices, and Networks (Cambridge University Press, 2026), co-authored with Aizada Arystanbek.

I hope you will enjoy this one!

Have a lovely end of the week.

— Agnieszka

Hi all,

Welcome back! I took a month off to rest, enjoy the sunshine, and think about the future of Turan Talks. It’s great to be back though. I missed work, I missed Almaty, and I definitely missed talking about Central Asia.

In today’s episode, we’re looking at the evolving relationship between Central Asia and China: neighbours for centuries along the Silk Road, and today major economic partners.

China’s presence is increasingly visible across the region. Chinese-made electric vehicles are becoming more common on the roads, Chinese companies are investing in local businesses and extractive industries, and more young people are choosing to study in China.

Yet research by Edward Lemon and Bradley Jardine found that China is viewed less favourably than any other major power in Central Asia. Why is that? How has Beijing responded to the challenge? And how important is Central Asia to China’s Belt and Road Initiative?

To answer these questions, I’m joined by Ed Lemon, co-author of the recently published book Backlash: China’s Struggle for Influence in Central Asia. Ed is a Research Assistant Professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University and President of the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs.

I hope you will enjoy this one.

Have a lovely end of the week,

— Agnieszka

Hi all,

As summer settles in, Turan Tales is taking a short break for the month of July. This year has been eventful and rewarding, but also exhausting for our small and hard-working team.

We’ll be back in August with new interviews, audio documentaries, and perhaps a few announcements.

Until then, have a wonderful summer.

We hope you’ll miss us!

— Agnieszka

This story is part of our series of audio features - also available as long reads - made possible by the International Press Institute. If you enjoy it, leave us a comment — we’d love to hear what you think.

Travellers passing through Central Asia once agreed on one thing: its great rivers – the Oxus and the Jaxartes, today’s Amu Darya and Syr Darya – were vast, powerful, and essential to life in an otherwise unforgiving landscape.

Whether Greek, Persian, Chinese, or Arab, travellers described the two rivers’ shifting, unpredictable waters, difficult to cross, and the rich oases along the Silk Road.

In The Anabasis of Alexander, the Greek historian Arrian wrote that the Oxus river was the largest one that Alexander the Great had seen in Asia.

This is now history. With its campaign of turning Central Asia into a cotton hub, the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union left the region drained. The mighty Aral Sea, the lake where the two rivers met, lost 90 per cent of its volume, while the Amu Darya and Syr Darya turned into shadows of their former selves.

But water scarcity is a global problem. According to experts, what we’re facing is no longer a water crisis — it’s a global water bankruptcy, an era where water systems deplete faster than nature can replenish them.

Today, most of Central Asia’s water originates in the glaciers of Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, which make up the region’s two water towers. But glaciers have been in decline.

Faced with the looming catastrophe, Tajikistan has helped put water on the global agenda. Thanks to its initiative, the United Nations declared the years 2018–2028 the Water Action Decade. It also launched the Dushanbe Process — a platform for dialogue and action on preserving water across the globe.

In late May, as carpet-like swathes of multicoloured roses covered Dushanbe’s arteries, the capital hosted its fourth Water Conference. Along Rudaki Avenue, behind a tall wall adorned with stones, the Kokhi Somon Palace gathered 2,500 guests: water and climate policymakers, experts, and media from around the world to discuss solutions to one of the globe’s most pressing issues.

The conference has surely helped to raise Tajikistan’s profile. But can Dushanbe fix Central Asia’s water crisis?

The pioneers

Dilorom Kayumova was 38 years old when she climbed a glacier for the first time. She could not say no. In 2018, her father, Abdulhamid Kayumov, a celebrated glaciologist, scientist, and the first Tajik to reach Antarctica, was given an ambitious task: to create the Glacier Research Centre at Tajikistan’s National Academy of Sciences.

That year marked the beginning of the Water Action Decade, and Tajikistan had to deliver on its promises. The Glacier Research Centre had to be a success, and for that Kayumov needed his daughter: a medical doctor and climate change researcher.

“The first person he brought in was me. He told me, ‘You have to support me. If not you, then who?,’” Kayumova recalls.

At the time, her father was 67 but still in good enough shape to climb Tajikistan’s glaciers with his new team, including his daughter. But as Dilorom explains, the beginnings were not easy.

“In 2018, we didn’t have all the necessary equipment. We took four or five pairs of sneakers, which we used for climbing,” she tells Turan Tales sitting in a corridor of the Kokhi Somon palace during the Water Conference. “When our Swiss colleagues arrived, they had special clothing and could climb easily. Since we didn’t have proper gear, we carried four jackets each.”

Dilorom is a 45-year-old energetic woman with a wide smile. She is part of the Association of Women Studying Glaciers. They have chosen the Edelweiss flower as their symbol, as it survives in the harsh mountain climate. It survives the impossible.

“During our first expedition, we barely made it up because our shoes were torn and our feet were soaking wet for ten to 15 days. We were there specifically to climb the glacier. There’s a rocky section where you climb, and your feet end up covered in blisters,” she said.

“These difficulties were especially severe in the early years of our Glacier Research Centre. This year, at the behest of our esteemed president, the centre was transformed into an institute, and our capabilities have expanded. We now have proper equipment and all the opportunities to continue our work.”

Dilorom studies how water quality affects people’s health. She collects meltwater from the glacier and all the way down to where it reaches consumers. She joins expeditions every year.

“I think the hardest part is just mentally adjusting to the fact that for 15 days you’re in a variety of climatic conditions. So while everyone else has sunshine and warmth, when you’re doing expedition work, there is hail, snow, and rain — you experience all the climatic facets of nature firsthand,” Dilorom says.

“It’s like in life. You think: ‘Today I’m going to give birth, and I won’t have another child,’ and then you go into labour again. When I come back from an expedition all sunburnt, my immunity drops, and it takes a week or two to recover. Your entire system gets knocked down, but once you’ve adapted, you crave it again, and you think: ‘I have to try it again this year.’”

Over the last few years, the Glacier Research Centre has expanded. It now hosts 60 scientists working on different areas of water research, 14 of them women. It also has a modern laboratory — something local scientists could only dream of at its inception. Previously, water samples were sent abroad for testing.

Water towers

Studying glaciers is key to Central Asia’s water future. Roughly 70–80 per cent of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya’s water originates from snow and glacier melt in Tajikistan’s Pamir and Kyrgyzstan’s Tien Shan mountains.

Over the past century, Central Asia has lost over a thousand glaciers. The year 2025 was the worst on record; the glaciers lost 30 cubic km of ice, roughly 30 per cent of the ice cover of the Alps.

Lander Van Tricht, a postdoctoral scientist at ETH Zurich, started his work on glacier modelling in Central Asia in 2018, the same year as Dilorom’s father opened his institute. He develops glacier simulations for the region to predict how much water will end up in downstream communities.

He organises expeditions, mainly in Kyrgyzstan, to measure ice thickness and glacier mass, and supports his work with remote sensing.

“The oldest glaciological measurements date back to the 1950s. The Soviet Union started many glacial monitoring programmes in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. But then in the 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, all these measurement programmes were stopped, except for two. And then we had 15—20 years without any measurements,” Van Tricht says.

“If you want to model how much ice will remain by the end of the century, you need to have an idea of how much ice there is today. We cannot measure all 20,000 glaciers, so you pick a couple of them, learn from local patterns, and then scale it up to get regional estimates.”

According to Lander’s predictions, even under optimistic scenarios where temperatures rise by 2.5–3°C, Central Asian glaciers will lose between 80–85 per cent of their ice volume by the end of the century.

“We were a bit surprised by this high number. We didn’t expect such a strong loss,” he says. “But when we started scaling it up to model all glaciers in the region, these numbers were confirmed. The results are pretty dramatic.”

The main reason for glacier decline is climate change.

“Glaciers in Central Asia are extra vulnerable to climate change because the melt season, which runs from June to September, partially overlaps with the accumulation season, from roughly April to June. So in winter it is very dry. In summer it is more wet, at least in the mountains. And you also have melt in the same period,” Lander explains.

“That’s different from many other mountain ranges, where you have snow accumulation in winter and melting in summer. In Central Asia it overlaps. This makes glaciers extra vulnerable because rising summer temperatures increase melt, while more precipitation falls as rain instead of snow.”

Stopping glaciers from melting is difficult, if not impossible, Lander says. On a small scale, one way is to cover the ice with geotextiles or a thick layer of rocks, but such approaches are costly. They have been used in wealthy regions of Switzerland, where Alpine resorts for the super-rich make such investments viable. The revenue generated by tourism can offset the cost.

But in the mountains of Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan, where it often takes days on horseback to reach remote peaks, such solutions may be ineffective, if not a fantasy.

To save glaciers, Lander says, the key is to limit global warming and reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. This can be done by shifting to green energy sources, something regional governments have been investing in. Glaciers would eventually respond, and with lower temperatures, they might even begin to grow again.

Another approach is investing in reservoirs. In time, they could gradually replace the melting glaciers.

