Theme - Kazakhstan

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 231 (September 21, 2026)

Part 2. Election campaign and evolution of party-political system.

Party Competition and the Transformation of Kazakhstan’s Party System in the 2026 Kurultai Election

The election of 23 August 2026 substantially reshaped Kazakhstan’s party system. Seven registered political parties contested all 145 seats in the newly established unicameral Kurultai, elected entirely through nationwide party lists. Five parties that represented all political spectrum crossed the 5 per cent electoral threshold: Adilet, Auyl, Respublica, Ak Zhol and the Nationwide Social Democratic Party (OSDP). Two left parties (The People’s Party of Kazakhstan and the Baitaq Green Party) failed to enter the new legislature. The official results were highly concentrated. Adilet received 71.17 per cent of the vote and 110 seats; Auyl 6.26 per cent and 10 seats; Respublica 5.56 per cent and nine seats; Ak Zhol 5.21 per cent and eight seats; and OSDP 5.11 per cent and eight seats. The People’s Party received 3.11 per cent and Baitaq only 1.07 per cent. The most significant feature of the election, however, was not simply Adilet’s overwhelming victory. It was the reorganization of party system, combined with a weakening of virtually all the smaller parties that had entered the Mazhilis in 2023.

1. Adilet: from a “party of power” to a party of presidential modernization

The current ruling party, Adilet, traces its institutional origins to Nur Otan (“Light of the Fatherland”), the pro-presidential party that dominated Kazakhstan’s political system under Nursultan Nazarbayev. At that period it looked like specific Post-Soviet “party of power” (with “United Russia” in neighboring Russian Federation being one of the examples of such a party) lacking any clear ideology and reform program. In the wake of President Tokayev’s reform agenda, the party after the January 2022 unrest was first reformed as Amanat (“Entrusted Legacy”) in March 2022, and subsequently seriously reorganized as Adilet (“Justice”) in 2026. Both transformations formed part of a broader effort to distance the political system from the Nazarbayev era, marked by the departure of many prominent figures associated with the former president and the construction of a new clearly cut political identity centered on Tokayev’s concept of a “New Kazakhstan”.

Adilet was formed only several months before the election and it directly incorporated Amanat in June 2026. So, the ruling party was not simply reformed twice, during the last reform it joined a completely new party, which emphasized an institutional and what is most important in Kazakhstan’s context personal breakthrough with the past.

Adilet therefore should not be understood simply as another new entrant to the political system. Institutionally, it inherited the organizational infrastructure and much of the political space previously occupied by Amanat, while simultaneously creating a new political identity associated more directly with the current stage of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s reforms.

The electoral effect of this transformation was substantial. Amanat had received 53.90 per cent of the party-list vote in the 2023 Mazhilis election. Adilet received 71.17 per cent in 2026. Although the two results cannot be treated as perfectly comparable because both the institutional setting and electoral context changed, the difference nevertheless points to a major consolidation of the presidential electoral bloc.

Ideologically, Adilet describes itself as a party of “reformist centrism” and explicitly rejects the conventional left-right division. Its program combines several elements that are characteristic of Tokayev’s broader political discourse: social justice, the rule of law, patriotism, personal responsibility, hard work, technological modernization, education, environmental responsibility, and the strengthening of a common civic identity. Its ideological formula is therefore neither classical conservatism nor social democracy, but rather state-centered developmental centrism. To a certain respect this program resembles political programs in the East Asian democracies (Japan, South Korea, etc).

This is an important change from the traditional function of Kazakhstan’s dominant party. Whereas Nur Otan and later Amanat largely functioned as broad parties of administrative and political consolidation (i.e. “parties of power”), Adilet seeks to present itself more explicitly as a party of modernization. Its role is to translate presidential reforms into policy and to mobilize social support for them.

The 2026 result gives this model an exceptionally strong parliamentary base: with 110 of 145 seats, Adilet possesses roughly three quarters of the Kurultai.

2. Auyl: agrarian interests combined with cultural conservatism

Auyl (“Village”)’s political profile is readily understandable to anyone familiar with the history of party politics in the post-Soviet space. Agrarian parties that emerged in the 1990s and early 2000s were often ideologically located on the left, in part because they represented the interests of former Soviet collective and state farm elites and frequently cooperated with, or electorally supported, Communist parties. Over time, however, this social base changed. In Kazakhstan, Auyl increasingly came to represent the interests of a modern agricultural sector, including commercial farming and agribusiness, while placing greater emphasis on traditional values, rural communities, national culture, and social conservatism. As a result, the party gradually moved away from its earlier left-agrarian profile toward a more conservative agrarian position.

Auyl emerged as the strongest of the smaller parties, receiving 6.26 per cent and ten seats. Yet this result also represents a marked electoral decline. In 2023, Auyl had obtained 10.90 per cent, making it the second strongest party in the proportional component of that election.

Auyl occupies perhaps the clearest sociological niche in Kazakhstan’s party system. It is fundamentally an agrarian and regional party, emphasizing rural development, food security, agricultural modernization, stronger regional economies and better infrastructure outside the largest cities. Its formula of “strong regions – strong center” summarizes this orientation.

At the same time, Auyl is not merely an economic interest party. Its platform also combines agrarian politics with relatively conservative communitarian themes: family, national traditions, cultural heritage, patriotism and the moral value of the responsible citizen. It can therefore be described as a form of agrarian communitarianism or moderate national conservatism, although it operates firmly within the general framework of support for the state’s modernization agenda.

Its decline from 10.90 to 6.26 per cent may indicate that part of the electorate attracted in 2023 by Auyl’s patriotic and socially conservative message migrated toward the much broader political platform offered by Adilet. Nevertheless, Auyl retained a distinctive constituency and still remains the second-largest party in the Kurultai.

3. Respublica: entrepreneurial modernization and a generational political niche

Respublica received 5.56 per cent and nine seats, compared with 8.59 per cent in its first parliamentary election in 2023. Thus, although the party survived the new electoral environment, it lost roughly three percentage points. Respublica is one of the most interesting products of the political opening that preceded the 2023 election. Unlike the older parliamentary parties, it was constructed around a younger generation of entrepreneurs and managers. Its political vocabulary emphasizes entrepreneurship, efficiency, modernization, digitalization and practical problem-solving.

Its ideological profile can best be described as economic pragmatism with a technocratic and entrepreneurial orientation. Its 2026 program was organized around the sequence “prosperous citizen – responsible society – effective state – secure country”.

This distinguishes Respublica from another right party Ak Zhol. Both appeal to entrepreneurial constituencies, but whereas Ak Zhol represents the institutionalized interests of established domestic business and has developed a long tradition of parliamentary economic advocacy, Respublica has sought to embody a newer, younger, more innovation-oriented segment of Kazakhstan’s middle class.

Its weaker result in 2026 suggests that the initial novelty effect surrounding the party in 2023 has faded. Some experts also say that since this party is the youngest, it still has no effective party machinery. An attempt to include popular figures to compensate for the absence of organization has not worked well. Yet crossing the threshold for a second consecutive election is politically important: it suggests that Respublica is becoming institutionalized rather than remaining a one-election project.

4. Ak Zhol: the established party of business

Ak Zhol (“Bright Path”) crossed the threshold with 5.21 per cent, securing eight seats. This was a significant decline from its 8.41 per cent result in 2023 and from the stronger positions the party enjoyed in several earlier parliamentary elections. Ideologically, Ak Zhol remains the closest Kazakhstan has to a classical economic liberal or pro-business party, although its contemporary position is more accurately described as entrepreneurial centrism.

Its historical transformation is particularly revealing. Ak Zhol emerged in the early 2000s from the reformist and initially oppositional Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan. Over time (particularly after Azat Peruashev became its leader in 2011) it evolved from a broad democratic opposition party into a highly institutionalized parliamentary representative of domestic entrepreneurs and private business. Its core issues now include protection of small and medium-sized enterprises, opposition to excessive taxation and regulatory pressure, limiting the expansion of the quasi-state sector, defending domestic producers, stronger parliamentary control over public finances and reducing the criminalization of economic disputes.

The arrival of Respublica has created an obvious competition within this electoral niche. Ak Zhol represents the older, institutionally established business community, while Respublica appeals more heavily to younger entrepreneurs, new-economy sectors and managerial constituencies. Their almost identical 2026 results – 5.21 and 5.56 per cent respectively – suggest that Kazakhstan now has two competing versions of pro-market or entrepreneurial politics.

5. OSDP: a small but remarkably stable social-democratic electorate

The Nationwide Social Democratic Party (OSDP), the only left party in the parliament, received 5.11 per cent and eight seats. Numerically, its performance was strikingly stable, although, traditionally not very strong: it received 5.20 per cent in 2023. Among all the smaller parliamentary parties, OSDP therefore demonstrated the greatest electoral continuity.

Ideologically it also occupies the clearest conventional position on the left-right spectrum. OSDP explicitly identifies itself with social democracy and emphasizes redistribution, social protection, labor rights, stronger trade unions, political accountability, demonopolization, competitive elections and parliamentary government. Its 2026 program combines demands for social responsibility with technological and economic modernization. This makes it a moderate center-left party rather than a traditional socialist organization.

Historically, OSDP has also possessed stronger roots in Kazakhstan’s opposition tradition than most parties represented in parliament. It posed a left-wing alternative to neoliberal policy of the government for many years. Its survival at just above the threshold is therefore significant. It suggests the existence of a relatively small but persistent electorate for a more socially redistributive and politically pluralist alternative.

Paradoxically, because all the other smaller parliamentary parties lost considerably more electoral support between 2023 and 2026, OSDP’s unchanged five-per-cent constituency gave it greater relative parliamentary importance: its representation increased from four party-list mandates in the 2023 Mazhilis to eight seats in the larger Kurultai.

6. Ex-Communists and the Green lost the election

The most noticeable loser was the People’s Party of Kazakhstan, which fell from 6.80 per cent in 2023 to 3.11 per cent in 2026 and therefore lost its parliamentary representation. The party represents the successor to Kazakhstan’s Communist political tradition, but in recent years it has increasingly defined itself through the language of modern socialism rather than orthodox communism. Its program stresses labor incomes, social equality, healthcare, inclusion, affordable public services and reducing regional disparities.

Its problem is partly one of ideological competition. The social-policy agenda is now crowded. OSDP can articulate similar concerns through a contemporary European-style social-democratic vocabulary, while ruling Adilet party itself has incorporated social justice and redistribution into a broad centrist presidential agenda. Exclusion of former Communists from the Kurultai is therefore more than a simple electoral setback. It may represent the gradual decline of the post-Communist branch of Kazakhstan’s party system.

The other party excluded from the Kurultai was the Kazakhstan Green Party Baitaq (“Vast Land”), which received only 1.07 per cent, down from 2.30 per cent in 2023. The 2026 result suggests that environmental politics in Kazakhstan continues to function primarily as a cross-party issue rather than an independent electoral cleavage. Environmental concerns are increasingly incorporated into the programs of larger parties, including Adilet and Auyl, which reduces Baitaq’s ability to monopolize the issue.

7. Election Results: Key Takeaways

First, the overall outcome of the election – a decisive victory for the pro-presidential party combined with a nationwide turnout of 74.08 percent – points to a high degree of political stability. Turnout was almost twenty percentage points higher than in the 2023 parliamentary election, when it stood at 54.19 percent. The most striking exception was Almaty, where turnout was only 43.23 percent, the lowest in the country. Yet even there participation increased substantially from 25.82 percent in 2023. Astana, by comparison, recorded turnout of 51.67 percent in 2026.

Almaty’s distinctiveness is politically significant. It is the country’s principal student and educational center and, together with Astana, one of Kazakhstan’s most economically and socially developed urban areas. Unlike Astana, however, its economy and social structure are considerably less centered on the national government bureaucracy. Its persistently lower electoral participation may therefore reflect the existence of younger, more autonomous, socially differentiated and politically demanding urban electorate. How to engage this electorate is a challenge that the new party system will have to address in the future.

Second, the pro-presidential party now exercises overwhelming control over parliament, while at the same time having largely distanced itself from both the personnel and the ideological legacy of the preceding political era. A similar process of generational and personnel renewal can be observed in other parties as well, both at the national and regional levels. This is consistent with President Tokayev’s repeated emphasis that one of the goals of the political modernization is to create opportunities for new people to enter politics and public life.

Third, Kazakhstan has traditionally differed from countries such as Russia in the relatively limited role played by the political left, and especially by Communist forces. The latest election reinforced this pattern. Parties associated with the post-Communist left, as well as the New Left as Greens, failed to enter the Kurultai, although the Social Democrats did cross the electoral threshold. This suggests that the left forces remain fragmented and electorally weak, while the center, center-right, agrarian, and technocratic segments of the party system continue to dominate.

Fourth, the role of political parties themselves is clearly increasing. This is visible not only at the institutional level: the new constitutional framework has eliminated the previous combination of party and regional representation in parliament, making political parties the principal foundation of national representation. At the same time, modernization appears to be taking place inside the parties themselves. One notable feature of the campaign according to the opinion of some interviewed experts was the declining role of outside political consultants and public-relations specialists. For many years, the extensive use of specialized campaign and PR consultants was a characteristic feature of electoral politics across much of the post-Soviet space, including Kazakhstan. In the 2026 election, by contrast, party organizations themselves increasingly controlled campaign strategy and implementation. The institutionalization of Kazakhstan’s parties has been a gradual process, but its maturation has now coincided with the constitutional consolidation of parties as the central actors of the political system.

Fifth, artificial intelligence emerged as a visible feature both of the campaign itself and of party programs. AI was used in the production of visual and textual campaign content, as well as for analytics, while at a more substantive level it occupied an important place in the modernization agendas of several parties. This reflects a broader shift in Kazakhstan’s political discourse: technological transformation, digitalization, and artificial intelligence are increasingly treated not as narrowly sectoral issues, but as central components of the country’s long-term development strategy.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 230 (September 15, 2026)

Part 1. Specificity of Kazakhstan’s political modernization model.

1. Kazakhstan’s road to current political modernization policy

Before Kassym-Jomart Tokayev came to power in 2019, Kazakhstan under Nursultan Nazarbayev combined a highly centralized political system with broadly neoliberal socioeconomic policies. In this respect, the Kazakhstani model displayed certain similarities with the previous developmental trajectories of several twentieth-century Asian states, including South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, where strong centralized authority coexisted with market-oriented economic modernization and deep integration into the global economy. Kazakhstan likewise achieved substantial (by Post-Soviet standards) economic growth, attracted large-scale foreign investment and built a relatively open market economy, while preserving a strongly personalized and vertically organized political system, which created a clear contradiction.

At the same time, however, the Kazakhstani model under Nazarbayev was specific in one particularly important respect. Members of the president’s extended family and individuals closely associated with them acquired a highly visible role in major sectors of the economy and in the political system. The concentration of political power was therefore accompanied by a popular perception that access to economic opportunities, state resources and political influence was distributed unequally. Over time, this contributed to a growing sense of social injustice and to a widening gap between the country’s considerable macroeconomic achievements that have significantly transformed Kazakh society and the way in which many citizens perceived the distribution of the benefits of modernization.

One of the most significant achievements of Kazakhstan during the first three decades of independence was the development of its distinctive multi-vector foreign policy. Situated between Russia and China, while simultaneously seeking close economic and political relations with the United States, the European Union and other major international actors, Kazakhstan avoided an exclusive geopolitical alignment and instead sought to maintain constructive relations with all major centers of global power. For Israeli readers, it is important to note that, as part of its multi-vector foreign policy, Kazakhstan’s leadership has traditionally maintained stable and constructive relations with the Jewish state. This strategy helped the country strengthen its sovereignty, attract investment from competing external partners and acquire a positive international profile. At the same time, Kazakhstan sought to present itself not merely as a geopolitical balancer but as a responsible international actor, emphasizing nuclear non-proliferation, multilateral diplomacy, dialogue and mediation in the conflicts.

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was one of the central figures in the construction and implementation of this foreign-policy model. A polyglot and professional diplomat, he served as Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister in the period of development of distinctive multivector foreign policy and, from 2011, served as United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Director-General of the UN Office at Geneva, while also representing the UN Secretary-General at the Conference on Disarmament. His career was therefore closely associated with precisely those elements that had become trademarks of Kazakhstan’s international strategy: multi-vector diplomacy, nuclear non-proliferation, engagement with different great powers and a strong commitment to multilateral institutions. This background also helps explain why Tokayev emerged as a new president in 2019. He had an unusually strong international reputation and extensive experience in both domestic government and global diplomacy. In this sense, the 2019 transition initially appeared to guarantee continuity in one of the most successful dimensions of the Nazarbayev-era model – Kazakhstan’s foreign policy – while opening the possibility of gradual transformation in those areas, particularly domestic political and socioeconomic governance, where the limitations of the previous model had become increasingly visible.

2. The logic of political modernization under Tokayev’s leadership

The 2026 Kurultai election should be understood not as an isolated institutional change, but as the element of a political modernization process that began with Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s accession to the presidency in 2019.

The underlying logic of this process has been adaptation. Kazakhstan itself has changed substantially over the past three decades. It has become more urban, more educated, more digitally connected and socially differentiated. A younger (and what is also important in a country with highly ethnically mixed population – ethnically mostly Kazakh) generation has entered public life with different expectations concerning government responsiveness, social mobility, participation and access to information. At the same time, the country is attempting to move beyond the economic and political structures inherited from the first decades of independence toward a more diversified, innovative and eventually post-industrial model of development.

Such socioeconomic modernization inevitably creates pressure for political modernization as well. Institutions designed primarily to guarantee combination of political stability with centralized and broadly neo-Liberal socio-economic decision-making increasingly need additional mechanisms of feedback, representation and responsiveness. Tokayev’s reforms can therefore be interpreted as an attempt to preserve political stability not by freezing the existing institutional system, but by gradually adapting it to a changing society.

Tokayev articulated this principle very early in his presidency. In his first State of the Nation Address in September 2019, he introduced the concept of the “Listening State” (“Slyshashchee gosudarstvo”) and linked it to the broader formula of a “Strong President–Influential Parliament–Accountable Government”. For someone familiar with Soviet and post-Communist political discourse, this may sound like a certain combination of Gorbachev-era ideas of political reform – such as glasnost and democratization – with reforms inspired by the East Asian developmental model (when a development of society produced a need for democratization in the states like South Korea or Taiwan, and created demands for political liberalization in China).

A “listening” state in Kazakhstan was not simply supposed to process citizens’ complaints more efficiently. It implied a different understanding of political stability: government would have to receive continuous feedback from society and respond institutionally to changing public expectations.

Tokayev simultaneously rejected the idea of abrupt political liberalization that can, according to the opinion of many Kazakh experts with whom I communicated (and who prefer to be anonymous), bring destabilization and consecutive degradation of institutions well known by the example of neighboring Kyrgyzstan (or even produce Lebanese-style conflicts in a very religiously and culturally heterogeneous society). Tokayev’s preferred model is one of controlled, gradual and cumulative political modernization. The first reform packages of 2019–2021 followed this logic from reduction of barriers to the registration of political parties to direct elections of rural heads of administrations (akims).

The January 2022 unrest, which increasingly came to reflect popular resentment against the continuing influence of Nazarbayev, his family and the economic elite associated with the former president, dramatically accelerated this process. For the authorities, January demonstrated the risks generated by a widening gap between the modernization of society and the capacity of existing political institutions to aggregate social demands, communicate with citizens and manage conflicts.

Tokayev used the crisis as a starting point for a considerably more ambitious institutional restructuring under the broader project of building a “(socially) just Kazakhstan”. In March 2022, he proposed a first constitutional reform intended to move Kazakhstan away from an excessively concentrated super-presidential model and toward a system with a stronger parliament, more competitive elections and clearer institutional checks.

The reform reduced several presidential powers, strengthened Parliament, established the Constitutional Court, prohibited the president from belonging to a political party while in office, simplified political-party registration, and restored a mixed electoral system for the Mazhilis. In specific Central Asian conditions a very important element of the reform was introduction of restrictions concerning the president’s close relatives holding senior public positions

These measures were followed by a broader electoral reset. Tokayev was re-elected in November 2022 under the newly introduced single seven-year presidential term, while the March 2023 parliamentary election was conducted under the revised rules and brought a more diverse set of parties into the Mazhilis. This set of parties created the party-system background for 2026 elections. The reforms also extended downward into local government. Direct elections of heads of local administrations were expanded.

The reforms of 2019–2023 had altered individual components of the political system. The next question was how these institutions should fit together as a coherent political architecture. This was particularly important because Kazakhstan was simultaneously confronting a new stage of socioeconomic transformation. Society becomes younger – about 28% of Kazakhstan’s population today is represented by the youth. Digitalization, artificial intelligence, changes in patterns of education and employment, the growing importance of a knowledge economy all strengthened the perceived need for a state capable not only of maintaining stability but also of making complex long-term policy choices.

Simultaneously, against the backdrop of a sharp deterioration in the global geopolitical environment (including the conflict in Ukraine affecting Kazakh export and import, heightened tensions in the Middle East, continuing instability around Afghanistan, and the intensifying rivalry between China and the United States) Kazakhstan came under growing external pressure. This, in turn, influenced its domestic agenda, increasing the importance of resilience, balance, and the overall effectiveness of the political system.