“We typically see glaciers as natural water reservoirs. In winter, you get a lot of snow. This snow accumulates on the glacier, and eventually transforms into ice. And later in the year, when it is drier and warmer, the glaciers melt and provide water for downstream communities,” Lander says.

“We are now showing that glaciers will provide less water, mainly in summer. This can be anticipated, for example, by building reservoirs where you can store water in spring, and then use it later in summer.”

According to Lander, building dams — water reservoirs that generate hydropower — is a way to produce clean energy while also storing water. But such a solution is not without its problems.

“It’s always a bit of a trade-off because you are also blocking natural rivers. So in some sense, you gain power over water. We are already seeing the potential for water conflicts, because upstream countries with dams can regulate downstream water availability. This is already leading to some tensions,” he explains.

“It requires a lot of regulation between countries, between upstream and downstream regions. Building dams and reservoirs can be a good solution, but it needs to happen at a regional scale, with extensive negotiation.”

The selfish world

For years, building dams in Central Asia was a contentious issue. After the collapse of the USSR, the centralised water system established by the Soviets became obsolete. Newly independent states focused on nation-building and economic transformation, and nationalist sentiments resurfaced. Any changes in river flows began to be viewed with suspicion as potential sources of conflict.

“[During the Soviet times], the role of Central Asia was to produce cotton, mainly for Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Kyrgyzstan focused more on livestock, while Kazakhstan was the wheat basket, so to speak. But the entire water management system in Central Asia was designed to maximise cotton production,” says Jenniver Sehring, head of the Water Governance Department at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands, and an associate professor of water governance and diplomacy, who has worked on Central Asia for 25 years.

“Canal systems were built, as well as dams and reservoirs in the mountains of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, such as the Toktogul reservoir and the Nurek reservoir. These were designed to store water so it could be released at the exact time needed for the agricultural season downstream,” she explains.

“The water sector was a powerful and prestigious sector in the Soviet Union. It had access to decision-making and funding, and strong research institutions, mainly in Tashkent, which served as a regional centre for planning. There was a strong water bureaucracy built on the assumption that nature is primarily a resource to be exploited for human benefit, with little consideration for environmental needs.”

After the Soviet Union’s collapse, Central Asian states agreed to maintain quotas for water use. They established the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination, which still functions today, where officials meet regularly to discuss shared water resources. They also funded the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea. However, this did not resolve the underlying issues.

“One major shortcoming of the existing mechanism with water-sharing quotas is that they define how much water each country receives, but not the timing of water releases from upstream reservoirs. During Soviet times, water was released in spring and summer when it was needed for irrigation. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this water-energy system broke apart because the countries became independent and the energy sector was partly privatised. Downstream countries could no longer supply upstream countries with subsidised fossil fuels,” Jenniver says.

“As a result, upstream countries like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan began using their hydropower potential in winter to supply energy to their populations. This led to severe energy crises in the late 1990s, for example. But releasing water in winter meant it was no longer available in summer, when it was needed for irrigation.”

Consequently, Jenniver explains, the system became skewed towards downstream agricultural interests, which had been the focus during the Soviet era. Upstream countries increasingly felt that existing institutions and agreements did not reflect their needs or provide room for adjustment.

This was one of the reasons why in 2016, Kyrgyzstan suspended its participation in the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea.

The disagreements over water quotas led to further tensions. In order to store water and produce hydropower, upstream countries needed more dams and reservoirs.

One such project was first planned in Soviet times, in 1976. The Rogun Dam was meant to solve Tajikistan’s energy crisis and store water for downstream communities. But in 1993, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the project was discontinued. Shortly after, the Tajik civil war froze all infrastructure projects for many years.

When Tajikistan decided to restart construction, Uzbekistan opposed it.

“This was largely due to the poor relations between Karimov and Rahmon, the presidents of the two countries, and the generally tense political climate. Uzbekistan resisted the idea of Tajikistan building the dam, as it would give it greater control over the flow of the Amu Darya,” Jenniver explains.

“A dam would not necessarily have a major long-term impact on total annual water flow, but it would affect the timing of flows, especially during the reservoir filling period. It takes several years to fill the reservoir to operational levels, and during that time less water flows downstream. Once operational, however, water continues to be released — rivers cannot simply be stopped.”

The dam also faced financial challenges. For years, the Tajik government struggled to secure funding to complete construction. At one point, Rogun was seen as a white whale — a project pursued but with slim chances of completion.

The stalemate began to ease with the change of leadership in Uzbekistan. Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who replaced Karimov in 2016, adopted a new approach. He improved relations with Uzbekistan’s neighbours and gradually positioned himself as a more cooperative regional leader.

In time, relations between all Central Asian countries improved. With Tajikistan’s initiative for the Water Action Decade, downstream states — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan — and upstream countries — Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — began to collaborate more closely, exchange data, and increasingly treat water resources as part of a shared, interconnected system. They also began shifting towards drip irrigation to reduce water use.

For water has no nationality. If one element in the system fails, everyone will pay the price.

The great new dam

Eventually, following feasibility studies, Uzbekistan withdrew its objections to the construction of Tajikistan’s Rogun dam. Work resumed in 2016, and two years later the first turbines were put into operation.

In 2024, the World Bank began providing direct financing for the project with a $350 million grant. Additional funding followed from a coalition of development banks and Arab funds, alongside contributions from the Tajik state budget.

Today, Rogun is Tajikistan’s flagship project. Located 110 km from Dushanbe, the dam has 335 metres. It is a symbol of the Tajik government’s ambitions, its pride, and a potential source of revenue for the impoverished nation.

Throughout the construction site, as in Dushanbe and along rural roads, Rogun is marked by photographs of President Emomali Rahmon. His portrait is glued to the window of a minibus that takes us through tunnels carved into the Pamirs and across the project. A gallery of his images lines the walls of the power plant, and a massive portrait crowns the dam’s main entrance.

Rahmon has reportedly visited the site dozens of times. It is his political monument of megalomaniac proportions, and one of the most closely overseen infrastructure projects in Central Asia. Once fully operational, it is expected to supply electricity domestically and export power abroad.

The local head of security at Rogun, who accompanied our group, had no doubt it is an undertaking of great international importance.

“The reservoir that will be created by the Rogun Dam will have a capacity of 13 billion cubic metres of water. Of course, we’ll save Central Asia. We’ll also save the Nurek dam, where the reservoir is, from flooding. There will be more clean water. Life will continue in Nurek for a few more years,” he says with optimism.

When I ask him how the Pamir makes him feel, the man takes a moment to respond.

“Inspired, perhaps? I can’t put it into words, but there is such a pleasant feeling, a sense of freedom, freshness, energy, and empowerment,” he says.

The views of the Pamir are spectacular: the Vakhsh River runs turquoise blue against a dramatic backdrop of rugged mountains. The works are in full force. The Italian Webuild group, responsible for construction, has brought to Tajikistan workers from Europe and beyond.

It is a huge project, employing 19,000 people, who operate over 1,000 trucks, and who work nearly three million hours combined each month. It is also a complex engineering endeavour and the project is under pressure to meet deadlines: the dam is expected to be completed in the early 2030s.

An Italian employee, Andrés Recalde, a health and safety manager, explains how to behave on site. Injuries are not unheard of. In the end, the massive workforce is building a powerful dam, a project of truly monumental scale.

“Each turbine will have a little over 600 megawatts. So in total it will be more than 3,600 megawatts, which is a major electricity output. With this project, Tajikistan will achieve energy independence. We will not need to buy energy from other countries, and we will have enough energy to export. We are very proud to work on such a project,” Recalde says.

“Naturally, when you are closing the gates a little, you are negotiating with the flow. At the beginning of summer, you have more water due to snowmelt. Now we are at the end of the rainy season. The rainy season also brings a lot of water.”

Once completed, the dam will provide electricity to other Central Asian countries, Afghanistan, and possibly even Pakistan. It will also function as a reservoir for meltwater, replacing the role of disappearing glaciers, as Lander described.

But the dam alone is unlikely to solve Central Asia’s water challenges. Not everything depends on the good will of regional states. One problem will soon be caused by Afghanistan and its construction of the Qosh Tepa Canal, which is expected to divert between 15 and 20 per cent of the total flow of the Amu Darya River. The canal is intended to irrigate more than 550,000 hectares in northern Afghanistan as part of a massive agricultural initiative.

The Qosh Tepa Canal will primarily affect Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which rely heavily on the Amu Darya for agriculture and drinking water. However, it will also have wider regional implications, as all countries in the region are part of one interconnected ecosystem.

Central Asian states recognise Afghanistan’s right to use its water resources for its own needs. But Afghanistan’s absence from regional water cooperation mechanisms, such as the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination, further complicates the situation. Moreover, as Lander explains, Afghanistan’s glaciers are largely inaccessible for research, making it difficult to assess the full scale of the crisis we may be facing.