The process culminated in a much more fundamental constitutional restructuring in 2026. On 15 March 2026 following several months of public discussion, including the work of a 130-member Constitutional Commission, a draft of an entirely new Constitution was approved by a national referendum. The new constitutional architecture replaced the previous bicameral Parliament with a unicameral Kurultai, which became the country’s highest representative legislative body when the new Constitution entered into force on 1 July 2026.

The significance of this reform extends beyond the replacement of the Senate and Mazhilis with a single chamber. The creation of the Kurultai represents an attempt to simplify the institutional structure of representation while simultaneously strengthening the political role of parties. This is particularly important because all members of the new Kurultai are elected through party lists, rather than through a combination of party-based and regional representation, as was previously the case.

Kazakhstani experts with whom I spoke suggested that this measure may have three main rationales. First, it creates an institutional foundation for the further development of the party system as an important element of future democratization. During the preceding period, party structures remained relatively weak, and one of the key questions is now whether these parties can develop recognizable constituencies, coherent policy identities, and meaningful connections with different groups within a rapidly changing Kazakhstani society. Second, the new system already reduces the opportunities for representatives of regional elites with strong patronal networks, many of them rooted in the Nazarbayev era, to enter parliament through territorially based channels. This consideration is particularly important in the specific political context of Central Asia. In this context, it is worth recalling that a number of scholars described the early years of Kazakhstan’s independence under Nazarbayev as a period in which former Soviet party and economic officials, often embedded in powerful regional and informal networks, continued to play a dominant role. Such senior figures were popularly referred to as agashki. Third, a fully party-based system makes legislative decision-making simpler and potentially faster, which may be especially valuable in conditions of global crisis. Against the backdrop of growing international instability, the strengthening of a genuinely nationwide party-political system may also reduce the influence of narrowly based regional interest groups. On the basis of these institutional changes, the first election to the Kurultai has been held on 23 August 2026.

3. Political Modernization in Kazakhstan Against the Backdrop of Global and Regional Democratic Recession

Because the policy of political modernization pursued by Kazakhstan’s leadership has been highly cautious, and because Kazakhstan still remains far from the contemporary Western model of liberal democracy, this policy – and, in particular, the recent Kurultai elections held within its framework – has been subject to criticism, in particular by European organizations working in these fields. For example, OSCE observers noted that the Kurultai elections were technically well organized, but stated that, in their view, they “lacked political pluralism”. Of course, inside Kazakhstan there are also critics that insist on quicker democratization.

At the same time, Kazakhstani experts with whom I spoke emphasized that the country’s political modernization should be understood in the specific context of current developments in the world in general, and in Eurasia in particular. The contemporary international environment, and especially the region in which Kazakhstan is located, is marked by a large number of conflicts and geopolitical tensions that are clearly not conducive to democratization. This specific context, according to this opinion, underscores the significance of the Kazakhstani leadership’s efforts to maintain its course of political modernization despite such unfavorable external conditions.

Freedom House has documented twenty consecutive years of global decline in political rights and civil liberties, beginning in 2006. In its Freedom in the World 2026 report, Freedom House notes that conditions for freedom deteriorated in 54 countries in 2025.  The democratic recession is clearly visible across the post-Soviet space. Between 2020 and 2026, due to different reasons, including war, Freedom House scores declined — often dramatically — in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine. In several of these countries, particularly in Central Asia, the scores were already very low in 2020. In Kazakhstan there has been no comparable erosion of representative institutions of the kind seen by Freedom House in many neighboring states, while in some areas (most notably internet freedom) there a progress observed in this country.

Moreover, as several Kazakhstani experts I interviewed pointed out, there is a clear effort to incorporate political modernization into the broader formula of national development: an approach that stands out particularly sharply against the regional background described above. They also point out that Kazakhstan stands out positively among many other post-Soviet states because its approach to political modernization is relatively systematic. Democratic development is presented not as an isolated political objective, but as an organic part of a broader strategy aimed at preserving peace and tolerance, preventing ethnic and religious conflict, and maintaining stability in a highly diverse society. At the same time, political reform is closely linked to the country’s longer-term socioeconomic modernization, with greater participation, institutional responsiveness, and social development treated as mutually reinforcing elements of national progress.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 224 (August 14, 2026)

Kazakhstan is the second-largest state by area (after the Russian Federation) to have emerged as a result of the collapse of the USSR. At the time it gained independence, it was also the only post-Soviet state in which the titular nation constituted a minority. As a result of the large-scale colonization of its territory by non-indigenous populations, predominantly Russians, under the Russian Empire and subsequently the USSR, the share of Kazakhs declined from 81.8% to 30% between the censuses of 1897 and 1959. Thereafter, the proportion of Kazakhs in the population of the Kazakh SSR began to increase slowly, primarily due to higher birth rates among the indigenous population. However, according to the last Soviet census of 1989, Kazakhs still accounted for only 39.7% of the population, while Russians constituted 37.8%. Together with other European, predominantly Russian-speaking ethnic groups—above all Germans (5.82%), Ukrainians (5.4%), Belarusians (1.8%), and Poles (0.36%)—Russians formed a numerical majority. In urban areas, Russians alone, even without counting other Russian-speaking groups, constituted an absolute majority (50.8%), while Kazakhs—who had to a significant extent been Russified linguistically and culturally—accounted for only 21.1%. This ethnic situation contributed to the marginalization of the Kazakh language, which the Russian-speaking population generally did not know, while for the overwhelming majority of Kazakhs Russian was a second language and, in many cases, even their first language. In a number of northern and eastern regions of Kazakhstan, Russians and Russian speakers formed a numerical majority, giving Russian nationalists grounds to advance ideas about incorporating these territories into the Russian Federation.

Nevertheless, the Kazakh elites chose the path of building a Kazakh nation-state and rapidly transforming the country’s ethnic composition. Against this background, Russian nationalists have, not without reason, accused the Kazakh authorities of regarding ethnic Russians as a potential Russian “fifth column” and of building an “ethnocracy”. After three decades of independence, according to the 2021 census, Kazakhs already accounted for 70.35% of the country’s population and, together with related Turkic peoples—Uzbeks (3.2%), Uyghurs (1.51%), Tatars (1.14%), and others—made up more than three-quarters of the population. The share of Russians had fallen to 15.54%, and together with Ukrainians, Germans, Belarusians, and Poles, to no more than 20%. At the same time, the status of the Kazakh language rose significantly, although Russian remains widely spoken in Kazakhstan.

Three main factors contributed to this radical transformation of the ethnic situation:

1. Higher birth rates among Kazakhs and other indigenous ethnic groups.

2. The emigration of a significant proportion of the Russian-speaking population to the Russian Federation, and of Kazakhstan’s Germans to Germany.

3. The arrival of substantial numbers of ethnic Kazakh repatriates from abroad.

The last factor merits particular attention because the repatriation of Kazakhs from abroad was carried out as part of a deliberate state policy and served as an instrument for changing both the ethnic and linguistic situation, since Kazakhs arriving from outside the former USSR generally did not speak Russian. According to official data, from the time Kazakhstan gained independence in 1991 through June 1, 2024, 1,135,700 repatriates arrived in the country (as of July 1, 2026, Kazakhstan’s population was 20,590,589). In addition to post-Soviet states such as Uzbekistan, the Russian Federation, and Turkmenistan, Kazakh repatriates also arrive from China, Mongolia, and elsewhere. At the same time, the Kazakh authorities deliberately resettle repatriates in the country’s northern and eastern regions, where the proportion of the Russian-speaking population is high.

The relocation of the country’s capital in 1997 from Almaty to Tselinograd, renamed Astana (it was called Akmola from 1992 to 1998), can be regarded as a measure aimed at de-Russifying northern Kazakhstan and preventing pro-Russian separatism in the region. According to the 1989 census, Kazakhs accounted for only 25.7% of the population of Tselinograd Region, while Russians accounted for 43.16%, Germans for 13.06%, Ukrainians for 8.75%, Belarusians for 2.66%, and Poles for 1.32% (68.95% combined). According to 2025 data, the share of Kazakhs in the region, now called Akmola Region, had risen to 56.77%, while the Russian share had fallen to 26.31% (37.55% together with Germans, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Poles). As for Kazakhstan’s capital itself, which is now administratively separate from the region, Kazakhs accounted for only 17.71% of its population in 1989, while Russians made up 54.1% (73.98% together with Ukrainians, Germans, Belarusians, and Poles). By 2025, the city’s ethnic composition had changed fundamentally: Kazakhs accounted for 82.3%, while Russians made up only 8.61% (11.56% together with Ukrainians, Germans, Belarusians, and Poles).

At the same time, Kazakhstan’s elites have not remained silent in response to territorial claims voiced against their country by Russian politicians. Moreover, from time to time they make statements that can be interpreted as counterclaims against the Russian Federation. Particularly indicative in this regard was Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s public reminder that Orenburg, now a Russian regional capital, once served as the capital of the Kazakh autonomy within the RSFSR from 1919 to 1925.

The success of Kazakhstan’s nation-building policy is evident. It is no coincidence that the country has become a model for the national movements of the Turkic peoples of the Russian Federation, as clearly demonstrated by the programmatic document of the Bashkir national movement drawn up by one of its leaders, Ruslan Gabbasov, who was forced to leave Russia because of persecution by the authorities. The particular interest that Kazakhstan attracts among activists of the Bashkir national movement is due not only to the ethnic affinity between Bashkirs and Kazakhs, but also to the fact that Kazakhstan is the foreign state closest to the Republic of Bashkortostan. The two are separated only by the so-called “Kuvandyk Corridor,” several dozen kilometers wide, which forms part of Russia’s Orenburg Region but is populated almost half by Turkic peoples—Bashkirs, Kazakhs, and Tatars.

In this context, it is appropriate to recall that this is far from the only part of the Russian Federation with a substantial Kazakh population. According to the 2021 census, the number of ethnic Kazakhs in Russia stands at 591,970. They are the tenth-largest ethnic group in the Russian Federation, yet they have no territorial autonomy of their own and are generally regarded by the Russian authorities as a “diaspora.” However, these are not migrants, but a long-established population of regions bordering the Republic of Kazakhstan. It is therefore appropriate to speak of a Kazakh irredenta in the Russian Federation—not yet in the political sense of the term, but rather in the sense of the continuation of the Kazakh ethnic territory beyond the borders of the Kazakh nation-state. According to the same census, the overwhelming majority of Russia’s Kazakhs live precisely in regions bordering Kazakhstan: 149,415 in Astrakhan Region, 120,262 in Orenburg Region, 78,303 in Omsk Region, 76,007 in Saratov Region, 39,000 in Tyumen Region, 37,576 in Volgograd Region, 27,057 in Chelyabinsk Region, and so on.

At the same time, a more detailed analysis of the data at the district level reveals the presence of territories directly bordering the Republic of Kazakhstan in which Kazakhs, either alone or together with other closely related Turkic peoples, constitute an absolute or relative majority. Several examples may be cited: Volodarsky District of Astrakhan Region—68.05% Kazakh + 1.54% Tatar (here and below, figures are from the 2010 census); Yasnensky District of Orenburg Region—56.1% Kazakh + 2.5% Tatar; Alexandrov-Gaysky District of Saratov Region—54.1% Kazakh + 2.2% Tatar; Krasnoyarsky District of Astrakhan Region—47.65% Kazakh + 5.6% closely related Nogais + 4.16% Tatar; Dombarovsky District of Orenburg Region—43.4% Kazakh + 2.3% Tatar; Pallasovsky District of Volgograd Region—43.9% Kazakh + 2% Tatar.

Linguistically, the assimilation of Russia’s Kazakhs has progressed quite far. According to the 2002 census, virtually all of them (98.3%) were fluent in Russian, while only 72% spoke Kazakh. Since then, the linguistic situation of Russia’s Kazakhs has only deteriorated, because even in districts where Kazakhs form a majority, school instruction is conducted in Russian, while Kazakh is taught, at best, as an optional subject. At the same time, there are two factors that impede the complete assimilation of Kazakhs into the Russian ethnic environment even when they lose their ethnic language:

1. The practice of Islam, even if only at a symbolic level, which is reflected, among other things, in the giving of children names that sound foreign to Russians.

2. Racial differences. Belonging to the South Siberian racial type, transitional between Caucasoid and Mongoloid populations, Kazakhs constitute a “visible minority” in the Russian Federation, where citizens with a “non-Slavic appearance” also frequently become victims of xenophobia.

Thousands of Russian Kazakhs have repatriated to the Republic of Kazakhstan during the years of independence. In the early years, there was also migration of Kazakhs from Kazakhstan to the Russian Federation, albeit on a smaller scale. This phenomenon was particularly noticeable in the early 2000s, when the economic situation in Russia was better than in Kazakhstan. In recent years, however, this is no longer relevant. Kazakhstan’s economy has been developing successfully, while Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine has led to a sharp deterioration in the economic situation in the Russian Federation and the elimination of even the appearance of democracy. Under these circumstances, the possibility of relocating from Russia to Kazakhstan has become attractive not only to ethnic Kazakhs but also to Russians of other ethnic backgrounds who cannot qualify for repatriate status. In the autumn of 2022, up to half a million Russians arrived in Kazakhstan, several tens of thousands of whom settled there.

Today, the Republic of Kazakhstan is an established nation-state that maintains ties with Kazakhs abroad. Until now, these ties have primarily taken the form of repatriation programs for overseas Kazakhs, which have helped alter the country’s ethnic composition in favor of the titular nation. Russia’s Kazakhs remain a significant potential source of repatriation. As the economic and political crisis in the Russian Federation is expected to deepen, an increase in the flow of repatriates to Kazakhstan appears likely, and the Russian authorities—already considering the introduction of exit visas for the country’s citizens—will probably attempt to obstruct it. However, another trajectory is also possible: against the backdrop of a dramatic weakening of Russia’s federal center and the de facto disintegration of the Russian Federation, the Republic of Kazakhstan may, in one form or another, have to take under its protection the Russian Kazakhs compactly settled along its borders. In that event, the expression “Kazakh irredenta” in the Russian Federation would acquire a different meaning.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 223 (August 10, 2026)

Script is rarely a neutral technical choice in this region. Which alphabet a state teaches its children is a declared vector of civilizational allegiance — a public signal of which power it expects to matter for its future. This is what “written sovereignty” means in practice: not legal independence, but the ongoing, contested right to decide whose cultural gravity a nation writes itself into. Three powers are currently making competing claims on that gravity in the post-Soviet Turkic and Persianate world — Turkey, Russia, and Iran — and they are not equally equipped to press the claim.

I. Facts on the Ground

On September 21, 2024, a commission convened in Baku under the Turkic Academy approved a Common Turkic Alphabet — a 34-letter Latin-based script intended to harmonize the writing systems of Azerbaijani, Turkish, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and other Turkic languages.1 The project builds on decades of piecemeal Latinization: Azerbaijan completed its own transition from Cyrillic in the 1990s and has since positioned itself as one of the effort’s most committed sponsors, hosting the commission that produced the 2024 declaration. At the commission’s fourth meeting, held in Astana on June 15, 2026, delegates moved from declaration to implementation — endorsing practical recommendations for the alphabet’s use, reviewing proposed Kazakh and Kyrgyz variants, and citing new editions of Abai and Aitmatov printed in the common script as proof of concept.2 The recommendations remain non-binding; each state retains final authority over its own orthography, and the Academy has been explicit that adoption will proceed at each government’s own pace.

That authority has been exercised unevenly. Turkmenistan’s Latinization, begun in the 1990s, is the most institutionally complete in the region. Uzbekistan, officially Latin since 1993, still operates in practice as a digraphic society: a July 2026 reading in the lower chamber of parliament proposed bringing its script closer to the Turkish model by replacing the digraphs sh, ch, o’, g’ with dedicated letters — Ş, Ç, Ö, Ğ — though the bill has not completed the legislative process.3 Kazakhstan’s promised transition, announced in 2017, remains unfinished: as of June 2026 the Ministry of Science and Higher Education had not approved a final Latin alphabet, and its own projections anticipate only 5 percent of written communication in Latin script by 2027, rising to 15 percent by 2029 — modest targets for a reform now entering its second decade.4 Kyrgyzstan’s presidential administration has stated explicitly that the Kyrgyz alphabet — 36 Cyrillic letters — will not change, even as Bishkek continues to participate in the Turkic Academy’s alphabet commission on a symbolic and consultative basis.5

Tajikistan presents the sharpest counter-current. On July 30, 2026, its Ministry of Education confirmed the formation of a working group to strengthen instruction in the traditional Perso-Arabic script — officially termed alifboi niyogon, “the script of the ancestors” — following an instruction from President Emomali Rahmon.6 The announcement stopped short of proposing to replace Cyrillic, Tajikistan’s official script since the Soviet period; it framed the initiative as expanding, not substituting, literacy, and floated the possibility of publishing scholarly work in Persian and Arabic alongside Tajik Cyrillic. Meanwhile, in Iranian Azerbaijan, the Perso-Arabic script has never been displaced, though this continuity reflects the absence of Azerbaijani-language schooling in Iran — where the language is taught in no script at all — rather than any deliberate script policy on Tehran’s part.

A parallel but distinct trend deserves separate treatment: the expansion of Arabic-language instruction across the region under religious and cultural auspices. Between September 2025 and June 2026, ICESCO and the Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud Foundation ran a six-phase teacher-training program — the Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud International Language Training Program: Arabic Language in Central Asia and the Caucasus — moving through Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan (Almaty and Turkistan), Bashkortostan, Uzbekistan, and finally Azerbaijan, where it closed in Baku on June 22, 2026 after training more than 200 educators and postgraduate students.7 This is a substantial and well-documented initiative, but its object is modern standard Arabic as a foreign language and religious-educational tool, not the historical Perso-Arabic orthography of Uzbek, Kazakh, or Azerbaijani. Reciting Quranic Arabic, studying modern Arabic, and reading a historical text in Chaghatai or Persianate orthography are three distinct skills that do not automatically follow from one another.8 Growing Arabic literacy in the region is a measurable fact; a corresponding revival of the pre-Soviet national scripts written in Arabic characters is not — Tajikistan, discussed above, remains the only case where a state has moved to institutionalize the latter.

These developments are unfolding against a wider and more assertive Turkish security posture. On August 7, 2026, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan signed the Mecca Agreement, a mutual-defense pact under which an attack on any signatory is to be treated as an attack on all three — a formula Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan explicitly compared to NATO’s Article 5.9 Officials in Ankara and Riyadh describe the pact as defensive and not directed against any third state, but analysts trace its acceleration to the US-Iran war that began on February 28, 2026, and to the erosion of Gulf confidence in American security guarantees after Israel’s September 2025 strikes on Qatar.10 The Mecca Agreement is a hard-security instrument, not a cultural one, but it reflects the same underlying pattern that runs through the softer evidence collected above: Ankara is currently the most willing and best-resourced actor building new regional architecture — military, religious, and linguistic — while Tehran is largely reacting to events set by others.

II. Three Logics, Not One Contest

It is tempting to read these developments as a single contest between Latin and Cyrillic script, with Arabic-Persian writing as a marginal historical curiosity. That framing obscures more than it reveals. What is actually underway are three distinct mechanisms of influence, each rooted in a different kind of power — and, in Turkey’s case, one that carries an unresolved contradiction of its own.

Turkey: infrastructure with a contradiction at its core. The Common Turkic Alphabet is not merely a philological convenience; it is the latest instrument in a decades-long effort — through TİKA-funded schools, joint universities, satellite television, and now the Organization of Turkic States — to make Ankara the practical center of a shared Turkic communicative space. This effort has an intellectual genealogy that predates the Republic of Turkey itself. In the 1870s–80s, the Azerbaijani playwright and reformer Mirza Fatali Akhundov proposed replacing the Arabic-based script used for both Azerbaijani and Persian with a phonetic, largely Latin-based alternative, arguing that Arabic orthography obscured vowels and impeded literacy among Turkic speakers — a project he framed as part of a broader anticlerical and enlightenment agenda rather than a narrowly technical fix.11 Akhundov’s proposal failed in his own lifetime, but its logic — that the alphabet is a lever of enlightenment and modernization, not merely a technical convention — reappeared in Atatürk’s 1928 reform and again in Soviet Azerbaijan’s own Latinization, which drew on an overlapping pool of Turcological and nationalist thought even as the Soviet and Kemalist states pursued rival visions of modernity.12 What is new in the 2020s is the scale on which this old logic now operates: Turkey has the university system, media market, and diplomatic apparatus to make the same argument regionally rather than nationally, a divergence in outcome between the Turkish and Azerbaijani reforms that later comparative scholarship attributes to precisely this gap in institutional capacity.13

But this Latin-alphabet project sits awkwardly next to the other face of Erdoğan-era Turkey: a sustained ideological turn toward re-Islamization and Ottoman nostalgia, and an explicit bid for leadership of the Sunni Muslim world — a bid the Mecca Agreement itself advances. That bid is written, historically, in Arabic script; the Ottoman Empire whose legacy Ankara increasingly invokes never wrote Turkish in Latin letters at all. A state pursuing Islamic leadership while exporting a Latin alphabet is, in a specific and unresolved sense, offering the region a modernizing script attached to a re-traditionalizing politics. Whether this tension is felt as a contradiction by the governments adopting the Common Turkic Alphabet, or simply absorbed as one more inconsistency of contemporary Turkish self-presentation, is an open question — but it is a real fault line inside Ankara’s own project, not only in the region’s response to it.

Azerbaijan: agency, not submission. It would be a mistake to read Baku’s alignment with Ankara as passive absorption. Azerbaijan did not merely adopt the Common Turkic Alphabet — it hosted and chaired the 2024 commission that produced it, positioning itself as the administrative hub of Turkic script integration rather than a mere recipient of Turkish standards. Azerbaijan is Latin, has been for three decades, and is geographically the hinge between Turkey and Central Asia; hosting the institution that sets the regional standard is a way of converting proximity to Turkey into leverage over the entire Turkic space, not a symptom of losing independent standing. Baku continues to insist, in its own state rhetoric, on the distinctness of the Azerbaijani literary language from Istanbul Turkish, even as it absorbs Turkish media, vocabulary, and educational partnerships. This distinction matters beyond linguistics: a genuinely independent-minded Azerbaijan, using the Turkic-integration project for its own ends rather than simply following Ankara, is also the more useful and more predictable partner for outside actors — Israel among them — who have built a substantial relationship with Baku and have an interest in an Azerbaijan that hedges rather than one that becomes a straightforward extension of Turkish foreign policy.

Russia: inertia that is also leverage. Russia’s position rests on inertia rather than script reform — but it would understate Moscow’s hand to call this passive. An open push to entrench Cyrillic would invite immediate accusations of colonialism and empire-building, with uncertain returns; Russia has largely avoided that fight. What it has instead is the region’s principal labor market. A Tajik, Uzbek, or Kyrgyz citizen can rebrand his national identity as Turkic, adopt a Turkish-modeled alphabet, and consume Turkish television — and still find that the country where the money is earned is Russia, not Turkey. That fact requires functional Russian, and in practice Cyrillic literacy, regardless of what the state does with its own national orthography. Comparative sociolinguistic work on the post-Soviet space shows this persistence varies by domain — Russian retains particular strength in employment, higher education, and private life even where states have symbolically prioritized the titular language in law and public signage.14 Kazakhstan’s stalled transition and Kyrgyzstan’s explicit refusal to change script are not simply evidence of the cost of alphabet reform; they reflect a population for whom Cyrillic remains tied to the language of remittances.

Iran: an archive that activates itself, but not for Tehran. Iran’s position is different in kind from both. Unlike Turkey, it is not building new institutions to project script influence in the region; unlike Russia, it has no comparable economic leverage to fall back on. What it has is depth of prior text: a body of classical Persian and Persianate literature — Ferdowsi, Rudaki, Hafez, and the “Azerbaijani school” of Persian poetry produced in Ganja, Shirvan, and Tabriz — that predates the modern national borders of the region and remains, in principle, legible to anyone who can read the Perso-Arabic script. Tajikistan’s alifboi niyogon initiative draws on exactly this reservoir, and the fact that Dushanbe, not Tehran, is doing the drawing should be read carefully rather than simply as a mark of Iranian weakness. Persian literary capital appears able to activate itself transnationally precisely because it is not owned by any single state — it belongs to Tajik, Afghan, and diaspora communities as much as to Iran, and a third country can claim it without asking Tehran’s permission. That is a genuine strength of the tradition.

It is also, for Iran specifically, the source of the problem this paper is tracing: a cultural asset that does not require Iranian institutions to survive is also an asset that does not translate into Iranian diplomatic leverage over the states that draw on it. The Tajik government has taken care to frame the script as ancestral and national, not Iranian or Islamic — treating Iran’s literary heritage as a common inheritance to be claimed, not a patron relationship to be entered into. The historical record supports reading this as an Iranian institutional failure rather than a simple absence of interest: Shireen Hunter’s assessment of Iranian foreign policy in the post-Soviet space finds that Tehran’s civilizational capital has repeatedly been outweighed by sanctions, the securitized caution of secular Central Asian regimes toward a revolutionary Shia state, and competition from a more agile Turkey.15 Hamid Ahmadi’s study of Iran-Tajikistan relations is more pointed still: an earlier, more ambitious attempt to revive the Perso-Arabic script in Tajikistan stalled into what he calls a deadlock, undone not by cultural distance but by political friction between the two states.16 A separate study of Ahmadinejad-era “strategic partnership” rhetoric reaches a compatible conclusion — public amity between Tehran and Dushanbe repeatedly failed to translate into substantive cooperation, undercut by dysfunction in Iran’s own foreign-policy execution as much as by Tajik reluctance.17 The 2026 initiative is best read against this history: a second attempt, this time initiated and controlled by Dushanbe rather than proposed by Tehran, which may be precisely why it has gone further than its predecessor.

A second archive that stayed on the shelf. Iran’s position looks stronger still when set against the obvious counter-case: Uzbekistan’s own pre-Soviet literary canon, above all Alisher Navoi, who wrote in Chaghatai Turkic in Arabic script and remains a celebrated national symbol in Tashkent — a competing archive available to the Turkic side without reference to Persian sources at all. In practice, however, the Uzbek state has not developed a comparable script-literacy initiative around it. What Uzbekistan has built instead is a heritage brand: an international Uzbek-language olympiad bearing Navoi’s name for students abroad, a national theater and museum complex, and cultural showcases at events like the Bukhara Biennale.18 None of this restores the ability to read Navoi’s actual Chaghatai text in its historical orthography, in the way Tajikistan’s initiative is explicitly designed to restore Perso-Arabic reading competence. Navoi functions in today’s Uzbekistan largely as a museum exhibit and a source of national pride, not as a living, re-readable archive. This asymmetry — one tradition being reactivated for reading, the other mainly commemorated — is itself evidence for, not against, the paper’s central claim: Iran’s literary capital in the region remains comparatively the more “alive” of the two available archives, even though Iran itself is not the one reviving it.

What ordinary readers actually do. It is worth being concrete about who bears the cost of these choices. A construction laborer from Tajikistan or a cleaner from Uzbekistan working in Moscow learned one alphabet in school and knows it; repeated state-level script changes do not touch their daily literacy so much as they threaten to leave the next generation stranded between the schoolbooks their parents can read and the ones the state now prints. For this population, the practical alphabet is whichever one is tied to where the work and the money are — which is currently Cyrillic, because that is Russia’s script, not because of any residual ideological attachment to it. Emerging machine-transliteration tools for the Tajik-Persian language pair are a genuine technical development, and may eventually make cross-script reading easier for scholars, journalists, and diaspora communities with reliable internet access.19 But they are not yet, and may not soon be, part of the daily toolkit of a Tajik construction worker or an Uzbek migrant cleaner, and it would overstate the case to treat this technology as a near-term equalizer of the region’s script politics. For the population actually doing the writing and reading day to day, the practical alphabet remains the one tied to employment, not to historical depth or software.

III. Archives Are Not Instruments

None of this points toward a single alphabet’s victory. The more likely trajectory, over the next five to ten years, is a functionally stratified writing landscape: Latin script consolidating as the medium of Turkic integration and digital modernity; Cyrillic persisting wherever Russian-language labor markets and infrastructure remain more valuable than any alternative; and Perso-Arabic script surviving as a register reserved for religion, classical literature, and acts of historical reclamation rather than for everyday state communication. Kazakhstan’s stalled transition and Uzbekistan’s enduring digraphia suggest this stratification is already the default outcome even where governments have formally committed to something cleaner.

Turkey did not win its current position through cultural affinity alone; it won it through universities, broadcasters, and a diplomatic and now security apparatus willing to spend money and attention on the region for three decades — and, as of August 2026, willing to formalize that commitment into a defense pact with explicit NATO-style obligations. Russia did not preserve Cyrillic through persuasion; it preserved it by remaining the region’s most reliable source of income, which is a harder thing to dislodge than any single government’s alphabet decree. Iran’s advantage, by contrast, remains what it has been since the Qajar period: an archive without a delivery system — one that other states can and do activate for their own purposes, but which Tehran itself has repeatedly failed to convert into diplomatic or cultural leverage of its own.

This has a bearing beyond orthography. The Mecca Agreement shows Turkey building hard-security architecture around exactly the same set of states — Central Asia, the Caucasus, the wider Sunni world — where it is also setting the cultural and linguistic pace, at a moment when Iran has been substantially weakened by the war that began in February 2026. For an Israeli and Western policy audience, the interesting conclusion is not that Iran is culturally rich but strategically impotent, an observation that by itself has limited operational value. It is that the region’s cultural and linguistic vacuum left by Iran’s institutional weakness is not staying empty — it is being filled, systematically and on multiple fronts, by an assertive Ankara that is simultaneously building a Sunni-aligned military bloc, a pan-Turkic linguistic bloc, and a media and education footprint that stretches from the Caucasus to Central Asia. A Turkey that leads unopposed in all three registers — security, script, and religious authority — across this space is a materially different regional actor than a Turkey that has to share civilizational ground with a weakened but still-present Iranian archive. That may be a real, if narrow, argument for why Western and Israeli policy should not treat Iran’s cultural weakness in this region purely as good news: an Iran with zero capacity to project its literary and linguistic capital removes one of the few countervailing claims on a space Turkey is otherwise positioned to dominate outright.

This is the real fault line in Eurasia’s alphabet politics, and it will not be resolved by counting how many states use which letters. The question that will determine the region’s cultural realignment over the coming decade is not which script prevails, but which power — or which government acting on its own initiative — proves able to convert written heritage into a functioning instrument of statecraft. On present evidence, Turkey and Russia both can, in different registers. Iran, so far, cannot — and that gap is now opening at the same moment Ankara is converting the same regional relationships into a formal security bloc.

Bibliography

1. Academic literature

1. Landau, Jacob M.; Kellner-Heinkele, Barbara. Politics of Language in the Ex-Soviet Muslim States: Azerbayjan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. London: Hurst, 2001.

2. Landau, Jacob M.; Kellner-Heinkele, Barbara. “Alphabet Reform in the Six Independent Ex-Soviet Muslim Republics.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 20, no. 1 (2010).

3. Algar, Hamid. “Āḵūndzāda.” Encyclopaedia Iranica.

4. Swietochowski, Tadeusz. Russian Azerbaijan, 1905–1920: The Shaping of National Identity in a Muslim Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

5. Fierman, William. Language Planning and National Development: The Uzbek Experience. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991.

6. Dave, Bhavna. Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, Language and Power. London: Routledge, 2007.

7. Kudaibergen, Diana T. The Kazakh Spring: Digital Activism and the Challenge to Dictatorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Esp. ch. 5, “Generation Q and Decolonizing Alash.”

8. Perry, John R. “Modern Tajiki Persian: Gharbzadagi of a Different Kind.” Nationalities Papers.

9. Ahmadi, Hamid. “Iran and Tajikistan: How Culture and Civilization Fade in the Shadow of Politics and the Political.” Iran and the Caucasus 23, no. 1 (2019): 105–.

10. Clark, B. “Ahmadinejad, Iran, and Foreign Policy Dysfunction in Tajikistan.” Asian Politics & Policy 7, no. 2 (2015): 213–244.

11. Hunter, Shireen T. Iran’s Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era: Resisting the New International Order. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2010.

12. Khalid, Adeeb. Islam after Communism: Religion and Politics in Central Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

13. Güven Kılıçarslan, Zehra. “Language Policy in Turkey and Azerbaijan: A Comparative Approach to the Two Language Reforms.” Littera Turca Journal of Turkish Language and Literature 8, no. 2 (2022): 1660–.

14. Lummus, Wesley. “One Nation, Two Languages: Latinization and Language Reform in Turkey and Azerbaijan, 1905–1938.” PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2021.

15. Pavlenko, Aneta. “Russian in post-Soviet countries.” Russian Linguistics 32, no. 1 (2008): 59–80.

1. Primary / official documents

1. Turkic Academy. “Declaration on the Common Turkic Alphabet.” Baku, September 21, 2024.

2. Turkic Academy. Materials of the Fourth Meeting of the Commission on the Common Turkic Alphabet. Astana, June 15, 2026.

3. Republic of Uzbekistan, Legislative Chamber (Oliy Majlis). First reading on alphabet amendment (introduction of Ş, Ç, Ö, Ğ), July 2026.

4. Republic of Kazakhstan, Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Statement on Latin alphabet implementation timeline, June 2026.

5. Tajikistan, Ministry of Education and Science / Asia-Plus. “This Is the Script of Our Ancestors.” July 30, 2026.

6. ICESCO / Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud Foundation. Closing ceremony announcement, Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud International Language Training Program — Arabic Language in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Baku, June 22, 2026.

7. APA. “Хакан Фидан: Мекканское соглашение готовилось 2 года и 8 месяцев.” August 8, 2026.

8. Vfokuse.mail.ru. “«Мусульманское НАТО»: что стоит за соглашением Турции, Саудовской Аравии и Пакистана.” August 2026.

9. Podrobno.uz. “Олимпиада имени Навои. В Узбекистане запустят международное соревнование по узбекскому языку.” May 19, 2026.

III. Preprints / technical

1. Arabov, Mullosharaf K. “A Systematic Benchmark of Machine Transliteration Models for the Tajik-Farsi Language Pair: A Comparative Study from Rule-Based to Transformer Architectures.” arXiv:2605.02270, 2026.

2. Arabov, Mullosharaf K. “TajPersLexon: A Tajik–Persian Lexical Resource and Hybrid Model for Cross-Script Low-Resource NLP.” arXiv:2605.06886, 2026. (Note: author is affiliated with Kazan Federal University, not with a Tajik or Iranian institution.)

Footnotes

1. Turkic Academy, “Declaration on the Common Turkic Alphabet,” Baku, September 21, 2024.

2. Turkic Academy, Materials of the Fourth Meeting of the Commission on the Common Turkic Alphabet, Astana, June 15, 2026.

3. Republic of Uzbekistan, Legislative Chamber, first reading on alphabet amendment, July 2026.

4. Republic of Kazakhstan, Ministry of Science and Higher Education, statement on Latin alphabet implementation timeline, June 2026.

5. Statement of the Kyrgyz presidential administration on the retention of the 36-letter Cyrillic alphabet, 2026.

6. Tajikistan Ministry of Education and Science / Asia-Plus, “This Is the Script of Our Ancestors,” July 30, 2026.

7. ICESCO / Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud Foundation, closing ceremony announcement, Baku, June 22, 2026.

8. Khalid, Islam after Communism, 2007.

9. APA, “Хакан Фидан: Мекканское соглашение готовилось 2 года и 8 месяцев,” August 8, 2026.

10. Vfokuse.mail.ru, “«Мусульманское НАТО»: что стоит за соглашением Турции, Саудовской Аравии и Пакистана,” August 2026.

11. Algar, “Āḵūndzāda,” Encyclopaedia Iranica.

12. Lummus, “One Nation, Two Languages,” 2021.

13. Güven Kılıçarslan, “Language Policy in Turkey and Azerbaijan,” 2022.

14. Pavlenko, “Russian in post-Soviet countries,” Russian Linguistics 32, no. 1 (2008): 59–80.

15. Hunter, Iran’s Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era, 2010.

16. Ahmadi, “Iran and Tajikistan,” Iran and the Caucasus 23, no. 1 (2019): 105–.

17. Clark, “Ahmadinejad, Iran, and Foreign Policy Dysfunction in Tajikistan,” Asian Politics & Policy 7, no. 2 (2015): 213–244.

18. Podrobno.uz, “Олимпиада имени Навои,” May 19, 2026.

19. Arabov, “A Systematic Benchmark of Machine Transliteration Models for the Tajik-Farsi Language Pair,” arXiv:2605.02270, 2026; Arabov, “TajPersLexon,” arXiv:2605.06886, 2026.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 212 (June 22, 2026)

The architecture of Eurasian connectivity is currently undergoing a fundamental transformation, driven by the systemic destabilization of traditional trade routes. As sanctions and geopolitical risks render the Northern and Southern corridors increasingly unreliable, the Middle Corridor is probably evolving from a supplementary diversification tool into an indispensable land artery linking the markets of the East and West. Furthermore, the potential integration of the Middle Corridor with the Indo-Israeli “Spice Route” creates a new “Eurasian arc of connectivity”. In this framework, Israel can emerge as a vital technological hub and “intellectual integrator,” bridging regional logistics through innovation. This analysis explores how these intersecting interests can forge a resilient, multilateral network of interchangeable nodes, where the stability of transit states becomes the cornerstone of Eurasian and global economic security.

The Collapse of Traditional Eurasian Connectivity: Implications for China, the U.S., and the EU.

For decades, the architecture of Eurasian logistics within China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has leaned primarily on the Northern (via the Russian Federation) and Southern (via Iran) land routes. During this period, the Middle Corridor was largely perceived by China as merely a supplementary diversification tool, essential only for safeguarding primary arteries. However, the current geopolitical landscape, defined by sanctions pressure on Russia and the heightened risks of military escalation involving Iran, has radically shifted this balance, rendering traditional trajectories critically unreliable for trade between Asia and Europe. From the perspective of Chinese strategists, the development of this route is a pivotal element in overcoming the “Malacca Dilemma”—the PRC’s excessive reliance on maritime routes that are vulnerable in the event of a conflict with the United States in the Indo-Pacific.

For Washington, the Middle Corridor has consistently been regarded as a strategic instrument for reinforcing the sovereignty of Central Asian and South Caucasian states. Under the current administration, this geopolitical objective is increasingly complemented by an economic agenda focused on supply chain resilience and fiscal efficiency. Consequently, Washington is incentivized to ensure the corridor maintains a multilateral character, preventing the emergence of a closed infrastructural system under the exclusive control of Beijing.

The European Union occupies a pivotal position in the emerging Eurasian landscape, navigating a dual-pronged strategy that bridges the geopolitical objectives of the United States and the geo-economic imperatives of China. For Brussels, the Middle Corridor is a strategic necessity, serving both to bolster the sovereignty of Central Asian states and to preserve vital commercial links with Beijing. This dualism allows the EU to align with Washington’s goal of securing infrastructural independence of the states of Central Asia and South Caucasus while simultaneously mirroring China’s interest in ensuring the resilience of global supply chains.

Regional Agency: Kazakhstan and the States of the Transit Arc

Within the emerging architecture of Eurasian connectivity, the nations of Central Asia and the South Caucasus are undergoing a fundamental transformation of their role in the global system. For decades, this region was perceived primarily as a periphery of great powers; today, it is evolving into a network of intersecting nodes where the interests of global actors no longer merely collide but have become functionally dependent on the stability of local states. The Middle Corridor creates conditions in which no major power can fully realize its objectives without considering the interests of transit countries, significantly enhancing their political value and strategic agency.

The common interests of the states along the transit arc lie in strengthening national sovereignty and expanding foreign policy autonomy through deep integration into global supply chains. For these countries such the development of the corridor is not only an economic project but a strategic instrument of multi-vectorism, enabling simultaneous cooperation with the U.S., EU, China, Russia and other nations of the West and the East without falling into exclusive dependence on any single actor. The primary priority for regional actors remains the maximization of cargo flows while maintaining the openness and de-politicization of the route, which transforms infrastructure into a mechanism of protection against destructive great-power confrontation.

The specificity of Kazakhstan as the “central gateway” of the Middle Corridor is defined by its unique geographical position and its capacity to serve as a political mediator. Unlike many other participants, Kazakhstan possesses a critical resource: political trust from all centers of power. Astana, probably, most successfully of all the actors of the region, maintains a multilateral dialogue by developing pragmatic engagement with Washington and Brussels, while simultaneously deepening its partnership with Beijing and preserving traditional relations with Moscow. This allows Kazakhstan to function as a “translator of interests”, understanding the logics of various players and moderating their intersection across the Eurasian space.

Kazakhstan’s strategy regarding the Middle Corridor is anchored in the principle of “complementarity, not substitution” relative to traditional routes. This approach stems from Astana’s established multi-vector foreign policy, which prioritizes constructive engagement with all major Eurasian stakeholders. To prevent the project from becoming a source of systemic friction with Moscow, Astana consistently frames the corridor as a tool for diversification while developing the Caspian Sea as a zone of joint coordination rather than a line of geopolitical rupture. Furthermore, Kazakhstan’s membership in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), with its common market and industrial coordination, facilitates seamless access for Russian firms to the Kazakh segment of the Middle Corridor, effectively integrating them into the broader regional ecosystem.

By maintaining the balance between different great powers, Astana avoids entanglement in anti-Chinese or anti-Russian coalitions, which would be inherently hazardous for a state positioned as a neutral actor. Instead, Kazakhstan focuses on its role as a systemic mediator working to transform contemporary global conflicts into opportunities for positive-sum regional cooperation and long-term stability. This can potentially turn Kazakhstan’s bet on regional connectivity into the foundation for a new, more resilient transport architecture for all of Central Eurasia.

Furthermore, Kazakhstan’s strategic course is focused on the consistent de-politicization of transport infrastructure. It is critically advantageous for Astana to avoid the use of military or sanctions rhetoric regarding the routes, steadily shifting international focus exclusively toward pragmatic issues of commerce and logistics. This approach allows the country to effectively maintain a balance of interests and prevent the monopolistic dominance of any external player, minimizing the likelihood of political pressure from great powers. In the long term, Kazakhstan strives to transform into an institutional hub for Eurasia, in which Kazakhstan acts not as a passive transit territory, but as one of its key architects and systemic moderators.

Potential Synergy of the Middle Corridor and the Spice Route as an Interest of Israel

The integration of the Middle Corridor and the Indo-Israeli connectivity project, known as the “Spice Route”, or India–Middle East–Europe Corridor, represents an effort to forge a qualitatively new “Eurasian arc of connectivity” linking East Asia, Central Eurasia, and the Mediterranean. Within this architecture, Israel is no longer perceived merely as a terminal destination but is transformed into a strategic crossroads for two of Eurasia’s largest logistical systems.