What is clear is that a region-wide water catastrophe is already here. Central Asia, with its ageing Soviet-era canals and imperfect water infrastructure, can only mitigate its effects. This is best done by facing the crisis together as a region—and this is what Central Asian states have been increasingly trying to do.

“They have seen and understood that there is a problem, and they are clearly on a good path to addressing it. Whether it will be enough, I’m not sure, because climate change in the region is happening very fast,” Lander says.

Jenniver Sehring agrees.

“Water management has improved significantly in recent decades. Both international donors and governments have invested heavily in it. There are two main approaches: technical improvements such as drip irrigation and canal lining, which reduce water losses,” she says.

“In irrigation, countries like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have made significant progress in improving water efficiency. Uzbekistan has also changed crop patterns, reducing cotton and shifting to less water-intensive crops.”

Dilorom Kayumova says that in terms of research and knowledge sharing, Central Asia is also improving its record.

“We are at a point where, in addition to creating the laboratory, we have reached a new level where we are beginning to cooperate with other Central Asian countries and conduct joint research,” she says.

“When we started, we had fragmented work, for example in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, but now we are combining our efforts to develop a common methodology. We are moving towards a unified approach.”

This story was supported by:

Hi all,

If I had to pick one book about Uzbekistan that I would recommend to everyone, it would be The Vanishing Generation: Faith and Uprising in Modern Uzbekistan by Bagila Bukharbaeva, an Uzbek journalist and former Associated Press correspondent.

Published in 2019, the book takes us back to Uzbekistan in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the newly independent nation was searching for its identity. Islam became an important part of that search. Dozens of local religious groups emerged under the leadership of new religious figures, some of whom developed their own interpretations of the faith.

Over time, President Islam Karimov came to see growing religiosity as a threat to both the secular state and his rule. The oppression of pious Muslims followed, eventually culminating in what became known as the Andijan massacre—the violent suppression of protests in the Ferghana Valley on May 13, 2005.

This week, we revisit those events with Bagila Bukharbaeva, author of The Vanishing Generation. We discuss Uzbekistan’s turn toward religion, unpack the events that led to the Andijan massacre, and examine whether religion has ever posed a genuine threat in the country. We also talk about Bagila’s own experience covering her community, which ultimately led to a years-long ban on her entering Uzbekistan.

I have a small announcement: Turan Talks will be taking a summer break throughout July, which means there will be no new episodes during that time. We’ll be back in August with more great interviews, stories, and perhaps a few surprises.

And one more thing: keep your fingers crossed for us on July 8. We’ll be in London for the Publishers Podcast Awards ceremony.

I hope you will enjoy this episode.

Have a great summer!

— Agnieszka

Hi all,

In the nomadic societies of Central Asia, among the Kyrgyz and the Kazakhs, there existed a social role fulfilled by poets, musicians, and improvisers. They not only created witty punchlines on the spot for the entertainment of the people but also served as mediators between ordinary folk and their rulers. Akyns could say more than others. They could criticise rulers’ decisions and sing about the problems facing common people in the hope of improving their communities.

Akyns still perform in both Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. In the former, however, some have redefined their role over the past several years by joining media organisations. They transform journalistic investigations into poems and songs to bring them to wider audiences. Several have ended up behind bars because of their work.

This week, we discuss the craft of akyns and aitysh, their poetic duels. We look into the history of this art form, its historical functions, and how these have changed during the Soviet era and since the collapse of the USSR. We also examine the social significance of aitysh and the differences between traditional akyns and those who have turned to journalism.

Joining us is Akylai Otkulbek kyzy, a Kyrgyz researcher who focuses on aitysh as a living civic and epistemological practice. She holds a MA degree in International Public Policy from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, and an MA from the OSCE Academy in Bishkek.

In the podcast, we used a fragment of aitysh between Kutman Sadybakasov and Turan Zhumaev.

I hope you will enjoy this one.

Have a great end of the week!

— Agnieszka

Hi all,

In his 1986 novel Plakha, translated into English as The Scaffold, Chingiz Aitmatov, Kyrgyzstan’s great writer, tells the story of Avdiy Kallistratov, an idealistic young man who joins a group of drug smugglers travelling to a remote corner of Central Asia. To Kyrgyzstan, to be precise, where large swathes of cannabis grow wild in the picturesque Issyk-Kul region.

Aitmatov describes in vivid detail the brutal process of harvesting and trafficking the drug by a criminal group. But how close is this depiction to reality?

This is a question I put to Gulzat Botoeva, Associate Professor of Criminology at Swansea University and an expert on illegal economies in Eurasia, including cannabis production in Kyrgyzstan. We discuss how the harvesting began, who benefits from it, and how local authorities respond to the phenomenon. Is there any incentive in Kyrgyzstan to legalise the crop?

Here is a list of Gulzat’s publications on the topic:

Botoeva, G. (2014). Hashish as cash in a post-Soviet Kyrgyz village. International Journal of Drug Policy, 25(6), 1227-1234.

Botoeva, G. (2019). Use of language in blurring the lines between legality and illegality. In Governance Beyond the Law: The Immoral, The Illegal, The Criminal (pp. 67-83). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Botoeva, G. (2021). Multiple narratives of il/legality and im/morality: The case of small-scale hashish harvesting in Kyrgyzstan. Theoretical Criminology, 25(2), 268-283.

Hope you will enjoy this one!

Have a great end of the week,

— Agnieszka

Hi all,

What does Uzbekistan’s first novel, O’tkan Kunlar (Bygone Days) by Abdulla Qodiriy, published in 1926, have to do with the fight for intellectual property rights a century later?

A lot. Its translator from the Uzbek original into English, Mark Reese, has just won a court case against Uzbekistan’s educational institutions, which had mishandled his intellectual property rights by uploading Bygone Days onto several university servers across Uzbekistan.

Reese, who received the Order of Dustlik from President Shavkat Mirziyoyev in 2019 in recognition of his work promoting the Uzbek language, literature, and culture, decided not to let it go. He took the case to court and won but, in his view, has justice truly been served?

Buy us a coffee

This week, Mark Reese is our guest and we’ll talk about the cultural and social significance of Bygone Days, the message it conveyed about the past, present, and future of the region, and the lessons we can draw from it today.

We also discuss his early days as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan, his love for Uzbek language and literature, what he thinks about Mirziyoyev’s reforms, and why he decided to fight for his rights in court.

I hope you will enjoy this one.

Have a lovely end of the week,

— Agnieszka

Hi all,

Let me start with some great news: I’m extremely proud and humbled that Turan Tales has been shortlisted for the Publisher Podcast Awards in two categories: Best Podcast Launch and Best Local and Community Podcast.

In the first category, we’re up against podcasts with real budgets produced by Politico, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg, which makes this an even bigger achievement, given that my podcast is literally made in my kitchen in Almaty.

I’m hoping to travel to London for the awards ceremony in July, so if any of you are planning to be there, feel free to message me.

This week, we’re diving into the fascinating history of Central Asian cinema and the ways Central Asia and Central Asians have been portrayed in foreign films. We’ll explore colonial tropes in portrayals of the region during Soviet times, how these representations influenced Central Asians’ self-image, and how they changed after the fall of the Soviet Union.

We’ll also talk about different waves in Central Asian cinema throughout the 20th century and into the present day.

Joining us is the best possible person to discuss these issues: Assiya Issemberdiyeva. She is a Kazakh film critic and researcher currently completing her PhD at Queen Mary University of London, where her thesis examines representations of Central Asia in Soviet wartime cinema.

She is a member of the Kazakhstan Film Critics Association, curator of Kazakh Film Week in London (2019, 2021), and producer-author of the KinoScope video essay series (El Arna, 2022–23).

Especially for you, I asked Assiya to compile a list of her favourite Central Asian films, here they are:

The Skies of Our Childhood (Небо нашего детства), dir. Tolomush Okeev, 1966

Atameken (Земля отцов), dir. Shaken Aimanov 1966(

They Call me Kozha (Меня зовут Кожа), dir. AbdollaKarsakbaev, 1963

Angel in a Cap (Ангел в тюбетейке), dir. Shaken Aimanov, 1968

The Mahalla is Buzzing (Об этом говорит вся махалля), dir. Shuhrot Abosov, 1960

Troubled Morning (Тревожное утро), dir. Abdolla Karsakbaev, 1966

You Are Not an Orphan (Ты не сирота), dir. Shuhrot Abosov, 1962

Shot at Karash Pass (Выстрел на перевале Караш), dir. Bolot Shamshiev

Angel on the Right Side, dir. Dzhamshid Usmonov, 2002 (no link)

Queen of the Mountains, dir. Sadyk Sher-Niaz, 2014

Biography of a Young Accordion Player (Жизнеописание юного аккордеониста), dir. Satybaldy Narymbetov, 1994

The Gift to Stalin (Подарок Сталину), dir. Rustem Abdrashev, 2008 

Harmony Lessons (Уроки гармонии), dir. Emir Baigazin, 2013

Little Brother (Бауыр), dir. Serik Aprymov, 2013

Dark, Dark Man (Черный, черный человек), dir. Adilkhan Yerzhanov, 2019

Cardiogram (Кардиограмма), dir. Darezhan Omirbaev, 1995

The Secret оf A Leader (Тренинг личностного роста), dir. Farkhad Sharipov, 2018

Abai (Юность Абая), dir. Ardak Amirkulov, 1995

The Fall of Otrar (Отырардың күйреуі), dir. Ardak Amirkulov, 1991

Sweetie, You Won’t Believe Me! (Жаным, ты не поверишь!), dir. Ernar Nurgaliev, 2020

2000 Songs of Farida, dir. Elkin Tuichiev, 2002

Killer (Киллер), dir. Darezhan Omirbaev, 1998

Poet (Акын), dir. Darezhan Omirbaev, 2021

Red Pomegranate (Красный гранат), dir. Sharipa Urazbaeva,2021

Madina, dir. Aizhan Kassymbek, 2023

The Owners (Хозяева), dir. Adilkhan Yerzhanov, 2014

Bauyryna Salu (Бауырына салу), dir. Askhat Kuchincherekov, 2023

The River (Река), dir. Emir Baigazin, 2018

Amanat (Аманат), dir. Satybaldy Narymbetov, 2016

I hope you will enjoy this episode as much as I did.

Have a lovely end of the week,

— Agnieszka

This story is part of our series of audio features - also available as long reads - made possible by the International Press Institute. If you enjoy it, leave us a comment or reply to this email with your feedback — we’d love to hear what you think.

This episode features music created in Central Asia by Jewish evacuees, and recorded as part of the Yiddish Glory project.

When Iya Rudzitska recalls her time in Uzbekistan, she begins to resemble the little girl she was during the war. Her voice changes, and she relives what she endured.

I met her in January 2023 in Krakow. She was 92 years old, fragile but energetic, with a full head of grey hair. A year earlier, she had fled her hometown of Kyiv after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. After several months in Lithuania, a Jewish organisation brought her and her son, Artur, to Poland.

At the time, I worked as a correspondent for an international news agency, and I was tasked with finding a human story for the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp in occupied Poland. But there was a catch: my editors wanted the story to connect to the war in Ukraine.

Iya was a perfect protagonist: old enough to remember the horrors of the war but equipped with an incredible memory and a witty sense of humor. She remembered details that brought her story to life.

As she was talking about her experiences of leaving Kyiv twice, first as a ten-year-old girl, and again at the age of 91, she said something that I had not seen coming:

“We arrived in Tashkent.”

I had lived in Uzbekistan for three years and I heard fragments of stories about Jewish refugees who survived the Holocaust in Central Asia, but I never researched it. And here, in my hometown, I was sitting across from someone who had lived it.

When I met her again to record her memories and began my research, it quickly became clear that the story of European Jews who survived the Holocaust in Soviet Asia has largely been forgotten.

Goodbye, Kyiv

The first bombs fell on Kyiv at 4 am.

Iya remembers it vividly. In the middle of the night, her uncle, doctor Salomon Weisblatt, was called to the hospital to treat the wounded. Iya, along with her parents and 17-year-old brother Shurik, rushed to a nearby bomb shelter, trembling with fear.

Operation Barbarossa began on June 22nd, 1941. Nazi Germany turned against its ally, the Soviet Union, and a new front of the Second World War opened. In Kyiv, what followed were weeks of utter chaos: everyone wanted to escape before it was too late.

But for those like Iya and her family, the invasion meant more than just fear of bombs or conscription. Eastern European Jews were among Hitler’s first targets. As the front moved closer to Kyiv, the Weisblatts needed an escape plan – and they needed it fast.

The family was influential. Iya’s grandfather, Naum Weisblatt, was a well-known Kyiv rabbi, and her uncles were well-connected doctors.

Her father, Vladimir, was a publisher, writer, and translator known in Ukraine’s literary circles. Although he had fallen out with Soviet authorities over some of his work, the family remained respected and well-off, living in a large apartment in central Kyiv.

As a child, Iya had German governesses and grew up surrounded by books. In theory, the Weisblatts’ social position could help them secure evacuation.

“There was a window of time between June and August when people could leave. The Soviet Union organised a very efficient evacuation of civilians from the war zone. They were interested in preserving the country’s cultural and industrial resources. This meant evacuating factories and industries: metal production, weapons manufacturing, clothing production, even agriculture,” says Anna Shternshis, a professor of Jewish studies at the University of Toronto and a specialist in Soviet Jewish history.

“People who ran these industries were, of course, evacuated with them. Because of the way Soviet Jewish history developed, Jews were very well-represented – sometimes overrepresented – in many of these sectors, so a large number of Jews ended up being evacuated to the Soviet rear.”

Writers, actors and cultural workers also made it to the evacuation lists. While Jews were never prioritised as a group, many of them were saved.

Iya and her family believed the war would last no more than two months. They packed their most essential belongings and went to the train station, hoping their connections would help them board a train carrying hospital equipment to Kharkiv.

You can support Turan Tales on Buy Me a Coffee! Get a membership or make a one-off donation to help us bring the next episodes to life

Buy us a coffee

They were right. They secured a place on the floor, right next to the bathroom.

“My dad’s sister was sitting there with her daughter and the daughter’s husband. He was very religious. As the train was about to leave, an old man approached – it was his father. He asked: ‘where are you going? What about my jewelry store? Who’s going to run it?’ And then the man jumped off the train,” Iya says.

Weeks later, he perished in Babyn Yar, in the Nazi massacre of Jews.

After two months in Kharkiv, the Weisblatts were on the move again. Iya does not know how they managed to get train tickets, but they left the city on September 21st, her 11th birthday.

“We ended up in Lopan. The tanks were crossing the bridge, and there was our little car. At that moment, the Germans started bombing. Bombs were falling. It was really terrifying,” she says.

“We moved past Lopan and were passing a store. My mom said: ‘stop here for a minute. It’s her birthday.’ She ran in and bought me a pair of boys’ shoes. I wore them for a long time. Then we reached the train, and off we went.”

Iya does not remember exactly how long the journey lasted. For an 11-year-old from a well-off urban family, it was likely a deeply traumatising experience.

The journey

“People who managed to get on those trains were, in a sense, the lucky ones. Those who stayed behind, especially Jews, their chances of survival were close to zero, less than 1 per cent in Kyiv. But the journey itself was incredibly difficult. Some trains had seats and benches, but most did not,” Shternshis explains.

“People sat on the floor, packed by the hundreds into cattle cars. There were no bathrooms. It was a very harsh journey. It was also dangerous, because the war was ongoing and trains were being bombed. It often took months to reach the destination, and people didn’t even know where they were going.”

During the trip, food was barely accessible. The ability to form alliances proved crucial, as survival often depended on others.

“People would get off at train stations just to buy boiled water if they had a cup or a pot to carry it in, which was itself a valuable possession. Those who survived were usually people who managed to make friends or travelled in groups. It was nearly impossible to survive alone,” Shternshis says.

“It was truly a survival-of-the-fittest situation. Children were especially vulnerable. Many became sick with dysentery and other diseases, and many died on those trains. There are accounts from evacuations of Leningrad, which say that when trains arrived in Tashkent, half the children were dead.”

The trains carried people of many ethnicities and cultures. Inevitably, tensions arose.

“The Germans weren’t just dropping bombs, they were also dropping leaflets. These claimed that the war was caused by Jews. That no one else wanted to fight – not Germans, not Russians – only Jews. This kind of propaganda fuelled hostility,” Shternshis says.

The journey lasted months. It favoured the strongest, claimed many lives, but for those who survived, it led to safety. Upon arrival, evacuees had to register to receive bread rations and other essential supplies. They were also assigned accommodation – often with local families who were required to make room for them.

“Many people weren’t even sent to cities, they were sent to nearby collective farms to perform physical labor, mostly agricultural work. Locals were expected to open their homes and take in newcomers. Some evacuees who had money could rent space, often just a corner of a room for an entire family,” Shternshis explains.

“They also had to find work. Salaries were almost nonexistent, what mattered were rations for bread, sugar, basic goods. You couldn’t really buy them, or if you could, they were extremely expensive. So finding work was essential.”

Central Asia had its own long-established Jewish populations, both Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi. There were Bukharian Jews in Uzbekistan and Judeo-Tats in Tajikistan, who had inhabited the region for hundreds of years. There were also descendants of prisoners sent to Kazakhstan by Tsarist Russia and later by the Soviets.

Finally, there were professionals who had been sent to the region to work in construction, engineering, and other skilled fields. In Tashkent, the Jewish community was so large that even before the war, the city had a Yiddish theatre.

But the evacuations caused the proportion of Jews to skyrocket.

“There are stories that in Tashkent you could hear Yiddish in the streets. Some people even say, though I think the numbers are exaggerated, that 40 per cent of the city spoke Yiddish. People always exaggerate, of course, but the perception matters. It shows just how widespread this was,” Shternshis says.