For Jerusalem, the development of the Middle Corridor carries a profound geopolitical dimension that extends far beyond mere logistics. Israel has a vital interest in strengthening and expanding relations with the neutral and relatively friendly states of the Turkic world that form the backbone of the trans-Caspian route.

This partnership gains particular significance from Kazakhstan’s stated support for the “Abraham Accords”, which could theoretically facilitate their logical expansion into the Central Asian region. Such a rapprochement would foster a fundamentally new international environment in Eurasia friendly to Israel, potentially creating a “belt of stability” stretching from the Caucasus to the borders of China. Strengthening ties with Turkic states along the Middle Corridor provides Israel with necessary strategic depth and allows it to diversify its foreign policy pillars beyond the traditionally conflict-prone Middle Eastern region.

Within the framework of Eurasian connectivity between the Middle Corridor and the Spice Route, Israel increasingly seeks to position itself as a technological hub and a key logistical gateway. The primary value of Israeli participation lies not necessarily in physical transit, but in its role as an “intellectual integrator” of the two corridors. Israeli expertise can address a critical challenge facing both the Middle Corridor and the Spice Route: management fragmentation and high administrative barriers.

Israel’s contribution to these systems could include:

• AI-driven logistics to optimize multimodal routes and reduce transit times;

• Supply chain cybersecurity to protect critical infrastructure from digital threats;

• “Smart Customs” and digital port management systems that integrate Indian, Central Asian, and European platforms into a single  network.

This agenda could be integrated into the future activities of the Negev Forum as a mechanism for the practical implementation of the Abraham Accords.

Potential Synergy between Israel and Kazakhstan: Aligning Two “Bridges” in the Context of the Abraham Accords Development

From a global geographical perspective, Kazakhstan and other countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus can be viewed as a natural northeastern extension of the Spice Route, connecting the Indo-Mediterranean axis with East Asian markets via the Caspian Sea. This creates a situation where Israel, on one side, and the countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus, on the other, do not compete for transport flows but jointly capitalize on their roles as “interest translators” between various power centers.

The interaction between Israel and Kazakhstan can be built on the principle of mutual complementarity of two “bridge states.” Kazakhstan, along with several other Central Asian and South Caucasian states, can serve as a Central Asian “entry point” for Israeli technology and investment. In turn, Israel can provide Kazakhstan with access to emerging Spice Route networks and the markets of India and the Persian Gulf countries. Due to the complex histories of their peoples, both countries are compelled to conduct sophisticated multi-vector diplomacy and organize complex international business schemes, making them natural partners in designing a new Eurasian architecture.

There is a certain degree of route variability and flexibility in this scheme of cooperation, as connection paths between the two routes can be utilized through Turkey, or bypassing Turkey — via Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Black Sea. In this instance, the convergence of the two routes enhances transport stability and renders it independent of the complex relations between Israel and the Hellenic states (Greece and Cyprus) on one side, and Turkey on the other.

India, seeking strategic depth in its confrontation with Pakistan and China and therefore, striving for access to Central Eurasia, also acquires a stable bypass route. The latter will remain operational even if:

1. instability in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, the Kabul-Islamabad conflict, and the Indo-Pakistani conflict block India’s access to Central Asia through Afghanistan;

2. conflicts surrounding Iran disrupt the functioning of the North-South Corridor, jointly established by Russia, Iran, and India.

Thus, the emerging Indo-Israeli partnership will receive an additional stimulus. The development of such a model will also benefit the U.S. within the framework of its Indo-Pacific Strategy.

The transport alignment of the Middle Corridor and the Spice Route could form a hypothetical model of a unified “Eurasian arc of connectivity.” A key difference between this geo-economic model and classical geopolitics is the transition from a struggle for route control to the creation of a network of interchangeable nodes. Such an arc does not require constant maintenance costs from an external hegemon (e.g., the U.S.), which is important in the context of modern American foreign policy’s drive toward cost minimization, and will be effective simply if its participants adhere to common standards of openness. The stability of this system directly depends on the resilience of key transit states, turning them into vital systemic actors in the global economy.

The main challenge for such a project remains the necessity of decoupling politics from logistics. Furthermore, a significant role could be played by making the project as inclusive as possible, ensuring that economic benefits are distributed among all players, regardless of their geopolitical disagreements.

Conclusion

Potential convergence of the Middle Corridor and the Spice Route may signal a fundamental paradigm shift in the governance of Eurasian trade. In this new landscape, the security of global supply chains would be no longer guaranteed by a single hegemon, but by a resilient network of interchangeable nodes, where the stability of transit states becomes a collective global interest.

The success of this “Eurasian arc of connectivity” rests upon the sophisticated strategic agency of regional actors. Kazakhstan, acting as a systemic mediator and “central gateway,” has demonstrated that a committed multi-vector policy can transform a transit territory into an institutional hub capable of local moderation of great-power interests.

Simultaneously, Israel’s role as an “intellectual integrator” can provide the necessary technological layer — through AI-driven logistics and digital security — to bridge the administrative and physical gaps between the Indo-Mediterranean and Trans-Caspian systems.

Ultimately, the primary challenge remains the consistent de-politicization of logistics. By decoupling trade infrastructure from ideological and military confrontations, the states of the “transit arc” can ensure that economic benefits are distributed across all global players. This  potential architecture offers more than just a logistical bypass; it provides a blueprint for a polycentric Eurasian order where cooperation is driven by pragmatic interdependence and mutual trade benefits.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 208 (June 6, 2026)

Western strategic analysis of Iran follows a well-established perimeter: the nuclear file, ballistic missile development, proxy networks across the Middle East. This perimeter is not wrong — but it is incomplete. It systematically excludes a vector that is already operational: Iran’s engagement with the political imagination of post-Soviet societies.

The evidence is visible in open sources. A consistent pattern emerges from monitoring comment sections and audience responses across major outlets covering the Iran–US standoff — including TRT, Yeni Şafak, Al Jazeera, and BBC Arabic — as well as Telegram channels oriented toward Central Asian audiences. Across these platforms, Tehran is framed overwhelmingly as the aggrieved party. More significantly, internal Iranian dissent is systematically recast as externally sponsored provocation. Criticism of the Islamic Republic originating from within Iran is not engaged; it is immunized against. This is not spontaneous sentiment. It is the signature of a narrative that has already found its audience and shaped its cognitive filters. (Author’s monitoring, 2025–2026.)

The post-Soviet space is not a passive recipient of Middle Eastern security dynamics. It is a contested informational environment in which Iranian narrative operations, transit dependencies, and identity fault lines interact to produce strategic consequences that neither Iran specialists nor post-Soviet analysts are adequately tracking. This paper argues that the gap between these two analytical communities is itself a vulnerability — and that closing it is a prerequisite for understanding what is already unfolding across the Eurasian arc.

Why the Post-Soviet Space Is Not Peripheral to Tehran

For much of the 1990s and 2000s, Iranian strategic thinking treated the post-Soviet space as a secondary environment — fragmented, inward-looking, and largely insulated from Tehran’s core security concerns. (Keddie, 2006; Vakil, 2020) This perception has changed, driven by the structural transformation of Eurasian connectivity over the past decade. Two channels account for Tehran’s growing stake in the region.

Transit and economic interdependence. Iran is a critical node in Eurasian overland logistics, including the North-South International Transport Corridor. Central Asian states — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan — depend on Iranian territory for the viability of trade routes that bypass both Russia and China. This dependency creates a structural asymmetry: Central Asian governments have limited incentive to align publicly with Western pressure on Tehran. Economic interdependence generates political deference — and political deference creates informational receptivity. (Al-Monitor, 2021; International Crisis Group, 2024)

Islamic networks and cultural proximity. Across Central Asia, Islamic institutions maintain connections — historical, financial, and personal — to Iranian religious infrastructure. These networks do not function primarily as ideological transmission belts; their influence is ambient and durable. Collectively, they produce a baseline interpretive disposition toward Iranian narratives: a vocabulary, a set of implicit assumptions about religious authority and its relationship to political legitimacy. (Pew Research Center, 2017)

Central Asian states are not neutral observers of the Iranian crisis. They are embedded in it — through corridors, through networks, through the quiet calculus of governments that cannot afford to be seen choosing sides.

The Mechanics of Iranian Narrative Reach

Iranian narrative reach in Central Asia does not operate through direct consumption of Persian- or Arabic-language state media. The linguistic reality makes this implausible: Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, and Turkmen neither speak nor read Persian, and Arabic-language broadcasting faces an identical barrier. The partial exception is Tajikistan — where Tajik, classified by Soviet and Russian linguistic tradition as a distinct language from Iranian Persian and Afghan Dari, nonetheless shares sufficient spoken intelligibility that Tajik audiences can follow Iranian audio and video. What Soviet-era alphabet reform foreclosed is not comprehension but literacy: the Arabic script was replaced by Cyrillic in 1940 and never restored at the popular level. Iranian narrative reach therefore operates almost entirely through intermediaries.

Indirect media amplification. The most consequential intermediaries are Turkish-language outlets — TRT and Yeni Şafak — which embed Iranian framing within a broader Islamic solidarity narrative resonant across Turkic-speaking societies. Russian-language aggregators and Telegram channels constitute a second amplification chain: for educated Central Asian audiences, Russian remains the primary language of international news, and Iranian framing circulates through this ecosystem within a wider anti-Western narrative architecture sustained since 2014. Neither channel requires Iranian editorial direction — structural alignment of interests between Iranian, Turkish Islamist, and Russian anti-Western framings ensures consistent amplification without coordination. (Author’s monitoring, 2025–2026.)

The transit dependency effect. Central Asian governments’ transit dependencies generate editorial self-restraint: government-aligned media in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan consistently avoids framing requiring a public position against Tehran. The absence of critical coverage is not silence — it is a signal. In an environment where state media remains dominant, governmental restraint functions as implicit endorsement, shaping audience priors before any explicit Iranian narrative reaches them.

The inoculation effect. These mechanisms converge to produce narrative inoculation: Central Asian audiences develop resistance to counter-narratives. The testimony of Iranian protesters, the documentation of IRGC repression — all arrives pre-labelled as Western-sponsored disinformation. This is the signature of a mature narrative operation: not persuasion requiring ongoing reinforcement, but the restructuring of interpretive filters so that counter-evidence is automatically discredited at the point of reception. (Author’s monitoring, 2025–2026.)

Azerbaijan as the Cognitive Fault Line

Of all the post-Soviet states, Azerbaijan occupies the most structurally complex position in Iran’s narrative calculus. It is simultaneously the primary target of Iranian narrative operations in the South Caucasus, the principal transit node connecting Central Asia to European markets, and a secular Turkic state rooted in a historically Shi’ite cultural space that maintains documented security cooperation with Israel.

The narrative target. Iranian state-aligned media has constructed a consistent picture of Azerbaijan: a secular state captured by Israeli and American influence, functioning as a forward platform for hostile operations against Iran’s northern frontier. (Tasnim, 2026; Fars News, 2026; Mashregh News, 2022) This framing serves a precise domestic function — externalising internal instability by anchoring it to a culturally familiar enemy. What makes it analytically significant is not its accuracy but its operational consequences: Iranian security institutions act on this picture. Military exercises near the Azerbaijani border, diplomatic protests over Israeli defense presence, and encirclement rhetoric are behavioural outputs of a threat perception that the narrative both reflects and reinforces. (Reuters, 2021) Perception here is not a soft variable — it is a driver of robust security decisions.

The structurally inconvenient reference point. Azerbaijan generates a deeper Iranian anxiety that is ideological in character. The Islamic Republic’s legitimizing narrative rests on the presumed inseparability of Shi’ite identity from Islamic governance. (Keddie, 2006; Vakil, 2020) Azerbaijan disrupts this claim structurally, not intentionally: decades of Soviet secularisation have produced a society in which Shi’ite cultural heritage coexists with secular governance and stable cooperation with Israel. Baku does not export this model — the disruption is a byproduct of proximity and divergent historical trajectories, not a strategic objective. (Cornell, 2017) An ideological rival can be debated; a structural alternative can only be denied — and denial requires sustained narrative effort. As Iran’s internal crisis deepens, the narrative labour required intensifies. (Brookings Institution, 2023)

Where the two vectors converge. Azerbaijan is the point at which Iranian narrative operations and Central Asian transit dependencies become one strategic problem. If Iranian framing of Baku as a hostile, Israeli-controlled platform gains traction — in Central Asian public opinion, in Turkish media, in Russian-language aggregators — it introduces friction into the transit relationships that post-Soviet states depend on. It does not need to be believed universally; it needs only to raise the political cost of visible alignment with Baku. The resilience of Israeli–Azerbaijani cooperation cannot be assessed in isolation from this informational environment. That environment is being actively shaped in ways that increase the political cost of the partnership and reduce its legibility to outside observers. (Inbar, 2018; Rubin, 2022)

The Analytical Gap and Its Strategic Consequences

The phenomenon mapped in this paper has attracted little systematic attention in Western analytical communities—not1 for absence of evidence, but because of how analytical institutions are structured. Western expertise on Iran and on the post-Soviet space has developed as separate intellectual communities with distinct language requirements, publication venues, and policy interlocutors. Iran’s engagement with the post-Soviet space falls precisely into the gap between them: too peripheral to the Middle Eastern security agenda for Iran specialists, too remote from Russian and Chinese competition narratives for post-Soviet analysts.

Three consequences follow. First, the inoculation effect goes unmonitored until it has already structured audience priors across an entire region — early warning requires tracking the ambient informational environment, not merely specific campaigns. Second, the strategic value of Israeli–Azerbaijani cooperation is assessed against an assumption of informational neutrality that does not exist. Third, Central Asian governments’ editorial self-restraint on Iranian matters is consistently misread as geopolitical neutrality, distorting expectations in Western diplomatic engagement with Astana, Tashkent, and Ashgabat.

Framing Iran as a Middle Eastern problem, and the post-Soviet space as a separate file, is not a neutral analytical choice — it reproduces the geographical error that Iranian narrative operations exploit. Closing the gap requires institutional mechanisms that reward cross-community collaboration and build monitoring capacity for the indirect amplification chains through which Iranian framing enters regional information ecosystems.

Conclusion: The Invisible Front and What It Demands

Iran is already operating across the post-Soviet information space — not through overt propaganda campaigns, but through structural dependencies, ambient cultural connectivity, and indirect amplification chains that function below the threshold of conventional influence-operation monitoring. The post-Soviet space is not a passive recipient of Middle Eastern security dynamics. It is an active front.

Three conclusions emerge. The first is structural: Iranian narrative reach is a function not of messaging capability but of a pre-existing informational environment shaped by transit dependencies, religious networks, and indirect media amplification. Instability and influence travel through networks, not along administrative boundaries — and monitoring frameworks need to reflect that logic. The second concerns Azerbaijan: Baku sits at the intersection of Iranian narrative targeting and Central Asian transit dependence, making it the single most consequential node in this dynamic. The operating conditions of Israeli–Azerbaijani cooperation demand considerably more sophisticated monitoring than is currently applied. The third is institutional: the analytical gap between Iran specialists and post-Soviet analysts is a structural vulnerability. Closing it requires not individual initiative but institutional design.

The invisible front is invisible not because it is hidden — it is visible in open-source monitoring, in comment sections, in editorial patterns, in the self-restraint of governments that depend on Iranian transit. It is invisible because the analytical communities tasked with seeing it are looking in the wrong direction. And cognitive fragmentation — the quiet restructuring of how regional audiences read political reality — does not wait for political fragmentation to become strategically consequential. It precedes it. Reorienting that gaze is the prerequisite for everything else.

Bibliography

Academic and Scholarly Sources

Cornell, Svante E. Azerbaijan Since Independence. London: Routledge, 2017.

Keddie, Nikki R. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Vakil, Sanam. Iran and the Global Order: Aspiration and Constraints. London: Chatham House, 2020.

Asgarov, Shahin. “Azerbaijan–Israel Relations and Regional Security Dynamics.” Journal of Eurasian Studies, 2024.

Think Tanks and Policy Research

Brookings Institution. Iran Protests and the Crisis of Regime Legitimacy. Washington, DC, 2023.

International Crisis Group. Iran’s Domestic Unrest and Regional Implications. Brussels, 2024.

Inbar, Efraim. Israel–Azerbaijan Relations and the Iranian Factor. BESA Center, 2018.

Rubin, Uzi. Missiles, Drones, and Deterrence: Israel’s Strategic Environment Beyond the Middle East. INSS Strategic Assessment, 2022.

Media Sources

Al-Monitor (Turkey Desk). “Turkey, Azerbaijan, and the Changing Security Architecture of the South Caucasus.” 2021.

BBC Persian. “Iran’s Protests and the Limits of Repression.” 2026.

Reuters. “Iran Warns Against Israeli Presence Near Its Borders.” 2021.

Iranian Sources (cited as narrative illustration)

فارس (Fars News Agency). «نقش اسرائیل در بی‌ثبات‌سازی پیرامون ایران» [The Role of Israel in Destabilising Iran’s Periphery]. Tehran, 2026.

مشرق نیوز (Mashregh News). «آذربایجان، اسرائیل و معادلات جدید امنیتی در شمال ایران» [Azerbaijan, Israel, and the New Security Equations on Iran’s Northern Frontier]. Tehran, 2022.

تسنیم (Tasnim News Agency). «چاлш‌های امنیتی ایران در مرزهای شمالی» [Iran’s Security Challenges on Its Northern Borders]. Tehran, 2026.

Demographic and Social Data

Pew Research Center. Religious Belief and National Identity in Central and Eastern Europe. Washington, DC, 2017.

Primary Empirical Source

Kogan, Gershon. Monitoring of open-source social media, comment sections, and regional media ecosystems — including TRT, Yeni Şafak, Al Jazeera, BBC Arabic, and Russian-language Telegram channels oriented toward Central Asian audiences. 2025–2026.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 203 (May 15, 2026)

For more than two decades, U.S. policy in Central Asia and the Caspian region was closely linked to the military operation in Afghanistan. The region was viewed primarily as a logistical and political periphery of the Afghan campaign: supply routes ran through it, transit agreements were concluded, and counterterrorism cooperation was developed. The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in August 2021 marked not only the military end of the campaign, but also the end of an entire era of U.S. regional policy. The Afghan factor ceased to be the structural element of the American presence in Central Asia. A strategic vacuum emerged: whereas security had previously defined the agenda, after 2021 Washington no longer had an obvious new “anchor” for a systematic policy in the region. Under these circumstances, the key question is as follows: what will become the new driver of U.S. strategy in Central Asia and the Caspian region? In 2026, the United States Strategy for Central Asia 2019–2025: Advancing Sovereignty and Economic Prosperity expired. Accordingly, a process is underway to formulate a new U.S. strategy. Below, I analyze the new trends that may form a strategy that has in fact been taking shape under the Trump administration in Central Asia and the Caspian region. Many elements of this new policy were already outlined in the 2019–2025 strategy and in the policy of the previous administration; however, the specific features of the Trump administration’s foreign policy have clearly accelerated the transition to a new model of relations. This model can be described as one based on business transactions and flexible diplomatic formats.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as the key Eurasian players in the Board of Peace

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan played the role of important participants at the inaugural summit of the Board of Peace on February 19, 2026. They were the only representatives of the post-Soviet space (along with Azerbaijan and Armenia). They also represented (together with Azerbaijan) a distinct Eurasian, Turkic and Former Soviet cluster of participants in this organization. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were the only Soviet countries that assumed certain financial, political, and even military commitments during this summit. Kazakhstan agreed to participate in the reconstruction of Gaza, undertook financial commitments, and expressed its readiness to send peacekeepers. Uzbekistan declared its readiness to take part in the construction of housing, hospitals, schools, and kindergartens.

In the context of the evolving relations between the Trump administration and these three countries, this carries strategic significance. The participation of the three states signals their willingness to deepen dialogue with the United States on terms that do not imply military-political confrontation with Russia or China — a matter of fundamental importance for the states of Central Asia. All of them pursue multi-vector foreign policies, seeking to maintain good relations simultaneously with the West, Russia, and China. The active participation of the regional countries in the inaugural summit of the Board of Peace demonstrates their readiness to work with Washington outside traditional multilateral frameworks — such as the UN. The emphasis of U.S. foreign policy under the current administration is shifting toward flexible diplomatic formats, business transactions, and infrastructure deals. The countries of Central Asia and the Caspian region are actively seeking to integrate into this model, adapting their multi-vector diplomacy to it.

The renewed interest of the current U.S. administration in Central Asia

It is important to emphasize that the Board of Peace summit continues and consolidates an already existing trend in U.S. relations with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as two regional leaders of Central Asia.

The most recent U.S.–Central Asia summit in the C5+1 format took place on November 6, 2025, in Washington under the chairmanship of President Donald Trump. It demonstrated a shift toward concrete economic deals. The emphasis was placed on critical minerals, energy, transport infrastructure, and supply chains.

Uzbekistan announced its intention to purchase American goods and services worth approximately $100 billion over the next decade and about $35 billion in the next three years. Kazakhstan presented a package of 29 agreements, including joint investments totaling nearly $17 billion.  At the same time, Kazakhstan announced its support for the Abraham Accords, which creates a favorable political and diplomatic backdrop for economic cooperation with the United States, as well as with Israel as Washington’s key Middle Eastern ally.