“People didn’t end up only in Uzbekistan or Tashkent, though it was a major hub, but also in Samarkand, Bukhara, and surrounding villages. They went to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. These places became centres of Jewish culture and life.”

Yiddish Tashkent

As Shternshis explains, about 1.4 million Soviet Jews were evacuated to the Soviet rear. While some were sent to the Urals or Siberia, a large proportion were relocated to Central Asia.

In a way, Iya’s family was lucky. They rented a small room on the outskirts of Tashkent from a Russian woman. It was cramped and basic, but they had a roof over their heads. Iya did not attend school, perhaps there were none nearby, or organising education for refugee children was simply not a priority at the time.

“A woman rented us a room. She would leave for work, and we lived in this tiny room. She had a huge shepherd dog in a kennel. She was busy with work, and in her large living room there was a gramophone with records lying around. One of them was called Suffering, and I fell in love with it. Whenever she left, I would sneak in quietly, put the record on, and listen: ‘goodbye, goodbye, don’t forget my suffering,’” Iya says.

“I would sit there, completely absorbed. Then one day, the gate banged loudly— the owner had come back. I was terrified. The record was still playing. I panicked, ran outside, climbed into the doghouse, and hugged the dog. I was hiding there when she burst in, opened it, and shouted: ‘I know you listen to it every day! The neighbours told me! And I know your mother once wore my galoshes!’”

If you haven’t done so already, please support us with a paid subscription

Upgrade to paid

Apart from listening to the woman’s records, Iya had little to occupy her time.

“I thought about food most of all. There were no books. I had brought one with me – I really liked it. The Great Confrontation by Lev Kassil. It was about directors, and for some reason, I wanted to become one. Even after the war.”

The mass influx of evacuees stretched Tashkent and other Central Asian cities to their limits. Food and basic necessities were scarce.

“I understood that when we arrived in Tashkent, there was a terrible famine. My mother got a job as a cleaner. She received a ration card. Almost every night, my brother would go to buy bread. He had to walk into the city center for that. You had to stand in line all night, as there were huge crowds.”

When I ask Iya what she remembers most vividly from Tashkent, she speaks about the Uzbeks living across the road. Their kindness left a lasting impression.

“I would draw water from the well and carry it back. Whenever I passed by, the Uzbeks would invite me in and feed me. That’s my fondest memory of them,” she says. “There was a hole in the floor where a fire burned with saxaul wood, and a storage area above. That’s where they fed me. Always. Whenever there was food, they shared it.”

“There was tremendous hospitality. Many people remember acts of kindness: sharing food, helping strangers,” Shternshis agrees. “There was also a lot of mutual learning. For many evacuees, it was their first time in Central Asia, and for locals, it was their first time meeting outsiders. This idea of a Muslim region welcoming Jewish refugees is especially meaningful today.”

But not everything was harmonious. Tensions existed as well.

“When my brother went to buy bread at night, he saw signs all over the city center: ‘beat the Jews, save Russia.’ Posters hung everywhere, and soldiers walked past them, smiling. No one took them down. He came home shaking with fear, poor thing,” Iya remembers.

“There were tensions. People were people, some were kind, some were traumatised, some had mixed feelings,” Shternshis says. “The lifestyle was also very different. For example, there are some accounts that say that in Tashkent, men and women stood in separate lines. Customs like head coverings were unfamiliar. This led to misunderstandings, and sometimes prejudice. Some European evacuees saw their own culture as superior, while locals resented that attitude.”

When Iya’s brother, Shurik, turned 18, he was called up to the front. He later fought in Manchuria and, after the Soviet victory, traveled to Germany. Iya did not see him again until the war ended. With him gone, only she and her parents remained.

A year and a few months into their stay in Tashkent, a letter arrived. It was from her uncle Salomon – the doctor who had lived with them in Kyiv. He invited them to move to Stalinabad, today’s Dushanbe. Soon after, Iya and her father left. Her mother joined them a few months later. Ever since, she has remembered Tashkent fondly, as the place that saved her and her family.

Despite the hardships, hunger, and overcrowding, Uzbekistan developed a good reputation among evacuees. Over time, Tashkent became a hub where Soviet artists – many of them Jewish – could continue their work, meet one another, and even flourish.

“Many of those who came to Central Asia were the cream of the Soviet intelligentsia, including musicians. They wanted to engage immediately with the local musical scene. Performers got involved in theatres and conservatories. Classical musicians, in particular, became interested in local instruments: dombras and others, and even experimented with adapting them to Tchaikovsky and Beethoven,” Shternshis says.

“Yiddish writers who were evacuated were very productive. Some even received bread rations for their writing, as members of local writers’ unions, a privileged category. I would say that Tashkent during the war became one of the world centers of Yiddish culture, if not the leading one. There were many Yiddish-speaking Jews who spoke the language openly and participated in literary evenings and cultural gatherings.”

Not all Jews who arrived in Central Asia in 1941 came from Belarus, Ukraine, or Russia. Some came from Poland. Daniela Gerson, a journalist and professor, traced her family’s story in the book The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II.

The bottom class

In 1939, when Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin divided Poland, Gerson’s grandparents left their hometown of Zamość in eastern Poland for the Soviet Union. But they refused to accept Soviet citizenship, and as a punishment were sent to a Gulag. What seemed like a tragedy at the time ultimately saved their lives.

In 1941, when Stalin joined the anti-Nazi alliance, Polish citizens imprisoned in Gulags were granted amnesty. Many joined the army of Władysław Anders, which traveled through Central Asia and Iran to Italy to fight against Nazi Germany. Among them were Jews, including Menachem Begin, who would later become Israel’s prime minister.

Gerson’s grandparents were among those freed from a Gulag in Siberia.

“These were Polish Jews who were granted amnesty in August 1941. They had the option to move on, and many – hundreds of thousands – went to Central Asia,” Gerson says.

“Another reason people went was a book called City of Bread, published in the 1920s and translated into Yiddish. It described Tashkent as a place full of food. After enduring extreme hardship, people believed they would find abundance there. What they found was very different.”

Gerson’s grandparents initially hoped to cross into Iran and continue to Palestine, but Soviet authorities prevented them from leaving.

“My grandmother always described the melons: you’ve never seen such melons, and the grapes. For Polish Jews arriving from Siberia, this abundance of fruit was astonishing. But alongside it, people were dying quickly from disease.”

Disease was widespread, and despite the fruit, hunger remained severe. Polish Jews were at the very bottom of the social hierarchy, the poorest of the poor. They faced suspicion from Soviet authorities, who often viewed them as potential traitors. Over time, many began referring to themselves as “the Wanderers.”

“The Soviets called them bezhenets: refugee. But many Polish Jews used a Yiddish term meaning ‘wanderers.’ In their memoirs, they connected this to the biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt, the idea of being freed, but not truly free. They couldn’t leave the Soviet Union and often moved from place to place without a permanent home,” Gerson says.

If you want to see more stories like this one, you can make a one-off donation and support our storytelling

Donate

Like many others, Gerson’s family went to Tashkent but were not allowed to stay due to overcrowding.

“Tashkent was overflowing with people. Some accounts describe people dying in the streets. My wife’s uncle described hamburgers made from people. Other scholars say that did not happen, but nobody disputes that there was incredible hunger,” she says.

Gerson’s family eventually found a room in a Tatar household in Juma, not far from Samarkand, where they stayed until 1946. During that time, two relatives were imprisoned for black-market trading, and one of them died in custody. Most of the family, however, survived, and later returned to Europe.

Iya’s family had more luck. In Stalinabad – today’s Dushanbe - uncle Salomon, who headed a surgical department, secured a job for Iya’s father. They lived near the city’s main avenue and socialised with members of the local elite, many of whom were also evacuees from Europe.

Iya would sneak into the opera house to watch performances for free, and she finally returned to school after missing two years. But she did not remember this period fondly. Her uncle’s family, in particular, was cruel to the young girl.

“They would sit me down at the table, and he would say to Tusya, ‘Tusya, let’s calculate how much this bowl of soup costs.’ Or Aunt Genya, his wife, would wake me up early in the morning, and we’d go to the market. She was afraid of dysentery, and afraid to try the food herself, so I tasted everything for her,” Iya says.

“I was like Cinderella there. I tried everything first, and then I helped her carry the bags.”

Life goes on

When Kyiv was liberated in 1943, Uncle Salomon’s hospital was scheduled to be transferred back to Ukraine, and with it, Iya and her family.

According to estimates, around 90 per cent of Jews who were evacuated to the Soviet Union survived the war. This contrasts sharply with only about 1–2 per cent of Polish Jews who survived in German-occupied territory.

And yet, this story is not widely known.

“This was something I had always wondered about. I knew my grandparents had survived in the Soviet Union, but I didn’t see that story represented. It’s not something taught in Hebrew school. During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were allies, fighting against Nazi Germany. In that context, there was little appetite to scrutinise Stalin’s actions,” Gerson explains.

“People didn’t want to hear about what Stalin had done, not during the war, and not immediately after. In the United States, he was seen as ‘Uncle Joe’ and was even named Time’s Man of the Year twice. After the war, that began to change with the Cold War. But for Polish Jews who wanted to immigrate to the United States, their time in the Soviet Union became a liability. It could prevent them from entering the country, so many avoided talking about it.”

But there was another reason for their silence, Gerson says. Commemoration focused so heavily on those who had been murdered by the Nazis that survivors often felt a responsibility to tell that story instead. Their own one remained in the background.

While many Jewish evacuees left Uzbekistan after the war, some chose to stay. They had built lives there: jobs, communities, and a sense of stability. For them, there was no compelling reason to leave.

Inna Davidovna Kogan will turn 70 this year. Her family arrived in Uzbekistan in the late 1930s, though she is not certain exactly when. They had fled pogroms in western Ukraine and, for reasons unknown, chose Tashkent as their destination.

“I don’t know, maybe it was chance, maybe fate that brought them here. My father used to say he arrived barefoot. I don’t know why, but perhaps it was meant to be. They were given housing and work here,” she tells me over the phone.

Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when emigration to Israel became possible, her family decided to stay in Tashkent.

“When the Soviet era ended, it became possible to leave for your historical homeland, Israel. But my father said, ‘I have three homelands: Ukraine, where I was born and where my family is buried but I cannot return there; it is like an unhealed wound. My homeland betrayed me,” Kogan recalls.

“I will stay here, in Uzbekistan, because this country and its people took us in. They fed us, clothed us, gave us shelter, and treated us with kindness. I will not betray my second homeland.’”

This story was supported by:

Hi all,

Before Russian became the lingua franca across Central Asia following Russian and later Soviet colonisation, the language most widely used in the region was Persian.

In fact, the word Turan, which appears in the title of this podcast, has Persian linguistic and literary origins — something we’ll be talking about today. We’ll look at Persian influences in Central Asia, how the language spread across such faraway lands, why Persian culture became so fashionable, and how this influence eventually faded. We’ll also examine what traces of Persian influence can still be found in the region today.

Support us with a one-off donation or choose a membership tier on Buy me a coffee

Donate to Turan Tales

Joining us is Ruben Nikoghosyan, a lecturer in Middle, Classical, and Modern Persian language and literature at the Ferdowsi School of Persian Literature, which he founded. Previously, he was a visiting lecturer at the Department of Armenian Studies at Isfahan State University in Iran.

I hope you will enjoy this one.

Have a great end of the week!

— Agnieszka

Hi all,

When Russia invaded Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians left their homes in search of safety. But this wasn’t the only large-scale migration that began in that fateful year of 2022.

During the same period, hundreds of thousands of Russians also left their country, escaping mobilisation and the increasingly authoritarian nature of Vladimir Putin’s regime — some out of fear, others to avoid the draft. According to some estimates, up to a million Russians may have decided to leave their homeland.

It is unclear how many of them ended up in Central Asia, as local governments have not released comprehensive data. What is clear, however, is that this migration has had a profound impact on local societies and the region as a whole.

You can now support Turan Tales on Buy Me a Coffee! Get a membership or make a one-off donation to help us bring the next episodes to life

Buy us a coffee

Today, we look at Russian wartime migration into Central Asia: how it unfolded, what motivated Russians to choose the region as their destination, how they rebuilt their lives there, and how this movement has reshaped Central Asia.

Joining us is Yan Matusevich, a journalist and Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His doctoral research focuses on the experiences of Russian exiles who have relocated to Central Asia since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

I hope you will enjoy this one.

Have a lovely end of the week,

— Agnieszka

Hi all,

This week, I would like to ask you a very big favour: please fill in a listeners’ survey about Turan Tales to help us improve.

For those of you with a Substack account, here is a Substack survey.

For those who don’t have one, I have created a Google Form with exactly the same questions.

I would greatly appreciate your feedback. Over the next few weeks, I will work on a list of benefits for our paid subscribers to give you something extra and thank you for your support.

I want to be honest with you: running Turan Tales is a great pleasure and a dream come true, but it is also quite expensive. I work with amazing sound designers, but to maintain the project—and especially to grow it—I need at least one more person to help run it. This is one of my key goals, and I won’t be able to achieve it without your support.

The funding we have received for the audio documentaries from the International Press Institute is also slowly coming to an end, so if you have ever considered supporting us, now is the time.

You can subscribe to Turan Tales on Substack for just 8 USD/EUR a month or 80 USD/EUR a year:

Subscribe on Substack

Or support us on Buy Me a Coffee, where you can donate any amount or choose from several membership tiers:

Buy us a coffee

Alternatively, you can wait to see the additional perks we are planning to introduce. And if you know of any institutions or private donors who might be willing to support us—I’m all ears.

Either way, thank you for listening to Turan Tales. It is you, my listeners, who make this project worthwhile.

As for this week’s episode, we focus on a fascinating story about cryptocurrencies in Central Asia. Which countries — and why — have opened up to cryptocurrencies? Why is Kyrgyzstan building its own cryptocurrency? And can the crypto market help develop green energy?

Joining us is Hugo Estecahandy, who holds a PhD in Geography and Geopolitics from the French Institute of Geopolitics. He is a researcher with the Geopolitics of the Datasphere project and coordinator of the “Digital Materialities” working group at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). He focuses on the geopolitics of cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency mining.

I hope you will enjoy this one.

Have a lovely end of the week,

— Agnieszka

Hi all,

I waited a few weeks before covering this story, simply because I wanted to see how the sensational split in one of the most stable political tandems in Central Asian history would unfold: the split between Kyrgyzstan’s president, Sadyr Japarov, and his loyal comrade, the chairman of the State Committee for National Security, or GKNB, Kamchybek Tashiev.

The two friends rose to power together after the 2020 revolution, which brought Japarov out of prison, where he had been serving an 11.5-year sentence for the kidnapping of a local official in the Issyk-Kul region.

While Japarov was ruling the country, Tashiev focused on building a police state, expanding both the powers and the size of the security services — and, with that, his own influence. During his tenure, journalists and members of the political opposition were jailed on trumped-up charges, and fear returned.

But after five years of largely successful rule, during which power was concentrated in the hands of both men — each representing the interests of different regional elites — Japarov decided to get rid of his longtime ally.

First, in February 2026, Japarov abruptly removed Tashiev from his position, while the security chief was in Germany receiving medical treatment. Since then, the state has been dismantling Tashiev’s network and removing his friends, relatives, and loyalists from positions of power.

In March, tax authorities published a video alleging that people in Tashiev’s inner circle were involved in a corruption scheme and the embezzlement of funds from the state-owned oil and gas company Kyrgyzneftegaz. In connection with the scheme, Interior Ministry officials arrested Tashiev’s younger brother, Shairbek, as well as former central bank governor Melis Turgunbayev.

It is still unclear whether the authorities will go a step further and arrest Tashiev himself. What is clear is that Japarov has begun consolidating his power.

In this episode, we will look at how the tandem came to power, what their rule looked like, and what the possible reasons for the split might be. We will also talk about the north-south divide — and about who, of all people, is mourning Tashiev’s fall.

Joining us is Aksana Ismailbekova, a Kyrgyz anthropologist and research fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), whose work focuses on kinship, ethnicity, patronage, conflict, and gender in Kyrgyzstan. She is the author of Blood Ties and the Native Son: Poetics of Patronage in Kyrgyzstan, published in 2017, and Migration and Welfare Austerity: Mobilizing Kinship for Care, Welfare, and Development in Kyrgyzstan, published in 2026.

I hope you will enjoy this one.

Have a great end of the week,

— Agnieszka

This story is part of our new series of audio features - also available as long reads - made possible by the International Press Institute. If you enjoy it, leave us a comment or reply to this email with your feedback — we’d love to hear what you think.

In a side alley just off a main street, there is another world. A drag singer in a long blonde wig and a black evening gown croons the opening lines of Back to Black by Amy Winehouse.

Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people watch as theatre lights catch the meticulous detail of the performer’s makeup. As the song goes on, the audience begins to sing along. For a moment, the fantasy becomes real; at least for one night, in this shabby bar.

It was autumn 2024, and Amirovka was one of Almaty’s best-known queer clubs, one of at least three bars in the city hosting drag several nights a week.

In a region where many queer people still hide their identities for fear of family rejection, public judgment, or violence, places like it offered a rare chance to gather openly.

By April 2026, Amirovka was gone, and the few queer spaces left face frequent police raids.

In December 2025, Kazakhstan passed a law banning so-called LGBTQ propaganda, echoing legislation introduced in Russia. Unlike in Russia, the queer community here has not been designated an “extremist movement”, but the fear that this could come next is real.

In just a matter of months, Almaty, a city many once described as Central Asia’s queer capital, has begun to close in on itself.