In December 2025, Donald Trump invited the presidents of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to participate as guests in the G20 summit in Miami in 2026, thereby elevating their international status.

The above-described line of the Trump administration toward flexible diplomacy based on business deals became even more evident during the visit of U.S. Special Representative for South and Central Asia Sergio Gor to Kyrgyzstan and his participation in the B5+1 summit in Bishkek on February 4–5, 2026. “B5+1” is a two-day business forum that brought together representatives of business communities and government bodies from Central Asian countries and the United States. During the forum, discussions focused on the development of agriculture, tourism, the financial and banking sector, transport and logistics, e-commerce and information technology, as well as cooperation in the field of critical minerals.

Gor noted that the “B5+1” forum in Bishkek became a logical continuation of the “C5+1” summit in Washington. He also stated that the United States would strengthen its economic presence in the countries of Central Asia in the coming years. At the same time, the key instrument of engagement will be the private sector. The U.S. government intends to support American businesses operating in the region in order to reduce investment risks. Gor also emphasized the role of TRIPP and the Middle Corridor in enhancing the economic interconnection between the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

Will the Middle Corridor Become “Western” Again Rather Than “Chinese” project?

The Middle Corridor (TITR – Trans-Caspian International Transport Route) connects China, Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, the South Caucasus, Turkey, and Europe. In recent years, it has gained additional relevance for the countries of Central Asia surrounded by the conflicts in Eastern Europe, Afghanistan and the Middle East. In 2026, in particular, southern trade routes from Central Asia have become constrained due to the crisis surrounding Iran and internal instability in Afghanistan. Consequently, the importance of the Middle Corridor for the functioning of Central Asian economies has increased significantly.

From the perspective of geo-economic competition, it is important to note that although today the Middle Corridor is integrated into China’s Belt and Road Initiative, its institutional roots lie in the supported by the West TRACECA project, launched in the 1990s as a tool to ensure the economic independence of the newly independent states of Central Asia and the South Caucasus. This fundamental Western interest in the Middle Corridor persists today.

The intensification of U.S. policy in the South Caucasus (including the TRIPP project -Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity) and Central Asia under current administration may restore the Western geo-economic dimension of the Middle Corridor and reduce the dominance of the Chinese aspect in the logic of this route. In this sense, the revitalization of the corridor can be seen as a kind of “return” of the Western agenda to Eurasian logistics, with significant geo-economic consequences.

Economic cooperation with the United States within the context of multi-vector foreign policy of Central Asian states

Cooperation with the United States in matters related to transport infrastructure not only serves economic interests but also aligns with the logic of the multi-vector foreign policies pursued by the countries of Central Asia. Through such cooperation, they do not enter into confrontation with China or Russia, while diversifying their foreign partnerships and strengthening their agency in the international arena.

China allows the states of Central Asia to pursue multi-vector foreign policies, provided that China itself remains one of their key vectors. The Middle Corridor — although ideologically and strategically not entirely favorable for Beijing — has significant practical economic importance for the Belt and Road project, particularly at a time when the war between Russia and Ukraine negatively affects the Northern Corridor, and the crisis surrounding Iran constrains the Southern route. Beijing would compete with Washington in Central Asia using geoeconomic instruments, which would be useful for the countries of the region.

Russia has traditionally viewed the Middle Corridor negatively, proposing the Northern route as an alternative. However, in the context of the war with Ukraine and the crisis in its relations with Europe, Russia cannot guarantee the uninterrupted functioning of the Northern route as a viable alternative for Central Asian economies. Moreover, Russia has traditionally anchored its position in Central Asia through military and security-based instruments, whereas China has projected its influence predominantly through economic penetration, infrastructure investment, and trade integration. Consequently, U.S. transaction-based engagement in the region increasingly places Washington in direct geoeconomic competition with China, not with Russia — not only over the development of the Middle Corridor, but also over the long-term configuration of Central Asia’s economic architecture.

Iran has historically taken the most negative stance toward any idea of transit across the Caspian Sea. This project competes with the North–South Corridor via Iran and also contributes to the distancing of the northern Eurasian neighbors from Iran. In the past Iran even attempted to block the division of the sea into national sectors for this purpose. However, under the current conditions of military crisis surrounding Iran, it will not be able to exert significant pressure on the countries of Central Asia. So, the degree of Iranian influence in Central Asia is much less than the influence of China or Russia. Therefore, Central Asian elites may afford serious disagreements with Iranian policy concerning cooperation with USA and Israel.

Conclusion. From a military logic to a logic of geoeconomic influence

If the Afghan era defined the nature of the American presence in Central Asia through security and military instruments, the geoeconomic model emerging under the current administration places strong emphasis on infrastructure, transit, resources, and flexible diplomacy. Formally embedding these three pillars in an articulated U.S. regional strategy would send a clear message to the Central Asian states that American engagement is not ad hoc or crisis-driven, but designed as a durable, long-term framework adapted to contemporary geopolitical realities.

The C5+1 summit in Washington on November 6, 2025, demonstrated the consolidation of the economic agenda as central to U.S. strategy. The focus on critical minerals, investment, and infrastructure became the core element of the dialogue. The Board of Peace (2025) further strengthened the trend toward flexible diplomatic engagement with the countries of the region.

For Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and other Central Asian states, it is fundamentally important today that engagement with the United States not be perceived as an anti-Russian or anti-Chinese geopolitical project. The geo-economic logic of cooperation with the United States and flexible engagement formats enables them to maintain balance within the framework of their multi-vector foreign policies. Thus, the demand of Central Asian states has aligned successfully with the new foreign policy emphases advanced by the Trump administration. The softer geoeconomic approach it proposes — compared to the period of the Afghan campaign — is the only politically acceptable format for the countries of Central Asia today.

At the same time, this policy allows for minimizing costs to American taxpayers while maximizing commercial benefits for U.S. investors. Moreover, it enables the United States to address many strategic objectives in a “containment-light” style. Washington is beginning to operate in Central Asia not through direct geostrategic containment of China, Iran, and Russia, as before, but through regionalization, trade, and infrastructure integration. At the same time, it is precisely in Central Asia and the Caspian region that Washington now has a realistic opportunity to engage China on symmetrical terms — through geoeconomic instruments capable of competing with Beijing’s model of outward economic expansion.

Paradoxically, despite the deep ideological differences between the Trump administration on the one hand and the overwhelming majority of European political elites on the other, the administration’s political style in several respects resembles European approaches to Central Asia. The European Union and individual European states operating in the region similarly prioritize pragmatic economic cooperation while avoiding large-scale geopolitical initiatives that could carry significant risks of conflict. That said, unlike the Trump administration, European policy in Central Asia also incorporates support for civil society and the promotion of European values.

For Israel, the Trump administration’s shift in Central Asia toward business-oriented initiatives and transactional diplomacy may prove broadly advantageous. Israel itself has pursued a comparable approach in the region. At present, Central Asian states are actively seeking to expand economic and diplomatic engagement with Israel. In this context, the administration’s operational style in the region can be seen as largely compatible with Israeli approaches.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 190 (March 17, 2026)

1. Official Position: Concerns and Neutrality

The military operation launched by the United States and Israel against Iran on February 28, 2026 may create serious economic challenges for the countries of Central Asia, particularly in the sphere of transportation. The war has significantly disrupted the functioning of two key transport corridors: the International North–South Transport Corridor (Russia – Caspian sea – Iran – India) and the southern branch of the Eurasian East–West transport corridor passing through Iran. This is unfolding against the backdrop of ongoing hostilities in the Black Sea region, which have already had a negative impact on transport routes linking the region with Europe.

Shortly before that, on February 21–22, 2026, the long-simmering conflict between Kabul and Islamabad sharply escalated. This armed confrontation may effectively block the Central Asia-Afghanistan–Pakistan–India transport routes. The hostilities in Iran may also exacerbate instability in Afghanistan due to the close economic ties between the two countries. As a result, the countries of Central Asia may either be forced to increase their involvement in addressing Afghanistan’s internal problems or face growing instability along the Tajik–Afghan and Turkmen–Afghan borders.

If hostilities were to spread to Azerbaijan (a possibility suggested by the Iranian drone strike on Nakhichevan) all international transport routes of Central Asian states could effectively be reduced to the Chinese corridor.

Across the region, there are widespread concerns that the war, and especially the potential collapse of the Iranian regime, could push the Greater Middle East (and subsequently Central Asia) into a period of geopolitical turbulence and uncertainty. Similar references to “turbulence” in the region are also widely found in the Russian press. Among the specific risks mentioned by the Central Asian experts are the possible inflow of refugees from Iran and other Middle Eastern countries into Central Asia.

At the same time, rising oil prices have had a positive impact on Kazakhstan’s economy, partly due to the shortage of oil supplies to China that previously came from the Persian Gulf. A similar dynamic may also benefit Turkmenistan to some extent. For the other countries of the region, however, rising oil prices pose significant economic risks.

Under these circumstances, the states of the region have generally adopted a neutral stance. Such a position allows them greater flexibility in managing the risks outlined above. At the same time, it broadly corresponds to the tradition of the multi-vector foreign policy that has long characterized Central Asian diplomacy.

Kazakhstan has taken a formally neutral but in practice cautiously formulated position that leans toward the Arab Gulf states. Astana has called for a peaceful settlement of the conflict but in its official statements has emphasized the security concerns of the Gulf monarchies and expressed solidarity with their leaders, while simultaneously seeking to maintain good relations with the United States and Israel. President Tokayev sent messages of support to the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan and held phone conversations with several of them, including the Emir of Qatar and the President of the UAE. At the same time, Astana expressed condolences to Iran over civilian casualties and called for a diplomatic resolution of the conflict but did not issue a separate presidential condolence message regarding the death of Ayatollah Khamenei.

Kyrgyzstan has effectively distanced itself from the conflict, limiting its response to a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressing serious concern over the escalation, calling for restraint, and urging a peaceful settlement in accordance with international law.

Uzbekistan has likewise called for a diplomatic resolution of the conflict. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev sent condolences to Iran over the death of Ayatollah Khamenei but did so in cautious terms, avoiding criticism of either the United States or Israel.

Tajikistan, which maintains the closest cultural and political ties with Iran in the region, also expressed concern over the escalation and called for an end to hostilities and a peaceful settlement. At the same time, President Emomali Rahmon was the first leader in the region to send an official telegram of condolences to the Iranian leadership and people following the death of Ayatollah Khamenei, emphasizing solidarity with the “friendly and brotherly” people of Iran. Nevertheless, Dushanbe also avoided direct criticism of the United States or Israel, seeking to maintain the balance characteristic of its multi-vector foreign policy.

Turkmenistan, following its long-standing policy of neutrality, responded in the usual restrained manner. Ashgabat described the escalation of the conflict as “regrettable” and called for a diplomatic resolution. 

2. Divided Societies: Regional Patterns in Public Perceptions of Iran and Its Opponents

An analysis of discussions on social media suggests that although Central Asian societies (like their political elites) generally prefer to maintain neutrality, in some cases one can observe something resembling the gap between elites and “the street” known from the Arab world in attitudes toward the United States and Israel. However, the scale of this divide remains far smaller than what is observed in the Middle East.

The depth of this division also varies significantly across the region due to Central Asia’s cultural heterogeneity. One can distinguish between the classical historical Turan — an Eurasian nomadic civilization encompassing most of Kazakhstan, northern Kyrgyzstan, and much of Turkmenistan — and regions shaped by a mixture of historical Turan and historical Iran, namely the sedentary agricultural areas that today largely belong to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Accordingly, public sympathy toward Iran tends to increase significantly in areas where the influence of fundamentalist Islam is strong (notably in the Uzbek-controlled part of the Ferghana Valley) and in regions where cultural, linguistic, and political-economic ties with Iran are particularly close (especially in Tajikistan). By contrast, in the countries of what may be called classical Turan — where the legacy of Eurasian nomadic culture remains strong and the social role of Islam is somewhat less pronounced (partly in Turkmenistan and especially in northern and central Kazakhstan and northern Kyrgyzstan) — sympathy toward Iran is noticeably weaker. Consequently, the gap between elite positions and public opinion is also smaller in these areas.

This societal divide, together with the presence of certain pro-Iranian sympathies within the public sphere, acts as a constraint on Central Asian elites when it comes to cooperation with the United States and Israel. This situation is similar to the Arab nations.

These internal cultural and religious considerations operate alongside geopolitical constraints stemming from the need to maintain good relations with China and Russia. Given the regional cultural patterns described above, Kazakhstan’s leadership faces the least domestic pressure in terms of religiously motivated public sympathy toward Iran. At the same time, however, Kazakhstan is subject to a certain degree of Chinese influence and very substantial informational and cultural influence from Russia. Since both of these states support Iran, their positions inevitably shape public opinion within Kazakhstan as well. A similar combination of Chinese and Russian influence can also be observed in Kyrgyzstan.

Another important factor is the degree of state control over public expression. As early as the summer of 2025, the Uzbek authorities called on the population to exercise caution when commenting on the Iran–Israel conflict in order to prevent radicalization and potential threats to domestic security. As a result, most Uzbek media coverage limited itself to reporting factual developments and practical consequences for Uzbek citizens (for example, those evacuated from Persian Gulf countries). The same is largely true for Turkmenistan, where the authorities generally prohibit political expression on the Internet altogether.

Kazakh society, by contrast, enjoys a comparatively higher degree of freedom to discuss foreign policy issues than other Central Asian societies. For this reason, the relationship between public attitudes toward the war in Iran and broader political and identity-based orientations can be observed particularly clearly in Kazakhstan.

For Kazakhs, as for other Muslim peoples, it is significant that the hostilities coincided with the month of Ramadan. This inevitably heightens emotional reactions among fasting Muslims. At the same time, contemporary Kazakh society is highly pluralistic and characterized by a complex and multi-layered identity.

As noted above, the Kazakh people historically emerged from a Eurasian nomadic civilization that was not originally connected to the Islamized Middle East. Yet Kazakhstan has long been a crossroads of different cultural and religious traditions. As a result, several distinct influences coexist within the country today:

1. the relatively liberal Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence within traditional Sunni Islam, which predominates among Turkic peoples;

2. elements of the liberal-modernizing Jadidist Islamic tradition that spread among Turkic peoples in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries prior to the establishment of the Communist rule, and from which the contemporary liberal current sometimes described as “Euro-Islam” later developed (primarily among Turkic and Balkan Muslims);

3. the influence of conservative Sunni Islamic traditionalism that expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union and is often associated with Saudi Arabia, other Middle Eastern countries, and Pakistan;

4. a composite influence of fundamentalist propaganda originating in the Middle East (Arab countries, Turkey, and Iran), including both Sunni and Shiite components;

5. the legacy of the Soviet anti-religious tradition together with the growing influence of Western culture among younger generations following the economic reforms that began after the dissolution of the USSR.

Accordingly, under the influence of these different factors, very different assessments of the war can be heard both among the general public and among opinion leaders. Many Kazakh nationalists in the Kazakh-language segment of the internet supported the actions of the United States and Israel, a position that has been sharply criticized in the pro-Russian segment of the online space. Supporters of a more generalized form of Islamic fundamentalism that does not emphasize Sunni identity as in other parts of the world tend to express stronger support for Iran. Advocates of closer alignment with the “Global South” and with the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization have likewise criticized the military operation against Iran.

Liberal groups that favor a pro-Western orientation, while showing a certain degree of sympathy toward the West and Israel, generally support Kazakhstan’s official policy of neutrality. Many centrist commentators similarly defend and justify the government’s neutral stance.

As a result, when the issue of Islamic solidarity arises — particularly during the month of Ramadan – it is interpreted very differently by various groups within society. For fundamentalists or supporters of the “Global South,” solidarity primarily means solidarity with Iran. For supporters of the official state position, it tends to mean solidarity first and foremost with the Arab Gulf states. For some nationalists or pro-Western groups, it may even take the form of sympathy for the Iranian opposition.

Social media activism can sometimes spill over into street-level activity. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, a pro-Iranian rally is reportedly expected to take place. In Kazakhstan, however, such public mobilization is currently unlikely because events in the Middle East are unfolding against the backdrop of more pressing domestic political developments, most notably a referendum on a new constitution on March 15. In the other Central Asian states, where political regimes are generally less liberal, authorities routinely prohibit uncontrolled public demonstrations. Nevertheless, the spread of anti-Israeli and anti-American narratives on social media, combined with the suppression of street-level protest that might otherwise release some of this pressure, may create potential security risks, including the possibility of terrorist acts by pro-Iranian activists.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 181 (February 09, 2026)

On January 31, 2026, Kazakhstan’s Constitutional Commission published the first official draft of a new Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan. This is not merely a set of amendments but a thoroughly revised version of the Basic Law, with changes affecting roughly 84% of the text (about 77 out of roughly 101 articles in the current version).

The draft was prepared by the Constitutional Commission chaired by Constitutional Court Chair Elvira Azimova, based on thousands of proposals from citizens, political parties, NGOs, experts, and discussions at the National Kurultai.

Over six months, as the authorities state, large-scale public debates on constitutional reform were conducted. More than 2,000 citizen initiatives were received through electronic platforms from citizens, lawyers, experts, attorneys, political parties, NGOs, and professional and business circles.

Substance of the Reform

According to Deputy Chair of the Constitutional Court Bakyt Nurmukhanov, the draft constitutional reform includes a preamble, 11 sections, and 104 articles.

Two new sections are proposed: “People’s Council” and “The Process of Amending the Constitution.” In addition, it is proposed to rename four existing constitutional sections: “General Provisions” to “Foundations of the Constitutional System,” “Person and Citizen” to “Fundamental Rights, Freedoms, and Duties,” “Parliament” to “Kurultai,” and “Courts and Justice, Prosecutor’s Office, Commissioner for Human Rights” to “Justice, Prosecutor’s Office, Human Rights Mechanisms.” Nurmukhanov stated that amendments are proposed to 77 constitutional articles, comprising 84% of the text.

A transition to a unicameral parliament is proposed: the Kurultai of the Republic of Kazakhstan would consist of 145 deputies elected by proportional party-list system for a five-year term.

Kazakhstan’s representative to the OSCE, Kairat Malaev, noted that parliament will consist of 145 deputies elected on party lists under proportional representation for a five-year term. The 30% quota for youth, women, and persons with disabilities on party lists, as well as the 5% electoral threshold, will remain in force. Meanwhile, the People’s Council will consist of 126 deputies representing ethno-cultural associations, major public organizations, local representative bodies, and regional public councils—reflecting the broad diversity of Kazakhstani society.

The post of State Secretary is being abolished, and, following a referendum, an institute of Vice President of the Republic of Kazakhstan will be created. Tokayev noted that the president himself will appoint the vice president, with the Kurultai’s consent, by a simple majority vote.

Speaking at the 5th session of the Ulttyk Kurultai (National Assembly) on January 20, 2026, the president proposed establishing a vice-presidency with constitutional status. This initiative is presented as the logical conclusion of a political architecture gradually built in recent years and intended to enhance governability and institutional resilience.

The Constitutional Court will be empowered to assess whether the implementation of decisions by international organizations and their bodies complies with the Constitution. On such matters, petitions to the Constitutional Court may be filed by the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Chair of the Kurultai, at least one-fifth of the total number of Kurultai deputies, the Prime Minister, and the Prosecutor General.

Another key reform will be the creation of “Halyk Kenesi”—a high-level consultative body intended to represent the interests of Kazakhstan’s citizens. It is expected to include representatives of ethno-cultural associations, civil society organizations, and regional public councils. “Halyk Kenesi” will be empowered to develop and submit recommendations on domestic policy priorities, promote national values, and formally submit draft proposals for consideration by state institutions. Its legal foundations, composition, and operating procedures will be defined by a separate constitutional law.

Four Years Back

On June 5, 2022, Kazakhstan held a constitutional referendum. This was the third referendum since independence in 1991 and the first since the 1995 referendum that adopted the current constitution.

The amendments were introduced after fierce civil unrest in early January, triggered by worsening economic conditions and subsequent calls for rapid political reforms. The referendum changed 33 of the document’s 98 articles.

The amendments covered a wide range of issues, including, among other things, abolition of the death penalty, a ban on senior officials joining political parties, a ban on the president’s relatives holding government posts, and new operating principles for the Constitutional Court. Under these amendments, the president would appoint only 10 senators instead of 15, five of whom would be recommended by a political body called the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan.

The Central Election Commission announced that 77.18% voted in favor of the amendments, which, among other things, stripped former president Nursultan Nazarbayev of the status of “national leader.” Turnout was 68.06%.

The constitutional reform of June 2022 enabled Tokayev to run for a new seven-year term, which he secured triumphantly in early elections in November 2022. The final term—unless new reforms are undertaken.

Tokayev’s Fall–Winter Collection

On September 8, 2025, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev delivered his annual State of the Nation address in front of Kazakhstan’s parliament building. In a wide-ranging speech Tokayev touched on topics as diverse as artificial intelligence, electric scooters, inflation, nuclear power development, scandalous behavior by women, and the need to transition to a unicameral parliament via a future constitutional referendum. He also proposed holding, in 2027, a national referendum on transitioning Kazakhstan to a unicameral legislature—thus abolishing the Senate, the upper chamber.