Becoming Natasha

When Slava, a lanky, flamboyant man, opens the door to his flat in a residential district of Almaty, what unfolds is a world of colourful feathers, gowns, and wigs. Recording equipment and lamps are scattered throughout the room. With the anti-propaganda law now in place, he is planning to move some of his performances online.

He is 27 and, by day, works as an analyst for a Russian sociological research firm. By night, since 2024, he has been known as Natasha Homophobia, one of Almaty’s top drag performers. Today, it is hard for him to tell where Slava ends and Natasha begins.

“I’ve been thinking about that. It seems to me like there’s no difference. Like with any mask, that’s the magic of theater: people allow themselves more when they’re wearing one,” Slava says.

“They throw stones at others, say nasty things, and let themselves do things they normally wouldn’t. To me, it’s like a hyperbolic version of Slava. It’s just that in my daytime life, I’m a serious senior analyst, but here, I can be anyone.”

Slava was born in Shchyokino, in Russia’s Tula region, but left the country after the war in Ukraine began. He did not want to be conscripted, and he opposed the war. At first, he and his partner Gleb, a producer, planned to move to Georgia, but administrative obstacles left them stranded in Almaty. Soon, they fell in love with the city.

“Almaty is basically a liberal city, I think. If the idea of a gay capital applies anywhere in this region, in Central Asia, then I think Almaty could be called that,” he says.

Natasha Homophobia had been taking shape inside Slava for some time. At first, he was simply a fan of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the American reality series in which drag queens compete for the crown.

You can support Turan Tales on Buy Me a Coffee! Get a membership or make a one-off donation to help us bring the next episodes to life

Buy us a coffee

A drag queen is typically a performer, often a gay man, who uses costume, makeup and performance to embody a heightened or theatrical form of femininity.

At first, Slava had no desire to perform himself. That changed when he saw one contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race who inspired him. Soon after, Natasha Homophobia was born. Slava shows me a YouTube video of one of his performances.

“It’s called Becoming Natasha. I imagined myself as a victim of Chernobyl radiation, living in a radioactive forest. And, in a way, it stayed like that,” he says. “And it’s actually true, because where I was born, there really was radioactive rain. I still joke about it.”

Natasha might never have existed without Slava’s move to Almaty and Amirovka, the city’s main queer venue, where she began performing.

“I immediately fell in love with this place. I didn’t expect to see anything like it here. And unlike the drag I had seen on TV or in Russia, which often meant walking from one corner to another with a microphone and a backing track, here, it’s different. It’s more theatrical. The performances are complex,” Slava explains.

“There’s dramaturgy, set design, special effects. People are really flexing their creative muscles and creating something truly interesting. I haven’t seen anything like it anywhere else.”

As Natasha Homophobia, Slava competed twice in Dragon, a drag competition at Amirovka, coming second both times. As he explains, Amirovka developed a system for producing new artists.

“It was like a real talent school,” he says. “Every six months, a new group of performers would emerge. They were helped to find their characters, improve their skills, work on props, wigs, costumes. There was a strong sense of community – everyone was eager to create something exciting, to make it great.”

There wasn’t much money involved, what mattered was the community. It was like drag in its original form: underground entertainment for poor transgender people and their friends, Slava explains.

“The whole idea is about turning trash into treasure. That DIY spirit is a huge part of this art form. You don’t need big money, you just need a space and a community. And that’s what created an entire culture of its own.”

The man behind it all

In April 2025, Amir Shaikezhanov, a man in his late thirties, with a friendly manner and laughing eyes, sat down on Amirovka’s rooftop to talk about how he had managed to create a space where queer people from across Central Asia could feel at home.

Amir had known he was gay from a young age. But for a long time, he thought he was the only one. He had grown used to the idea that loneliness might simply be his fate. Then he moved to Almaty and discovered that he was not alone after all.

He began frequenting the bars where queer people gathered, but he was troubled by what he found there: heavy drinking, fights, and what he saw as a culture shaped by internalised homophobia.

He wanted to build something different: spaces where people could feel accepted, loved, and treated with dignity. He helped to launch Kok.team, a website for queer Kazakhstanis, and Amanbol, the first project in Kazakhstan to offer HIV self-testing.

Since bars did not always feel safe, around 2016, he began inviting people from the community to his own 50-square-metre apartment for get-togethers that sometimes lasted for days. In time, people started calling the place Amirovka – Amir’s house.

He became one of Almaty’s most prominent activists, community organisers, and LGBTQ voices, speaking openly, under his own name, about issues affecting the community, from transphobia to the stigma surrounding people living with HIV.

As the years passed, Amirovka took on a more permanent form. Though it changed locations several times after first emerging in 2018, it remained a refuge for queer people from across Central Asia, and, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for many from Russia as well.

Amir made a point of ensuring that Russian migrants were welcomed into the bar and the wider queer scene. His partner, Bakhtiyar, ran Dragon – the competition where Slava – Natasha Homophobia first found a platform for his work. Together, they had become something close to an institution.

Several times during our meeting, people interrupted to ask Amir for help or advice. Each time, he responded patiently, ready to deal with whatever issue had arisen. He spoke a lot about trans rights, about the violent language that had become normalised in some drag spaces, and about the need for more inclusion, more care, and more love.

That night on the rooftop, I asked him whether he feared that the anti-LGBTQ propaganda politics already entrenched in Russia, and the wider anti-queer backlash that had followed, might eventually reach Kazakhstan.

He said he wasn’t worried. Kazakhs, he told me, were not like Russians. They minded their own business more. He remained hopeful about the future.

One year on, Amir is in prison.

In June 2025, a transgender man named Yelisey, who had worked at Amirovka, published a heart-wrenching video on social media telling that Amir had raped him. Attached to the statement was security camera footage showing a sexual encounter between the two.

Soon afterwards, police arrested Amir on charges of rape and of exposing another person to HIV through sex.

Kazakhstan’s queer community was horrified. Some people turned against him, and against Amirovka itself. Others directed their anger at Yelisey.

“Amirgate, as I call it, is a great tragedy for Kazakhstan as a whole, not just for the LGBTQ movement. I don’t want to speak for the man himself, but he was very helpful,” Slava says.

“As an activist, as an employer, as someone who created a cultural space for artists and for people, a safe space where they could come, he played an important role. Many people felt better there than at home. Many were there every day. It was simply a very important place.”

Amir should face the consequences of his actions, Slava thinks. But his prolonged detention and the repeated postponement of his trial dates by the court appear to be politically motivated decisions by the authorities. Ten months have passed since his arrest, and Amir remains in custody. It is unclear when his trial will conclude.

If you haven’t done so already, please support us with a paid subscription

Support Turan Tales

“I don’t think there is any sense of justice here. Despite the charges, he is clearly being held not because of them, but because he is an inconvenient person for the authorities. And if we’re talking about the original conflict, there are no winners at all. Everyone lost, and only the authorities won,” Slava says.

Amirovka did not survive the scandal. For several months, the space operated under a different name – Icon, but it soon closed.

The new reality

For this story, I reached out to several active drag performers and bar owners originally from Kazakhstan, but they either did not respond to my messages or declined to speak. Following the introduction of the propaganda law people have begun to fear that the safe spaces they have spent years building may be at risk.

“Even before the law was introduced and adopted, we had already been facing severe repercussions and attacks. For example, in October last year, one of our colleagues from another organisation was kidnapped by the military. I was detained for three hours. I was also attacked by homophobic groups – and by the police as well,” says Temirlan, a 22-year-old activist with Queer KZ.

“Now they will have a legal basis to act. Under the new law, we can face up to 15 days of imprisonment for publishing anything related to LGBTQ topics, as it can be labeled so-called ‘propaganda.’ We believe this law essentially institutionalises hate crimes and discrimination.”

Temirlan sees several reasons why the government decided to pass the law. First, there is pressure from Russia, which has sponsored anti-gender groups in Kazakhstan. Secondly, he says the authorities exploit queer people as a political scapegoat.

“The government needs public approval, and the easiest way to gain it is by appealing to homophobic attitudes in society. Since a large part of the population holds these views, it becomes an easy way to score political points,” he says.

“There is a growing narrative portraying us as being against the nation and the state – as if we want to destroy them – which is, of course, absurd and untrue.”

But queer nightlife and drag in Almaty did not disappear. Alongside Kazakh-owned venues, Russian capital entered the scene following the invasion of Ukraine. Today, Blush bar in Almaty is one of only two venues where drag performances are still held: every day from midnight onward, featuring both Kazakh and Russian performers.

Just off a main street, the entrance lies at the end of a long corridor resembling a garage, guarded by security staff who meticulously check visitors’ bags and documents. They ensure that no unauthorised individuals can enter the venue.

Inside, to the left, hangs a tall pink sequin curtain set against a glossy pink wall. A large shelf displays lavish high heels and a crown: very flashy, very ostentatious, and very drag.

In the dressing room, two performers finish their elaborate makeup and prepare for their shows. They carry themselves like divas, unapproachable and composed, and it is unclear whether this is a pose or part of their character.

Shortly after midnight, the show begins. One after another, performers, some accompanied by dancers and sophisticated visuals, take to the stage, captivating the audience with their skill and glamour. Unlike at Amirovka, they do not sing live, but the performances are mesmerising.

Every now and then, the audience’s attention shifts to uniformed police officers who enter the venue without any clear purpose. Are they monitoring the situation? Looking for violations of written or unwritten rules? Trying to instill fear? No one knows. Their visits have become so frequent that they no longer surprise anyone.

It is hard to define what a drag bar owner should look like. But if we rely on stereotypes, probably not like Artem Demchenko. The 44-year-old from Novosibirsk, Russia, is wearing a multicolored tracksuit and sport shoes, with short hair and a casual beard.

He and his partner opened a venue in Almaty after their drag bar in Krasnoyarsk was shut down by the authorities.

On February 23, Russia celebrates Defender of the Fatherland Day, a national holiday honoring the military. And Demchenko’s bar featured a special programme.

“On February 23, 2024 there was a program. It featured drag performers and naturally, there were performances that included costumes resembling military uniforms,” Demchenko says.

“A young man filmed the performance. He was a member of our community. Then he got into an argument with other guests and he was asked to leave because of his behavior. After that, he sent a video of our performer to a well-known public figure, Ekaterina Mizulina. The next day, we were surprised to see ourselves featured on her blog.”

Soon after, their bar was surrounded by people belonging to the “Northern Man” movement, Demchenko explains, a group advocating for the purity of the Russian race, that began intimidating their guests and security.

If you want to see more stories like this one, you can make a one-off donation and support our storytelling

Donate

“Then the police arrived, but instead of protecting us, they forced everyone to the floor and said they now had a warrant accusing us of extremism,” he says.

After the scandal, the bar in Krasnoyarsk was shut down, and Demchenko and his partner decided to leave. Russia was no longer safe. Since they already had contacts and friends in the local queer scene in Almaty, they moved their business to Kazakhstan.

But recently, the situation in the city has become more tense.

“There have always been raids. They regularly carry out so-called ‘operational and preventive measures,’ when they enter an establishment – ours or any other – where there might be 30 or 40 people, and try to find some kind of violation. Hookahs, balloons, someone smoking, anything,” Demchenko explains.

“And sometimes, frankly, it reaches the point of absurdity. Since January 1st, laughing gas balloons have been classified as a narcotic substance in Kazakhstan. There was one club – our competitor – and they didn’t get rid of them. Officials came to their venue at the end of January, confiscated the cylinders and shut the club down.”

It is still unclear what the limits of the new propaganda law will be, and whether bars like Blush will be targeted. While the Blush bar is not a newspaper or a bookstore, they do run social media.

“How do you determine what counts as propaganda and what doesn’t? No one knows,” Demchenko says.

After two years of operation, Demchenko and his partner are considering leaving again. The pressure has simply become too great. If they do, Almaty will lose one of the last venues where queer people can enjoy themselves in peace and acceptance.

The queer nostalgia

The heyday of Almaty’s queer scene seems to have passed. Outside Blush, a young regular named Sergey does not hide his pessimism. In his late twenties, he was born in northern Kazakhstan, but it was Almaty that helped him become the confident and extravagant man he is today.

“We’re seeing the consequences in the clubs themselves, there are more and more inspections, disrupting our peace and quiet. Before, it wasn’t like this. Is being blonde or wearing a sequined blouse considered LGBT propaganda or not? This lack of clarity and understanding traps you in endless questions,” he says.

“I think that we’re moving toward something like a Russian-style regime. Before, everything felt relatively free. I remember when I came to Almaty in 2015, I saw guys walking hand in hand in a shopping center. But over the years, things have gotten worse. And more and more, we’re thinking about moving – to Poland, or somewhere else in Europe.”

Slava-Natasha is not very optimistic either. He is also thinking about leaving Kazakhstan.

“I’ve been performing less lately, only when I’m really invited, only if I truly want to. Especially after Amirovka closed. It was such a comfortable place. The stage was big, the audience was appreciative, and everyone knew me,” he says.

“I see that many people from this new wave that emerged around Dragon are stepping back. It scared a lot of them so much that they left drag altogether. Some have even closed their social media accounts. Many are planning to leave.”

The decline of the queer scene, along with the introduction of the censorious propaganda law, has already had an impact not only on the lives of LGBTQ people in the city and across Kazakhstan, but on the arts scene too.

Before the law came into force in March, Mark Kuklin, a theatre director from Almaty, had the freedom to explore issues related to queer rights in his work. At Artishok, one of the city’s leading avant-garde theatres, he staged Dark Room, a play by an anonymous Belarusian writer.

It tells a coming-of-age story of a gay boy in authoritarian Belarus, touching on migration, sexual exploration, and abuse. The play is bold, heart-wrenching, and unmistakably queer. It may have been one of the last times such a work was performed in a Kazakh theatre.

“Everyone will start self-censoring. At least in the theater, they’re already doing it. All my friends and colleagues, and I’m in touch with a lot of people from both independent and state theatres, are experiencing this,” he says, sitting in a hip café in central Almaty.

“My friends and I often joked that Almaty was the queer capital of Central Asia, because life here was completely different. It was a wonderful city. I loved it very much, and I always wanted Almaty to be among those great cities – those Babylons, as I call them – like New York, Berlin, Paris, maybe Moscow at one time, or St. Petersburg. But it’s definitely not there anymore.”

Kuklin believes that anti-LGBTQ propaganda is just the first step in the government’s broader campaign to control public life and enforce censorship. It is also one of the reasons he and many of his friends are considering leaving the country in search of a “freer society.”

“Fear eats away at the soul. I think so because I see it in the theater, in people’s insecurity,” Kuklin says. “I would probably say that I’m afraid of fear itself. It’s better to do what you’re afraid of than to simply be afraid.”

This story was supported by:

*A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Yelisey was from Russia.

Hi all,

Once upon a time, when the Eurasian steppe was governed by Turkic and Mongolic nomadic tribes and people lived according to the rhythm of nature, they worshipped Tengri, the god of the sky. Genghis Khan and the rulers of the Turkic khaganates adhered to this belief system, known as Tengrism, before Islam began to spread across the region beginning in the 8th century.

However, Tengrism was never fully eradicated. Its practices survived among Central Asian communities in everyday rituals, customs, and beliefs. While the Soviet Union sought to suppress it through systemic atheism, Tengrism — like Islam — persisted underground.

You can now support Turan Tales on Buy Me a Coffee! Get a membership or make a one-off donation to help us bring the next episodes to life

Buy us a coffee

In the late 1980s, with perestroika, the ancient belief system gained new traction among people in the region who were longing for purpose and a renewed sense of belonging. Yet in the ensuing years, through the collapse of the Soviet Union and the nation-building processes across newly independent Central Asia, Tengrism never became the dominant faith.

Why is that? What is Tengrism in the first place? And why did Kazakhstan refuse to register it as an official religion?

To explore these questions and more, I have invited Abigail Scripka, a doctoral candidate at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam, Germany, who studies Tengrism in Kazakhstan with a particular focus on the period of perestroika.

I hope you will enjoy this one!

Have a great end of the week.

— Agnieszka

Hi listeners,

Or I shall rather say – viewers, because this is the first episode of Turan Tales that you can not only listen to, but also watch. I don’t know yet if this format is here to stay, so you have an opinion — do let me know.

My guest today was born in 1991, the same year as the independent states of Central Asia. A few years ago, he set out to explore what’s happened in the former Soviet republics since the collapse of the USSR, and whether they have flourished over the last 35 years without the “big brother” Russia.

You can now support Turan Tales on Buy Me a Coffee! Get a membership or make a one-off donation to help us bring the next episodes to life

Buy us a coffee

His book, Farewell to Russia: A journey through the former USSR, has just been published in the UK and the US. His name is Joe Luc Barnes, and you might also recognise his voice from our audio documentaries. In this episode, we talk about his book, travelling and living in Central Asia, and the (often problematic) craft of travel writing.

I hope you will enjoy this one.

Have a nice end of the week!

— Agnieszka

Hi all,

Last Sunday, March 8th, Turan Tales celebrated turning one with its first live podcast and a community gathering in Almaty. We sat down with Kazakh podcaster and feminist Aisulu Toyshibek to talk about women’s rights in Kazakhstan and how the situation has changed over the centuries and in the last few decades.

We then had cake and drinks and spent the rest of the evening getting to know each other and celebrating. Thank you to all of you who made it, and to all my listeners who showed me that a podcast about Central Asia - with stories that most mainstream media ignore - has the potential to survive.

I hope this wasn’t the last get-together of the Turan Tales community. In the coming months, I hope to organise another event, maybe in a different city. If you or your institution would like to host us, feel free to message me - I’m open to cooperation.

This week, you can listen to the talk we recorded during our Almaty meeting with Aisulu.

I hope you enjoy this one as much as we did.

Have a nice end of the week.

— Agnieszka