Shortly thereafter, on October 8, the president signed a decree establishing a working group on parliamentary reform in line with his key proposal to move to a unicameral parliament as set out in his September 8 address. The group was tasked with developing proposals to strengthen parliamentary institutions and ensure a more efficient legislative process. According to the presidential decree, the head of the group is State Counsellor Erlan Karin. Its members include representatives of the Mazhilis (lower house), the Senate (upper house), the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan, and leaders of parliamentary party factions in the Mazhilis.

Two months later, on December 1, 2025, Tokayev announced that the planned transition to a unicameral parliament would abolish the president’s quota for appointing members of the legislature. At that time, Kazakhstan’s parliament had two chambers: the Mazhilis, with 98 deputies elected under a mixed electoral system, and the Senate, with 50 members—some elected by regional maslikhats (local representative bodies), others appointed by the president. Under the current system, the head of state appoints 10 senators, half of whom are nominated by the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan.

Political “Security” for the Reform—As Understood in the Post-Soviet Space

As is customary across the post-Soviet space, prior to undertaking institutional reforms, the political leader—President Tokayev—consistently secured his power by judicially removing the leaders of the legal opposition from the political scene. The illegal opposition in a country where the forceful suppression of protests has a decades-long history is not a serious threat to presidential power.

In the snap elections of March 2023, Tokayev’s party, Amanat, won 62 seats in the Mazhilis. Auyl won 8, Respublika and Ak Zhol won 6 each, the People’s Party of Kazakhstan won 5, the National Social Democratic Party won 4, and independent candidates won 7. Although more parties entered the lower chamber than in the previous term, none of them in practice represented any serious opposition to Tokayev.

In this piece, we will omit the critical assessments by Freedom House and other international observers — they were fairly moderate; it was emphasized that technical violations existed, but they could not decisively affect the election results.

Half a year after the elections—in order to ensure that a judicial crackdown on the opposition would not appear to be an attempt to obtain an electoral outcome and thereby cast doubt on it—Kazakhstani authorities stepped up efforts to suppress opposition political activity. Following the conviction in November 2023 of opposition leader Marat Zhylandbayev, sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment on charges of “financing extremist activity” and “participation in the activities of a banned extremist organization,” the authorities jailed two more government critics on the same charges. Several months later, on August 2 and 16, 2024, Kazakhstani courts sentenced Duman Mukhammedkarim, an independent journalist and activist, and Asylbek Zhamuratov, another public activist, to seven years’ imprisonment each; they also banned Mukhammedkarim from public activity for three years and Zhamuratov from political activity for five years.

In June 2024, Kazakhstan adopted a new media law that threatens freedom of speech and the right to information. The law expands the definition of mass media to include online publications, requiring their registration and a physical presence in Kazakhstan, and grants the government broad powers to deny accreditation to foreign media representatives if their materials contain unspecified “propaganda of extremism.”

The new law was not directly repressive. Rather, it introduced long-awaited regulation into the country’s new networked communications space, which had been marked by anarchy, lack of oversight, and legal vacuum—while simultaneously creating mechanisms for the authorities’ manual control over the content of online communications and the composition of their participants.

These actions created tools of total governmental control over actors’ presence in both the political sphere and the media sphere.

A telling example: Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Justice has refused to register the opposition group “Alga, Kazakhstan”—the successor to the party “Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan,” designated an extremist organization in 2012—no fewer than 24 times, most recently in April 2024. In late November, the group submitted a registration application for the 25th time. As of November 2025, the chair of the party’s organizing committee, Amangeldy Dzhakhin, has been arrested and is charged with participation in an “extremist organization” and “financing extremism.”

The “security” of implementing a radical reform—understood as it is in the post-Soviet space—can be considered ensured.

Transition or Rebranding?

The proposed change in Kazakhstan’s parliamentary system will likely accelerate lawmaking and could be economically advantageous. But above all, it signifies a shift in the model of power transition.

In Kazakhstan today, the line of succession in the event of the president’s absence or incapacity is as follows: Speaker of the Senate, then Chair of the Mazhilis, then the Prime Minister. A unicameral parliament would reduce this pool.

Formerly known as Otan and then Nur Otan, the party was long associated with Nazarbayev. Although Tokayev officially left the party in 2022, Amanat retained its dominant position, quickly adapting to the new political reality. Erlan Koshanov, an experienced civil servant and the current Chair of the Mazhilis, has earned a reputation as a loyal operative—precisely that—of President Tokayev. Before becoming speaker, he headed the Presidential Administration.

Ultimately, Tokayev’s proposed reform is unlikely to significantly alter the party balance. Amanat remains dominant and, barring unexpected events, will likely continue to shape the legislative agenda. The real question is whether Erlan Koshanov will remain at the helm of the new parliament—or whether Tokayev has in mind a more strategically advantageous candidate.

For example, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

Given that Tokayev’s presidential mandate expires in 2029—and there is no possibility of reelection under the 2022 constitutional changes—the proposed reform takes on added significance, raising questions about planning for the retention of real power in Tokayev’s hands and about the political landscape of the post-presidency era.

Russia’s Influence

On the second day of 2022, January 2, Kazakhstan experienced its largest unrest since the sudden doubling of liquefied gas prices.

The protests began in the gas-producing city of Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan, but on January 3–4 spread to Almaty and other cities. Protesters shifted from economic demands to political ones, including the government’s resignation and the withdrawal from politics of the country’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. By January 4–5, protests in Almaty escalated into mass riots, including arson attacks on government buildings and looting, and the authorities lost control of the city. The former presidential residence and the akimat (city hall) were burned down, and protesters seized Almaty airport.

The next day, the CSTO Collective Security Council decided to deploy a peacekeeping contingent to Kazakhstan. This decision was a response to an official request by President Tokayev to CSTO leaders to “assist in neutralizing the terrorist threat.” Russia’s peacekeeping contingent within the CSTO in Kazakhstan included units from the 45th Airborne Special Forces Brigade, the 98th Airborne Division, and the 31st Separate Air Assault Brigade—Russia’s most combat-capable airmobile units at the time. CSTO communications stated that units from Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan also formed part of the CSTO forces sent to Kazakhstan in January 2022, but there is no reliable information about their actual numbers—or even confirmed evidence of their presence in Kazakhstan at that time. Russian paratroopers saved Tokayev in January 2022. They remain his primary political fear.

The China Factor

Tokayev is seeking to resolve this dilemma by shifting his reliance from a political alliance with Russia to a political alliance with China.

As one of Kazakhstan’s largest trading partners and investors, China, according to observers, prioritizes economic relations rather than political loyalty and “the shared Soviet past.” At the same time, given instability in Afghanistan and the growing securitization of Xinjiang, China is increasingly interested in ensuring security in Central Asia—something it can obtain from the leader of the region’s strongest country: Kazakhstan’s President Tokayev. This increases Tokayev’s value in Beijing’s eyes.

Kazakhstan, notes the U.S. Congressional Research Service, is viewed as a key country in the overland Silk Road Economic Belt—one of the main corridors of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative—and has received significant financing from Chinese companies for the construction of transport and energy infrastructure.

The Council on Foreign Relations, on December 2, 2024, noted that Kazakhstan skillfully balances the competing influence of Russia and China by diversifying trade partnerships, fostering economic growth, and using its strategic position to protect its sovereignty and autonomy.

Change Shoes in the Air

It should be noted that, according to analysts, Tokayev must pursue policy amid complex internal dynamics among economic actors.

This includes the residual influence of elements of the Nazarbayev-era “old guard” and the dissatisfaction of “new champions,” especially regarding the aggressive expansion of Chinese competitors—curbed to a much lesser extent by Tokayev for political reasons than during Nazarbayev’s rule and that of his clan. Meanwhile, Russia continues to pressure Kazakhstan to limit its independent foreign policy, possessing an extensive toolkit for doing so. Moscow’s leverage includes much of Kazakhstan’s business sector, whose commercial interests pass through Moscow to a disproportionately greater extent than through Washington, Brussels, or Beijing. This Kazakh business has become one of the world’s main beneficiaries of the “Iron Curtain” around Russia’s economy, and the Kremlin’s favorable attitude toward Kazakh schemes and routes is critically important to it.

The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, in one of its texts, writes: “We may be witnessing the restoration of a personalist regime, now headed by the second president rather than the first, leaving little chance for democratic transition in the near or medium term….. By positioning himself against the negative image of the first president Nazarbayev and abolishing Nazarbayev’s constitutional privileges, Tokayev managed to preserve all presidential power and reinforce his legitimacy through the referendum.”

Tokayev would not be the first Central Asian president to change the rules in order to reset presidential term limits on his own terms.

In comments, Kazakh political scientist Dimash Alzhanov suggested that this is precisely the trick. “The constitutional amendments will most likely pursue the goal of renewing presidential terms… We still do not know the full list [of planned] changes. But under the pretext of amending the Constitution to create a unicameral parliament, they can quietly push through more important changes, such as resetting the presidential term or introducing the post of vice president,” he said.

The Atlantic Council (February 2025) notes another vector of turbulence in Kazakhstan’s political landscape: “Rising social conservatism accompanying an Islamic revival could pose a serious challenge over the next ten years.”

As we can see, there are many uncertainty factors in the future of the constitutional reform initiated and driven by President Tokayev. And the main one is Tokayev himself: a Soviet diplomat, Deputy Secretary-General of the UN and Director-General of the UN Office in Geneva, long-time chair of Kazakhstan’s Senate under President Nazarbayev, also Nazarbayev’s prime minister—and, at the same time, the initiator of stripping Nazarbayev of his status privileges….

There is no shortage of scenarios for Kazakhstan’s future. But all scenarios converge on one point: the keys to the republic’s political future are in the hands of one—and only one—person.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 179 (January 22, 2026)

Since gaining independence, the Central Asian states have maintained a position of neutrality toward Israel. Following Kazakhstan’s accession to the Abraham Accords on 6 November 2025, Israel may find itself presented with an opportunity to significantly expand its diplomatic presence in both Central Asia and the Caspian Basin (after Azerbaijan joined the “Central Asian Five” in 2025, the two spaces may reasonably be viewed as a single international region — a point that will be elaborated below). It is therefore worth examining how Israeli diplomacy has begun to make use of this emerging “window of opportunity” and what potential trajectories might exist for Israel’s foreign policy in this context.

1.  Israel’s diplomatic activity on the Kazakhstan track

On 10 January 2026, at Israel’s initiative, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a telephone conversation with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan. During the exchange, the two leaders reaffirmed the steady and long-term development of bilateral cooperation and discussed further ways to deepen engagement across a broad range of issues on the bilateral agenda. A central subject of discussion was Kazakhstan’s decision in 2025 to join the Abraham Accords. Netanyahu expressed deep appreciation to Tokayev for this decision and underscored its importance for strengthening peace and international dialogue.

Kazakhstan’s accession to the Abraham Accords makes it the first Central Asian state to join the initiative and extends the geographical scope of the framework beyond the Middle East and North Africa. This significantly enhances Astana’s value for Israel—not only as a partner in bilateral economic projects but also as a key participant in multilateral peace initiatives.

The Netanyahu–Tokayev conversation took place one week before the expected visit of Israel’s foreign minister to Astana. Gideon Sa’ar plans to visit Kazakhstan immediately after his official visit to Azerbaijan on 26 January 2026. The preparation for this visit has been underway since November 2025, when — in the context of Kazakhstan’s decision to join the Abraham Accords — the foreign ministers of the two countries discussed prospects for cooperation in technology, water and agriculture, as well as the establishment of direct air transport links.

Several directions of dialogue can be reasonably anticipated during the visit:

• Discussion of a possible expansion of the political dialogue in the context of the expanding Abraham Accords. Such political dialogue corresponds well to Kazakhstan’s traditional multi-vector foreign policy, aimed at maintaining balanced and mutually beneficial relations with both Western and Eastern partners.

• Discussion of regional security issues in light of multiple ongoing conflicts worldwide, including in the Middle East. The conflict surrounding Iran has become particularly salient, given the possible reaction of the United States and Israel to the violent suppression of mass protests by the Iranian authorities (as well as Iran’s previous pursuit of a nuclear program and its “hybrid” confrontation with Israel and the United States in the Middle East). For Kazakhstan, it is of fundamental importance to minimize the negative spillover effects of existing conflicts — including the potential outbreak of a new war in Iran — on Central Asia.

• Further development of cooperation in energy, technology, and agriculture. This dimension is critical in the context of Kazakhstan’s current economic modernization agenda. Technologies related to artificial intelligence are of particular interest, as emphasized in Tokayev’s 2025 Presidential address to the nation. Israel holds substantial expertise in this field.

2.     Strengthening traditional ties with Azerbaijan

The forthcoming expansion of the Israeli–Kazakh dialogue will unfold against the background of the further consolidation of the Israeli–Azerbaijani partnership. As noted above, Sa’ar plans to visit Azerbaijan on 26 January 2026 for a one-day official visit prior to traveling on to Kazakhstan.

Information on the preparation of this visit had already begun to circulate in late 2025. The focus was on deepening bilateral cooperation in the fields of economics and security in connection with broader discussions on peace and stability in the Middle East and the South Caucasus — including Trump’s mediation on the Zangezur question, the situation in Gaza, and issues related to Iran.

Azerbaijan is of strategic importance to Israel at present for several reasons:

• The country maintains a long-standing structural conflict with Iran. Estimates suggest that between 6–7 million and up to 30 million ethnic Azerbaijanis reside in Iran’s northwestern provinces — a range that is itself indicative of the opacity surrounding demographic data in the Islamic Republic. By contrast, the population of the independent Republic of Azerbaijan is roughly 10 million, making neighboring Azerbaijan a natural point of attraction for Iranian Azerbaijanis. During the 20th century, the USSR even sought to detach Southern Azerbaijan from Iran, although the effort ultimately failed due to firm resistance from the United States. Beyond the issue of Azerbaijani self-determination, Tehran and Baku have also experienced other disputes, including over the delimitation of the Caspian Sea. Added to this were longstanding ideological frictions between Azerbaijan’s secular post-Soviet regime under the Aliyev family and Iran’s fundamentalist religious leadership. In the event of a territorial fragmentation of Iran as a result of revolutionary upheaval, Azerbaijan — alongside Kurdish autonomous entities in Iraq and Syria and the Baloch movements in Iranian and Pakistani Balochistan — could play a highly consequential role.

• Israel has become a key supplier of weapons to Azerbaijan. Between 2016 and 2020, Israel accounted for roughly 69% of Azerbaijan’s arms imports. Deliveries included drones (such as the Searcher and Heron platforms), air-defense and missile-defense systems, as well as simulators, personnel training, and technical support. Baku has not hesitated to signal its strategic partnership with Israel to Iran, treating this as an element of deterrence. In recent years, open-source reporting has frequently pointed to a broader security relationship between Israel and Azerbaijan, including alleged intelligence cooperation. Officially, however, Azerbaijan maintains a position of neutrality vis-à-vis Iran.

• Azerbaijan occupies a unique position in the South Caucasus and the Caspian Basin as a transit corridor for the Central Asian states — and even for parts of East Asia — bypassing both Iran and Russia. The transit architecture has a major energy component, which has become especially relevant for Central Asian exporters after the Black Sea route became increasingly risky for hydrocarbon shipments due to the Russia–Ukraine conflict. This was particularly evident in 2025–2026 amid attacks on the infrastructure of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium carrying Kazakh oil to the Russian port of Novorossiysk. As a result, Kazakhstan accelerated its reorientation toward Azerbaijani infrastructure. The long-standing idea of exporting Turkmen gas to Europe via Azerbaijan also remains on the table. Such projects could play a significant role in mitigating Europe’s ongoing energy crisis.

• After its victory in the Second Karabakh War, Azerbaijan’s regional role in the South Caucasus increased substantially — to the point where assessments began to describe Baku as a potential new regional hegemon. In 2025, Baku entered into a rather sharp confrontation with Russia, which also claims hegemonic status in the South Caucasus. At the same time, under Trump’s mediation, new prospects emerged for resolving the decades-long Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict, while Prime Minister Pashinyan intensified Armenia’s shift away from reliance on Russia and Iran.

• Finally, recent years have witnessed an expansion of economic cooperation between Israel and Azerbaijan, particularly in technology, energy, and tourism. Sa’ar has emphasized, for example, that the flow of tourists from Israel to Azerbaijan increased sharply in 2025, and that sustaining this trend is considered a priority.
  

3.   Israeli diplomatic activity in the context of the regional system of international relations in Central Asia and the Caspian Basin

Let’s analyze Israel’s relations with Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan in a broader diplomatic context. It is clear that the degree of proximity between Israel and these two states is not the same. With Azerbaijan, Israel has developed close military, strategic, intelligence, and economic ties. With Kazakhstan, the relationship remains a form of “soft cooperation,” centered on multilateral diplomacy and economic engagement. Cooperation with Azerbaijan gives Israel an avenue for deeper participation in Caspian projects and for expanding its soft economic presence in Central Asia. At the same time, Kazakhstan — as the most economically developed country in the region and the source of more than half of Central Asia’s GDP — may serve as a key intermediary target for such gradual penetration. Israel and Kazakhstan have significant room for developing their economic partnership. Moreover, the evolution of this partnership may function as a positive precedent for other Central Asian states, all of which maintain normal diplomatic relations with Israel.

For Israel itself, such an opening would represent the next step in expanding diplomatic contacts across the Islamic world, following the recent recognition of Somaliland.

How might the deepening of Israeli–Azerbaijani and Israeli–Kazakh cooperation be perceived by the principal actors in the region?

From Washington’s perspective (because of US-Israel strategic partnership), the emerging configuration could serve as one of the mechanisms for compensating the deficit of U.S. influence in Eurasia that resulted from the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan. Without such a compensatory strategy, it will be difficult for the United States to address a number of broader strategic challenges associated with its confrontation with China, Iran, and Russia simultaneously. For the United Kingdom and the European Union, the logic would be broadly similar, and in general they are likely to support any regional initiatives that reinforce Western diplomatic presence and connectivity in Central Asia, especially, in the forms of “soft power”.

Turkey’s position is more nuanced. In principle, Ankara has grown accustomed to the strategic alignment between Azerbaijan and Israel, as well as to Kazakhstan’s multi-vector foreign policy. For that reason, Turkey is unlikely to obstruct such cooperation directly. Moreover, Turkey has historically shown an ability to treat the foreign relations of other Turkic states as an additional diplomatic resource. A notable example is Kazakhstan’s role in facilitating the reduction of tensions between Turkey and Russia during the Syrian crisis through the “Astana Process”. However, given the current depth of Turkish–Israeli disagreements, President Erdoğan is not inclined to welcome a visible rapprochement between Israel and the Turkic world. The most realistic scenario is a policy of pragmatic tolerance: Ankara will neither endorse nor hinder such cooperation, while preserving room for maneuver and seeking to ensure that it does not alter the balance of influence within the Turkic political space.

For Russia, Azerbaijan’s ties with Israel — as well as Kazakhstan’s multi-vector foreign policy — are no longer surprising. While the situation is strategically disadvantageous for Moscow, it is unlikely to trigger a harsh response in the short term. Two factors explain this restraint. First, the Kremlin is currently preoccupied with its confrontation with Ukraine and the European Union and is therefore willing to engage in various forms of “geopolitical trade-offs”, as illustrated, for example, by its behavior in the Syrian theater. At this stage, Israel and the United States are seen as a lesser strategic challenge compared to the EU–Ukraine axis. Second, this posture is also shaped by the ideological profile of the current Russian leadership. With its pronounced ultra-conservative worldview, the Kremlin perceives figures such as Trump and Netanyahu — representatives of the Western right — as ideologically more proximate than the more left-liberal leadership in Europe.

China’s strategic focus in the region remains economic expansion. Beijing grants the Central Asian states a relatively wide margin of autonomy, particularly regarding multi-vector and pragmatically oriented external partnerships, as long as the Chinese vector remains among the central pillars of their foreign policies. If cooperation with other external actors contributes to the development of projects that align with China’s own interests — such as the trans-Caspian connectivity corridor — Beijing tends to view such engagement calmly, even if it simultaneously benefits Western actors.

The state most predisposed to react sharply to the expansion of Israeli influence near its northern borders is Iran. Baku’s foreign policy is perceived in Tehran as a direct strategic risk. The extension of the Abraham Accords beyond the Middle East has also generated significant irritation in Iran, as it undermines Tehran’s efforts to forge a unified “Global South” front against Israel and the United States. However, for the moment, Iran is deeply absorbed by its own internal challenges, including ongoing revolutionary upheavals and the severe weakening of its “Axis of Resistance” in the Middle East, particularly in Lebanon and Syria. As a result, Tehran is unlikely to take meaningful action on this front in the near term.

Moreover, Kazakhstan has pursued a balanced diplomacy and complemented its multi-vector approach with gestures towards Iran. Notably, on 10–11 December 2025, President Masoud Pezeshkian paid an official visit to Astana, during which the sides discussed the expansion of regional cooperation in transportation and energy.

The Turkic states of Central Asia — and Uzbekistan in particular, as the region’s second political and economic center after Kazakhstan — are likely to take a cautiously positive view of the deepening partnership between their neighbors and Israel. In this context, Kazakhstan’s policy could become a useful precedent. Should Astana’s cautious engagement with Israel prove beneficial and unfold without major costs — including reputational ones — other Central Asian states may eventually line up to explore cooperation with Israel in a similar manner and within comparable formats.

4.   Most positive scenario: establishing a permanent consultative format between Israel, the Central Asian states, and Azerbaijan

If the scenario described above materializes, the question arises as to where Israel’s diplomacy could move next in its relations with the Central Asian region. One plausible direction would be for Israel to adopt, at a later stage, a version of the “Central Asia 5+1” mechanism currently independently employed by the United States, the European Union, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and India.

The defining characteristics of these formats are well known: they are non-institutional, do not impose binding bloc-type obligations, focus on concrete pragmatic projects, and remain largely depoliticized and demilitarized. In other words, they are optimally tailored to the multi-vector foreign policies pursued in different degrees by the Central Asian states.

The “core” regional format independent of external actors remains the Consultative Meeting of the Heads of State of Central Asia, often referred to as the “Central Asian Five.” A significant development in 2025—largely overlooked outside the post-Soviet space—was the expansion of this format from a five-party to a six-party framework. At the Consultative Meeting held in Tashkent in November 2025, Azerbaijan officially joined the format, thereby transforming the informal “Central Asian Five” into a regional “Six”.

In this sense, the traditional 5+1 format is becoming insufficient not only for regional actors but also for external partners. The emerging reality suggests that a 6+1 framework is already more relevant. For Israel, such a configuration would be particularly advantageous, as it simultaneously includes two key states with which Jerusalem has developed strong, sustainable relations: Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan also maintain diplomatic relations with Israel. In the latter, Israel even opened a resident embassy in 2023 — an important symbolic and institutional step. None of these states espouse an official ideological anti-Zionism; their relations with Israel are better described as “latent” or “dormant” rather than adversarial. According to the dominant pattern of multivector foreign policies their political and administrative elites approach external partners through a pragmatic lens, focusing primarily on trade, investment, technology, and connectivity.

The most complex bilateral track for Israel is with Tajikistan (the only non-Turkic state of the region), largely due to Iran’s cultural and linguistic proximity and Tehran’s sustained influence in that country. Nevertheless, even Tajikistan maintains formal diplomatic relations with Israel, and Israel is represented in Dushanbe through its embassy in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), accredited concurrently to Tajikistan. Moreover, within its own multi-vector foreign policy, Tajikistan readily engages in multilateral, pragmatic, technically defined initiatives.

Under these conditions, the groundwork could be laid for the establishment of a non-binding diplomatic consultative format between Israel and the “Central Asian Six”, initially at the level of deputy foreign ministers and/or relevant sectoral ministries responsible for specific projects.

It is equally clear that such a format, especially in its initial phase, should remain modest and strictly pragmatic — though, over time, it could be conceptually linked to the broader ecosystem of the Abraham Accords. The platform could serve to facilitate discussions on economic and infrastructure development, agricultural modernization, water-management technologies, and a range of emerging technological fields (including digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence applications).

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 166 (November 21, 2025)

Reviving the “Abraham Accords” — the process of normalizing relations between Israel and the previously hostile yet “moderate” Sunni Arab regimes of the Saudi bloc (the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Northern Sudan), initiated by U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term — has become one of the top priorities of the Republican administration following Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025.

From the Saudi bloc to Azerbaijan — and beyond?

Part of this package was the achievement of a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, with the prospect of transforming it into a long-term truce capable of ending the two-year war that began with the bloody aggression against Israel by Hamas — the radical Islamist terrorist organization controlling the Strip — on 7 October 2023, followed by the IDF’s response operation Iron Swords. That escalation, in turn, derailed the process of rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The normalization of relations between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would undoubtedly become a trigger for the establishment of full diplomatic relations between the Jewish state and not only other pro-American Arab regimes in the Middle East, but also a number of non-Arab Muslim states, such as Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia — the latter being the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. Therefore, the end of the war in the Gaza Strip (though not yet in the Middle East as a whole) may revive the dialogue between Jerusalem and Riyadh, especially given that Trump’s plan envisions the involvement of the Saudis and their allies in the Washington-designed plan for “external administration” and reconstruction of the Strip “after Hamas.”

However, this time Donald Trump’s vision for the scope and meaning of the Abraham Accords is clearly far broader. Abraham Accords 2.0 envisions the formation, under U.S. auspices, of a large-scale economic, political, and — not least — defense-oriented strategic alliance in the eastern segment of the “Greater Middle East.” Such an alliance could become a serious counterweight to the anti-Western axis of Moscow and Beijing across Central, South, and Southeast Asia, and in the Middle East — to the jihadist regime of the Shiite ayatollahs in Tehran and its satellites, patronized by those global competitors for influence in the “Global South.”

In light of these prospects, the expanded version of the Abraham Accords could also include states that have maintained diplomatic and partnership relations with Israel for several decades already, in some cases quite close ones.

It was expected that among such states the first candidate to join this project would be Azerbaijan, which has maintained long-standing strategic partnerships with Israel in diplomacy, economics, and security, driven by shared challenges and threats emanating from the Iranian bloc. Moreover, it was assumed that Baku would be able to persuade other post-Soviet Central Asian states — and the entire Turkic world — to join this “pact of reconciliation”.

Unsurprisingly, the pro-government Iranian think tank Iran Diplomacy expressed concern, stating that “by bringing Central Asian countries closer to Israel, Baku is seeking to enhance its own ties with the United States and bolster its role in Washington’s regional policy”.

Their concerns were well-founded: with Baku launching the ambitious Middle Corridor (TITR) project — a trade route from Southeast Asia to Europe via Central Asian states — Azerbaijan is becoming one of the critical links in a developing transcontinental network. Israel may find itself integrated not only into this promising trade architecture, but also into the merging of the “extended” Abraham Accords with the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) — a 5,000-kilometer transport and infrastructure system consisting of a rail link, an electricity grid, a hydrogen pipeline, a high-speed data cable, and other elements. IMEC is envisioned as an economic-geopolitical alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Why Kazakhstan?

Yet the first post-Soviet Turkic state to openly declare its intention to join Abraham Accords 2.0 was Kazakhstan — as officially announced by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev during his meeting with Donald Trump on 7 November of this year.

Signs that such an initiative was already being diplomatically prepared became evident earlier, on 12 June of this year, following a meeting in Washington between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Kazakh counterpart Murat Nurtleu.

The starting point for the process that culminated on 6 November at the second “U.S.–Central Asia” summit, held at the White House, was the creation ten years earlier of a forum aimed at advancing economic and geopolitical cooperation between the United States and the five post-Soviet Central Asian states — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

For the first several years, cooperation occurred primarily through contacts among foreign ministers. However, the clear mutual interest — and the regional leaders’ desire to diversify their systems of strategic partnership beyond Russia, which had remained the dominant geopolitical force in the region for three decades after the USSR’s collapse — gradually elevated U.S.–Central Asian cooperation in the C5+1 format to the highest political level.

This trend accelerated sharply after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In the same year, the Secretariat of the C5+1 group was established, aiming to further institutionalize the platform and expand U.S.–Central Asian engagement in support of shared priorities.

And already in September of the following year, 2023, the summit in New York brought together the leaders of the post-Soviet Central Asian republics — hosted by then U.S. President Joe Biden.

The new/old master of the White House, Donald Trump, continued this tradition: the second summit of the C5+1 forum took place in Washington a little over a year later — on 7 November 2025. It was on this occasion that the official and ceremonial announcement of Kazakhstan’s entry into the Abraham Accords was made.

Although many observers, noting that Kazakhstan — the largest and most economically powerful state in the region — has actually had formal relations with Israel since 1992, downplayed the significance of Astana joining the Accords and considered its move primarily a symbolic gesture, as noted by Dov Zakheim, a columnist for the semi-official Washington outlet The Hill, in fact, Kazakhstan’s accession signifies far more than merely a rubber stamp of a long-standing relationship.

Indeed, Kazakhstan, according to observers, has emerged as the United States’ primary economic partner in Central Asia, accounting for over 96% of Central Asia’s U.S. exports (approximately $2.4 billion out of a regional total of $2.5 billion). U.S.–Kazakhstan trade has grown meaningfully in recent years. Bilateral trade peaked in 2024 at $4.2 billion, the highest level in six years, with U.S. exports to Kazakhstan accounting for 53.2% of the total.

Although in the first eight months of 2025 total trade between the two countries experienced a 25.8% drop compared to the same period in 2024, U.S. exports to Kazakhstan remained relatively stable. So for the United States, Kazakhstan might be seen as a “flagship” in converting diplomatic engagement into tangible deliverables: critical minerals (antimony, tungsten, rare earth elements, and 40% of the uranium deposits in the world), regional connectivity, and security coordination.

In light of these trends, for Astana — as President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev openly stated while departing for the Washington summit — joining the expanded version of the Abrahamic alliance “means that we will receive certain dividends in terms of economic cooperation,” that is, this is mostly about bilateral relations with the United States. And the traditional “good relations with Israel and the Middle Eastern countries” serve as a positive backdrop on the way to that goal. (In the wording of the country’s Foreign Ministry statement — “this important decision is taken exclusively in the interests of Kazakhstan and fully corresponds to the balanced, constructive, and peace-loving foreign policy of the republic”.)

Although even in this sense it is hardly worth fully accepting the opinion of those who see Astana’s move — and, potentially, future moves by other Central Asian leaders — as “an attempt to find creative ways to secure foreign policy victories for Trump and earn his favor at minimal cost to themselves.”

In any case, in the vision of Trump’s team, however important the economic aspect may be for the United States in its relations with Kazakhstan, and whatever political image dividends it might bring, this is clearly not the limit of their ambitions. Likewise, in our view, it is not limited to the desire to find an alternative to the stalled process of expanding the first circle of the “Abraham Accords,” which came to a halt after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the beginning of Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip.

The struggle for rare earths and other valuable minerals is a critical element of Washington’s regional and global geopolitical game — including, and possibly among its highest priorities, in its confrontation with Beijing and, to some extent, Moscow. And Central Asia occupies far from the least important place in this context. All the more so because it is precisely there that the eastern flank of the strategic geopolitical and economic alliance of U.S. partners on the Asian continent is located.

By entering Central Asia on such a scale, Trump, in search of a weak link on the geographic axis between the two contenders for leadership in the “Global South,” as noted in conversation with the author by the respected Israeli military and political analyst Grigory Tamar, “is in effect putting his boot between China and Russia.” If Trump indeed succeeds in linking all these states — from post-Soviet Central Asia to Israel and Saudi Arabia, and the members of its bloc — into a single economic and defensive alliance, Tamar argues, “then considering their combined volume of raw materials, technologies, military capabilities, economic and industrial resources, and so on, we will get a construction that may well surpass the former Soviet Union in its potential… And integrating such a conglomerate with India would allow Trump to build a monster that even China will not be able to cope with”. 

Interim conclusions and possible prospects

So, while the American strategy on this issue is complex, multifaceted, yet overall fairly transparent, their South Caucasian and Central Asian counterparts are still determining not so much the general idea — which appears broadly acceptable to them — as the methods of integrating themselves into the Abraham Accords 2.0 and the potential consequences of such a step.

On the one hand, for the Central Asian states, participation in the project offers an opportunity to maintain their multi-vector foreign policies, avoiding dependence on either Russia or China. On the other hand, as they move closer to the West, it remains equally important not to damage relations with Moscow or Beijing. It is telling that on 11 November, exactly four days after participating in the Washington “5+1” summit, Tokayev travelled to Moscow for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting resulted in the signing of a Declaration on elevating interstate relations between Russia and Kazakhstan to the level of a comprehensive strategic partnership and alliance, which, as one can see, was not hindered by Astana’s recently announced rapprochement with Washington and may even have accelerated the process. (Notably, once the presidential aircraft crossed into Kazakhstan’s airspace, it was escorted by an honor guard of the Russian Air Force.)

Another indicator of Astana’s updated multi-vector policy was a speech delivered on 11 November of this year at the academic conference “Expanding Horizons of BRICS Cooperation” held at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Rustem Kurmanguzhin, a professor at Narxoz University in Almaty, proposed an innovative idea: that BRICS countries should view the current U.S. Republican administration not as a geopolitical rival or adversary, but as a “potential situational ally”.

It is difficult to imagine that this proposal — voiced by Kurmanguzhin, a figure close to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and formerly his colleague in Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry — was not previously coordinated and likely approved at the level of both Kazakh and Russian leadership. And considering that today China, even more than Russia, sets the tone within BRICS — an organization created, as analysts note, “to expedite the rebalancing of global power away from the West”, this seemingly academic proposal also contains a message directed toward Beijing.

The next unresolved question concerns the reasons why Azerbaijan did not become the first to embark on the path toward a new interpretation of the Abraham Accords. Three explanations are commonly offered.

The first: Azerbaijan had indeed hoped to become the first post-Soviet Muslim country in Asia to join the Abraham Accords 2.0, expecting that, along with importing weapons from Israel and Turkey, it would gain direct access to American defense technologies. In this view, Kazakhstan’s move came as a considerable surprise to Baku. However, it is difficult to believe that Azerbaijan was so unaware of ongoing developments that — had it had such intentions — it would have failed to stake its claim to a leading role in the emerging process of rapprochement among the Muslim states of the former USSR.

The second explanation: Azerbaijan, whose relations with Israel are at the level of de facto strategic partnership, must also take into account the position and interests of its strategic partner both de facto and de jure — Turkey, including the moods (and at times, the “whims”) of that country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly succeeded in reducing tensions between Jerusalem and Ankara and even achieving, at least at the declarative level, normalization of their economic and diplomatic contacts. Yet Erdoğan has consistently disrupted this process from within.

Today, despite Azerbaijan’s considerable political experience and successful diplomatic efforts within the Baku–Jerusalem–Ankara triangle, its leadership appears somewhat constrained in its maneuverability along the Israel–Turkey axis. If so, a declarative accession of Azerbaijan to a defense alliance with Israel could appear as a provocative gesture toward Turkey, whose leader is currently displaying yet another escalation of anti-Israeli rhetoric. If this is the case, then Azerbaijan — especially against the backdrop of its increasingly complicated relations with Russia over the past year — clearly cannot afford to provoke Ankara, whose assistance, including military assistance, Baku may need in the event of new tensions with Moscow.

And the third hypothesis — which to the author of these lines appears the most logical, though it may not exclude the previous two — is the following: from the perspective of Azerbaijan’s leadership, it would be far more rational if the official declaration of Baku’s accession to the expanded version of the Abraham Accords were to become a symbolically significant culmination of the formation of the aforementioned U.S.–Middle Eastern supra-regional bloc, rather than a loosely binding “declaration of intent.”

If this hypothesis is at least partially correct, the Azerbaijani leadership may be taking into account the experience of the Saudi leadership, which at the dawn of the Abraham Accords 1.0 preferred to “let their closest allies from the Saudi bloc — the UAE and Bahrain — go first,” expressing their intention to join the process only if it proved its relevance, and not before the United States and Israel were able and willing to accommodate the requirements and conditions of official Riyadh. Considering that Azerbaijan, within the new geopolitical framework outlined by the Abraham Accords 2.0, is expected to become a key supporting element of the Washington–Jerusalem–Baku axis — playing on the western-northern flank of the Middle East–South Caucasus macro-region a role similar to that which Saudi Arabia is supposed to play on its western-southern flank in the Washington–Jerusalem–Riyadh vector — the Azerbaijani leadership indeed has no need to rush.

And finally, what place does the Jewish state itself occupy in this diplomatic wave triggered by Kazakhstan’s announcement of its accession to the Abraham Accords?

At first glance, the main contacts and negotiations with the project’s new potential participants are being conducted directly by the U.S. administration, giving the Israeli leadership, for the moment, the role of a “side observer.” At the same time, there is reason to assume that behind Trump’s message about the “very good,” as he put it, phone conversation he held in parallel on 7 November with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, there is something more than a polite gesture toward the Israeli partner. At least in theory, this gives the Prime Minister’s Office grounds to claim that everything is taking place in close coordination with Jerusalem — which may well correspond to reality. And it may allow Netanyahu and his government to somewhat strengthen their not especially high standing in the eyes of Israeli society, where the news of the U.S.–Kazakh initiative was received positively, but without the excitement that accompanied the first reports of breakthroughs in relations with the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf a little more than five years ago.

Moreover, even at this early stage, Israel is already gaining new and interesting opportunities. In particular, there is considerable potential for expanding Israeli arms exports to the Central Asian states, including Kazakhstan, with which Israel’s defense industry previously carried out a number of joint military projects (especially in 2007–2009), though later cooperation declined due to access-level restrictions. Clearly, Kazakhstan’s participation in the Abraham Accords is capable of lifting such restrictions, and Israel’s defense industry may gain access to a market that was previously partially closed.

Last but not least for Israel: unlike the Saudis — who demand a solution to the Palestinian issue as an ultimatum-like condition for normalizing relations with Israel — the Kazakh leadership, it appears, is not particularly concerned with this matter. In any case, Astana virtually ignored the statement issued by the leaders of the Hamas terrorist organization, who described Kazakhstan’s decision to join the Abraham Accords and strengthen the country’s ties with Israel as “justifying genocide,” allegedly committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, and called for “Islamic solidarity,” demanding that all Muslim countries sever relations with Israel. Tokayev himself limited his response to a noncommittal affirmation of the “good relations with Israel and the countries of the Middle East” that Kazakhstan had always maintained, and that its accession to the Abraham Accords would be “a logical continuation of current policy.”

It is not impossible that a similar reaction could be expected from the leaders of other potential entrants into the Abrahamic bloc with the United States and Israel among the post-Soviet Central Asian states — including Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and possibly even (though less likely) Tajikistan, where, unlike in the more moderate, “ethnically Muslim” Kazakhstan, internal and external threats from radical Islamist groups are felt quite acutely. However, at the time of writing, these states are still refraining from binding steps or statements.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 163 (November 10, 2025)

Kazakhstan’s decision to endorse the Abraham Accords declared on 6 November 2025 in connection with Kazakh president Tokayev’s visit to Washington fits neatly within Astana’s long-standing multi-vector foreign policy, which seeks to balance the interests of major powers while maintaining the broadest possible network of partnerships. For Astana, supporting an initiative aimed at normalizing relations between Israel and a number of Muslim-majority states aligns with core principles of its external strategy: interfaith dialogue, peaceful coexistence, and a deliberate refusal to operate within rigid bloc politics. The move, however, has a clear pragmatic dimension — and it lies not in relations with Israel, but in relations with the Trump administration. By backing the Accords, Kazakhstan extended a meaningful political gesture toward President Donald Trump, for whom the Accords (and the broader idea of advancing peace in the Middle East) represent a signature foreign-policy achievement. Astana has been searching for credible points of engagement with Washington, and symbolic support for the Trump-backed initiative offered a convenient and low-risk way to build political rapport.

Crucially, this step does not contradict Kazakhstan’s overarching commitment to multi-vector foreign policy. On the contrary, it illustrates the flexibility of that doctrine: Astana remains firmly oriented toward cooperation with Russia, China, Turkey, and the wider Islamic world, yet is simultaneously identifying new ways to strengthen its U.S. track — in this case, through a gesture toward Israel. Kazakh policymakers calculated that endorsing the Abraham Accords would allow them to move closer to Trump without crossing any red lines for Moscow or Beijing, whose relations with Kazakhstan carry far greater strategic weight simply by virtue of geography.

Astana is, in fact, seeking a new framework for relations with Washington compared to earlier decades. In the early 2000s, cooperation centered largely on security, particularly on the fight against terrorism during the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. Once the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, that agenda lost its relevance. Under the Biden administration, the format of engagement was effectively exhausted, and by 2024–2025 the bilateral relationship required new substantive content.

Coordinating geopolitically against Russia or China is not an option for any Central Asian capital — Astana, Tashkent, and others expressly rule out participation in anti-Russian or anti-Chinese initiatives. This leaves only one viable basis for deepening ties between Kazakhstan and the United States: economic cooperation, technology, and investment. These areas do not carry the geopolitical risks that could undermine Kazakhstan’s delicate balancing act.

Yet a purely economic foundation was not enough. Kazakhstan’s geographic distance from the United States and the limited scale of bilateral trade meant that economics alone was unlikely to capture Trump’s attention. A political gesture was needed — and support for the Abraham Accords provided precisely that: a symbolic but strategically calibrated step that could anchor a renewed Kazakh-American dialogue without destabilizing Kazakhstan’s relations with its much closer neighbors.

In this context, Kazakhstan’s endorsement of the Abraham Accords becomes a significant political act. It introduces a symbolic layer into Kazakh-American relations that speaks directly to Donald Trump’s foreign-policy priorities. At the same time, Astana is confident that this gesture will not provoke serious irritation in Moscow or Beijing. Unlike any form of military or geopolitical cooperation with the United States, participation in a framework aimed at normalizing relations between Israel and Muslim-majority states can be interpreted in both capitals as a neutral diplomatic initiative, consistent with Kazakhstan’s established foreign-policy behavior.

Indeed, Kazakhstan has long positioned itself as a state that promotes dialogue and de-escalation. It initiated the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Central Asia; it launched the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA); it has invested heavily in global interfaith dialogue; and it has at various moments helped facilitate rapprochement between Russia and Turkey as well as between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Against this background, support for the Abraham Accords appears as another iteration of Kazakhstan’s familiar diplomatic toolkit rather than a departure from its established line.

The country that most strongly opposes to the Abraham Accords is Iran. But for Kazakhstan, this does not constitute a decisive constraint. Astana maintains cautious, functional relations with Tehran, and potential criticism from Iran does not rank among its major foreign-policy risks. This is precisely why the Abraham Accords emerged as an ideal vehicle: they allow Kazakhstan to signal goodwill to the Trump administration without disturbing the regional balance on which its multi-vector strategy depends.

Kazakhstan’s decision was not only politically calibrated but also carefully timed. Astana acted at a moment when the broader international environment allowed for a degree of maneuverability: tensions among major powers had eased slightly, and the diplomatic climate was more forgiving.

A key factor was the Gaza ceasefire of 10 October 2025, brokered with the involvement of the Trump administration. This de-escalation reshaped the context by making Kazakhstan’s support for the Accords appear as a contribution to peace rather than an alignment with one of the parties to the conflict.

A second important element of the broader context was the renewed engagement between the United States and China. The meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping on 30 October 2025 — after which both sides signaled a willingness to pursue a “pragmatic exchange” and reopen working-level communication channels — reduced the likelihood that Beijing would interpret Kazakhstan’s move as a shift toward the American camp. It is worth noting that, from China’s perspective, the economic dimension of Kazakhstan’s recent agreements with the United States is far more consequential. Beijing has repeatedly used its dominance in rare-earth minerals as leverage over Washington, while Kazakhstan has now agreed to expand cooperation with the United States precisely in this strategic sector. By comparison, the Abraham Accords do not touch the core lines of U.S.–China rivalry, which is why Beijing views Kazakhstan’s endorsement of the Accords without particular concern.

A third factor that eased political risks was the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on 15 August 2025 in Alaska. Although the talks did not produce breakthroughs and, in fact, the two sides have since resumed trading hostile statements and actions, the meeting nonetheless demonstrated a basic willingness to keep communication open, as well as an element of personal rapport between the two leaders. This temporary softening of tone made it less likely that Moscow would read Kazakhstan’s outreach to Washington as a “geopolitical choice.” If anything, given the current dynamics, Moscow may see President Tokayev’s ability to maintain dialogue with multiple actors as a useful asset in its own search for a workable modus vivendi with Trump.

Finally, in this same vein, it is particularly significant that immediately after his visit to the United States, President Tokayev is scheduled to travel to Russia on 12 November 2025. This serves as an explicit signal to Moscow that Kazakhstan remains committed to the strategic character of the bilateral relationship and is not departing from its multi-vector course.

Kazakhstan’s announcement of support for the Abraham Accords was prompted by the C5+1 Summit in Washington (this diplomatic format includes five Central Asian states and USA). A central outcome of Tokayev’s visit to the summit — and one of strategic importance for the U.S. government — was the formal institutionalization of cooperation on critical and rare-earth minerals. Kazakhstan and the United States signed a Memorandum of Understanding on collaboration in the field of strategic raw materials, laying the groundwork for technology exchange, support for processing facilities, American investment in value-added production chains within Kazakhstan, and the integration of the country into “clean” global supply networks for critical minerals.

Other areas of cooperation include logistics, transport, and advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence — the latter being particularly significant in light of the new domestic and economic priorities recently outlined by President Tokayev.

Kazakhstan’s decision to align itself with the Abraham Accords was, above all, a political gesture aimed at strengthening relations with the Trump administration; for Israel, its practical significance remains limited for now. President Tokayev effectively opened a “political door” toward Washington while preserving room to develop cooperation with Israel gradually and carefully, and strictly within areas that pose no geopolitical risks or tensions in Kazakhstan’s relationships with Russia, China, or its partners in the Muslim world.

For precisely this reason, an economic format is the only viable and natural avenue for Astana. Israel is a global leader in water management, agrotechnology, cybersecurity, medicine, and innovations — sectors in which cooperation offers Kazakhstan tangible benefits and fits squarely within its broader strategy of economic modernization. None of this carries the political weight that could upset regional balances, which makes economic engagement both safe and mutually advantageous.

One of the most promising platforms for such cooperation is the Negev Forum, a multilateral mechanism designed to turn the principles of the Abraham Accords into practical, sector-based collaboration.

It brings together working groups on water and food security, energy, logistics, healthcare, education, and interfaith dialogue. Kazakhstan’s participation in selected clusters would allow it to plug into the technological and investment networks of the Middle East and the United States without straying from its characteristically cautious foreign-policy posture. For the southern regions of Kazakhstan, which increasingly face water scarcity, cooperation on Israeli irrigation technologies, precision agriculture, and the management of arid lands would be particularly relevant.

A further avenue is bilateral cooperation with Israel, which Astana can expand independently of the Abraham Accords framework. Here, Kazakhstan has considerable freedom to choose the most pragmatic directions: joint projects in agrotechnology, energy, transport, innovation, and medical technology; educational partnerships; and new forms of IT collaboration. Israeli companies already have experience working in Central Asia, and Kazakhstan is well-positioned to scale up this engagement without taking steps that would be politically sensitive for its neighbors.

Kazakhstan’s support for the Abraham Accords also carries broader international significance. Astana became the first Muslim-majority country to take advantage of the opening created by the Gaza ceasefire to explore future cooperation with Israel. The move aligns with Kazakhstan’s multi-vector diplomacy, but it also establishes a new precedent within the Muslim world — particularly within the Turkic sphere.

Turkey’s stance is an important part of the picture. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has pursued an overtly anti-Israeli line in recent years. Yet the Turkic world is far from uniform: Azerbaijan has developed a markedly different model, building a strategic partnership with Israel. Kazakhstan’s endorsement of the Accords falls squarely within this second, more pragmatic trajectory.

By positioning itself in this way, Kazakhstan may serve as a reference point for other post-Soviet Turkic states. Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan closely follow shifts in the region’s diplomatic architecture, and Kazakhstan’s ability to cultivate calm and mutually beneficial relations with Israel could lower the political costs for others to explore similar avenues. The step taken by Astana encourages a view of Israel grounded not in ideological or religious confrontation but in economic and technological opportunity.

For Israel, this is a strategically valuable signal. Kazakhstan’s support could mark the beginning of a transformation of the Abraham Accords from a primarily Middle Eastern initiative into a broader platform for cooperation between Israel and Muslim-majority states — one centered on technological development, infrastructure, energy, water management, and interfaith dialogue. In that sense, it offers Israel a chance to lay new foundations for its relations with the Islamic world in the post-war period — a period one hopes will eventually arrive.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 157 (October 6, 2025)

When a former U.S. ambassador says Washington has effectively abandoned Central Asia to Russia and China, it’s not idle chatter. Daniel Rosenblum, who served as ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2019 to 2022 and to Kazakhstan from 2022 until earlier this year, warned that the United States has pulled back so far from the region’s information space that Moscow and Beijing now shape the narrative almost unchallenged. In practical terms, this means one thing: the story Central Asians hear about themselves, their neighbors, and the wider world is written by powers that view them less as partners than as vassals.

That retreat has consequences. Western absence leaves countries like Kazakhstan to fend off Moscow’s neo-imperial ambitions without a counterweight, offering Russia the advantage of presenting itself as the natural arbiter of Central Asian affairs. And while Astana has proven adept at balancing over the years, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed the limits of tightrope diplomacy. Kazakhstan now finds itself cornered — pulled into sanction circumvention by sheer economic gravity, yet punished by the risk of Western backlash. It is the kind of dilemma only created when bigger players walk off the board.

Kazakhstan Between Survival and Compromise

Kazakhstan’s predicament is unenviable. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine shattered the fragile balance it had maintained between East and West. Suddenly, neutrality became harder to sustain. Kazakhstan’s political and economic ties to Russia are deep, unavoidable, and in some cases coercive.

Sanctions evasion illustrates the trap. On the surface, facilitating parallel imports or gray-zone trade looks like easy money. For Kazakhstan, however, it is also an offer that cannot be refused. Its economy is entwined with Russia’s, from pipelines to financial flows. This makes Astana vulnerable to secondary sanctions, dragging it deeper into Moscow’s embrace even as it risks Western punishment. Refusing such economic engagement would devastate local industries and impoverish ordinary Kazakhs — fuel for political instability in a region where fragility is contagious.

The rational solution is not blanket pressure, but precision. Any sanctions, which seems like an easy solution, should be laser-sharp, leaving space for legitimate commerce. Equally crucial is to open Western markets to Kazakh goods and attract Western investment. Stability will come not from isolation, but from integration.

The Turkic Alternative

For Kazakhstan, survival cannot rest on defensive maneuvering alone. Building alternative frameworks of cooperation is critical, and one of the most promising avenues lies in Turkic integration. The Organization of Turkic States (OTS) — bringing together Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey — has quietly transformed from a cultural talking shop into a geopolitical platform. It offers Kazakhstan not only economic diversification, but also a new form of collective identity that dilutes Moscow’s monopoly on influence in the region.

Turkic cooperation gives Astana something it has long lacked: a community of states that understand both the constraints of geography and the pull of history. For Central Asia, it opens trade corridors that bypass Russia, strengthens collective bargaining power with China, and provides access to Turkey’s NATO connections without forcing an all-or-nothing choice between East and West.

But there’s a subtler dimension. For Turkic minorities inside Russia — Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvash, and others — the OTS creates an external reference point beyond Moscow’s narrative of “Russian civilization.” It doesn’t mean secession or open defiance, but it does mean exposure to new models of governance, culture, and self-expression that Moscow cannot fully control. In the long run, that could chip away at the Kremlin’s claim to speak unchallenged on behalf of all non-Russian peoples under its flag.

This isn’t to say Turkic integration is a magic wand. The Central Asian republics still compete with one another, and Turkey’s ambitions sometimes raise eyebrows. Yet compared to the dead-end dependency on Moscow, it is a positive-sum project. It creates a gravitational pull of its own—one that makes the region less susceptible to Russian coercion and more confident in articulating a future on its own terms.

Diversifying Away From Moscow

Symbolism matters, but so do barrels of oil. Kazakhstan has started probing alternatives to Russian-controlled export routes, experimenting with new outlets and suppliers. The volumes involved so far are modest, but that almost misses the point. Every barrel of crude that leaves Kazakh territory without crossing Russian pipelines is a statement: Astana is unwilling to remain hostage to Moscow’s infrastructure stranglehold.

Oil is Kazakhstan’s lifeline. Roughly two-thirds of its crude has historically been exported through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which runs directly to Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. That dependency gives the Kremlin a dangerous lever: one “technical inspection” or “environmental check” can suddenly halt flows, depriving Kazakhstan of billions in revenue. This is not hypothetical — Moscow has used these tactics before, shutting or slowing the CPC under pretexts that coincided suspiciously with political tensions.

By exploring alternative routes, Kazakhstan is buying insurance against such coercion. The so-called Trans-Caspian corridor — shipping oil across the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan, and from there via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline to Turkey — offers a non-Russian path to global markets.

Of course, the alternatives cannot fully replace Russian routes overnight. Costs are higher, capacity is limited, and building new infrastructure takes years. But in geopolitics, signaling matters almost as much as volume. For investors and partners, diversification signals that Kazakhstan is not resigned to being Moscow’s captive. For Russia, it shows that every act of pressure risks accelerating the erosion of its dominance.

Over time, this diversification could reshape the region’s energy map. If Astana can scale up alternative routes, it not only reduces Moscow’s leverage, but also ties Central Asia more firmly to Europe, Turkey, and beyond. For the West, supporting such diversification is not just an energy policy — it is a strategic bet on Kazakhstan’s sovereignty.

Negotiations and Red Lines

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s recent comments about Kazakhstan’s role in potential Russia-Ukraine negotiations illustrate both caution and fear. Astana has carefully avoided presenting itself as a mediator, preferring instead to offer neutral venues. This hesitation is not just diplomatic modesty — it is rooted in existential concern.

Russian nationalists have repeatedly floated the idea of annexing Kazakhstan’s northern regions. For Astana, even symbolic overexposure risks feeding Moscow’s fantasies. Yet the recent demographic dynamics complicate Russia’s calculus. Recent research highlights the evolving identity of ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan’s north, where Moscow’s appeals increasingly fall flat.

The war in Ukraine has been sobering. What once seemed to Russian nationalists a quick blitzkrieg turned into a quagmire of attrition, destruction, and death. Entire cities have been erased; landmines render vast swathes of territory uninhabitable. For Kazakhstan’s Russian diaspora, the lesson is clear: war is not a parade. It is the nightmare their grandparents warned them about. Few now imagine annexation as a desirable or even feasible path.

A Way Forward

Kazakhstan’s future — and by extension, Central Asia’s stability — hinges on whether the West can muster the discipline to act strategically. The introduction of blanket secondary sanctions risks collapsing fragile economies and forcing them further into Moscow’s orbit. Pinpoint sanctions, combined with meaningful incentives, could do the opposite: empower local governments to resist Russian coercion without destabilizing their populations.

The case for Western responsibility is straightforward. By withdrawing, the U.S. and its allies ceded ground to Russia and China. Supporting Kazakhstan’s diversification, backing Turkic integration, and investing in local economies are not acts of charity. They are investments in global stability.

Former U.S. envoy Daniel Rosenblum put it bluntly: “The biggest challenge today is ourselves. We have to decide as a country, do we want to be engaged in the world or not? If we cut ourselves off from the world, we will ultimately be less secure and less prosperous”. Central Asia doesn’t need sermons, it needs strategy. If the West won’t provide it, Russia and China surely will — and they won’t ask twice.

PSCRP team

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 156 (September 29, 2025)

The core element in the foreign policy of post-Soviet countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus is so-called multivectoralism: maintaining relations with multiple global actors without binding themselves exclusively to any single one. These states seek to balance ties with the China–Russia axis and the collective West (including the USA and the EU—although it should be noted that the internal fragility of this grouping has never been as evident as it is now). These actors, who claim global influence in the world politics, can be regarded as the first tier of influence in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. A second, regional tier consists of other regional neighbors, with Turkey (and, to a lesser extent, Iran) being the most prominent actors in this “regional league.”

Amid today’s global uncertainty and high risks, the states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia are striving to diversify their foreign policies as much as possible, with the goal of strengthening their autonomy and agency. In Central Eurasia, where these countries are located, there is currently a clear weakening of the Western vector of influence. There are several reasons for that:

• The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the resulting loss of interest in adjacent post-Soviet regions.

• The war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East, both of which have diminished the earlier geopolitical relevance of the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

• The weakening of the West due to internal political conflicts and the confrontation between the Trump administration and the European political mainstream.

Nevertheless, preserving good relations with the West - and, in many cases, artificially “boosting” this vector of foreign policy despite limited reciprocal interest from the Western side — has become, within the framework of multivectoralism, a strategy of survival for the post-Soviet South. Otherwise, these states risk falling into complete dependence on the China–Russia bloc, which aspires to global influence, as well as on regional powers such as Turkey and Iran.

The above features of foreign policy were clearly visible in the policies of the several key states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia in late summer and early autumn 2025. Two distinct diplomatic styles can be identified: a “soft” Central Asian one (most evident in the recent diplomatic moves of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan), and a “hard” Caucasian one (best exemplified by the policies of Azerbaijan and Armenia). In both cases, however, there is a clear attempt to rebalance foreign policy so as to reduce dependence on immediate Central Eurasian neighbors by strengthening ties with the West - above all with the United States, as the leader of the Western world.

At the 80th session of the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2025, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev delivered a speech in which he called for reform of the UN (a logical position, given his earlier service as UN Deputy Secretary-General) and for strengthening the global role of the “middle powers.”

Tokayev stressed that middle powers such as Kazakhstan can contribute to global balance by acting as intermediaries between major powers. He also advocated for diplomatic solutions to armed conflicts, including the war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.

Amid the UN General Assembly, on 22 September 2025, Wabtec Corporation (USA) announced the signing of a $4.2 billion contract with Kazakhstan’s national railway company, Kazakhstan Temir Zholy, for the supply of 300 locomotives and their long-term maintenance. This agreement is considered the largest locomotive supply contract in Wabtec’s history. The contract goes beyond delivering locomotive kits, including servicing, technical support, and likely local assembly. The deal creates about 11,000 jobs in the United States across supply chains, manufacturing, and maintenance. Previously, Kazakhstan had procured locomotives from Russian manufacturers (Transmashholding).

Several analysts have also drawn attention to the strategic dimensions of the deal. Kazakhstan’s leadership is not only creating jobs in the United States -something the Trump administration welcomes — but also strengthening the Trans-Caspian route to Europe, bypassing Russia and Iran. It should be noted that the West has long supported this route for strategic reasons, while China has also traditionally favored it as part of its broader policy of diversifying continental transport corridors and assisting the development of Central Asian and South Caucasus states. Thus, although the move is unwelcome in Moscow and Tehran, it is well received in Brussels and Washington, and cannot be described as directed against Beijing. Overall, it can be seen as a subtle diplomatic maneuver within the framework of Kazakhstan’s multivector foreign policy. In June 2025, Kazakhstan awarded Russia a major contract for the construction of a nuclear power plant; the new U.S. locomotive contract serves to balance that move.

Russian experts paid even closer attention to the meeting that took place on 23 September 2025 on the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly in New York between President Tokayev and President Zelensky of Ukraine. Observers noted that the two leaders conversed in English, rather than Russian. For Tokayev – a career diplomat and polyglot - this was natural and carried little symbolic meaning. For Zelensky, however, the choice was more significant, as he consistently conducts his diplomatic communication either in English or in Ukrainian. During the meeting, Zelensky thanked Kazakhstan for supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Tokayev, in turn, emphasized that a final resolution of the conflict must be achieved through diplomacy. The two leaders also discussed economic and humanitarian cooperation. Afterward, Tokayev stated that Kazakhstan was ready to provide a venue for a meeting between the presidents of Russia and Ukraine, should both sides express interest.

Kazakhstan had previously played a similar role in facilitating rapprochement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as between Russia and Turkey during a flare-up of tensions over Syria. At the same time, in the context of his visit to New York, Uzbekistan’s President Mirziyoyev achieved a significant breakthrough in relations with the Trump administration. Like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan under its second president seeks to strengthen contacts with the West while avoiding rhetoric directly aimed against Russia or China. Unlike his predecessor Islam Karimov, Mirziyoyev generally avoids political framing in such cases, emphasizing instead the economic pragmatism of his actions.

On 23 September 2025 in New York, on the sidelines of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly, President Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan met with Donald Trump. During the meeting, the two discussed issues of strategic partnership between Uzbekistan and the United States, expansion of economic cooperation, as well as projects in key sectors (aviation, infrastructure, technology). After the meeting, Trump publicly praised Mirziyoyev, calling him a “man of his word” in reference to the fulfillment of agreements.

Before meeting Trump, Mirziyoyev had held talks with representatives of more than 50 American companies and banks, discussing large-scale business deals. During his UN visit, Uzbekistan and Boeing signed a contract for the purchase of up to 22 Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, valued at more than $8 billion. The initial agreement provides for the delivery of 14 Boeing 787-9 aircraft, with an option for an additional 8 units. The deal is described as the largest of its kind in Central Asia. Deliveries are expected to begin in 2031, with the contract projected to support about 35,000 jobs in the United States.

The foreign policy content of Mirziyoyev’s speech at the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2025 largely mirrored that of Tokayev’s address. He stressed the need to reform international institutions, especially by strengthening the role of developing countries and reshaping the composition of the UN Security Council to better reflect contemporary challenges. He also noted the growing number of conflicts in today’s world, voiced support for diplomatic efforts to resolve the crises in Ukraine and the Middle East and called for the development of regional transport corridors.

The similarity of the policies of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, as demonstrated by the September visits of their presidents, became quite clear. In both cases, the countries face growing geopolitical conflicts and global uncertainty, and they seek to strengthen their position through multivector diplomacy—particularly by deepening ties with the U.S. administration. In both cases, diplomacy is pursued through expanding economic cooperation with the United States and promoting transport corridors that enhance economic diversification and reduce dependence on Central Eurasian neighbors.

To strengthen the comparative dimension of the analysis, the diplomatic moves of the leaders of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan should be contrasted with the summer actions of the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia.

On 8 August 2025, a ceremony was held at the White House in Washington, where Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a joint declaration. Trump acted as mediator, and the project was named the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.”

Under the agreements, Armenia granted the American side a 99-year concession for development of the territory. The corridor will function under Armenian law (meaning Armenian jurisdiction remains in place), but the United States will receive exclusive rights to develop infrastructure — roads, railways, energy pipelines, communication lines, and more. The corridor is intended to provide transport connectivity between mainland Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave through southern Armenia (Syunik/Zangezur). This transit corridor is a key element of the peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, aimed at normalizing communications and opening transport routes. Russia and Iran expressed concern over the agreement, viewing it as an expansion of U.S. influence in the South Caucasus and a potential weakening of Moscow’s and Tehran’s role in the region.

The agreements are important not only as a U.S.-backed solution to the previously tense diplomatic situation around Zangezur, which threatened to trigger a new war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, but also from a geopolitical perspective. They represent a major strategic step in developing the same Middle Corridor via the Caspian Sea that bypasses Russia and Iran — a route which, as shown above, Central Asian countries have been developing in a more diplomatically cautious manner. It is also significant that Trump thereby signaled Washington’s claim to hegemony in the South Caucasus. Other actors who had previously played a key role in the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan (for instance, France and Russia) were thus sidelined.

It should be noted that both Azerbaijan and Armenia have entered into open confrontation with Russia. In Azerbaijan’s case, this concerns the conflict over the Azerbaijani civilian airliner damaged over Chechnya on 25 December 2024, resulting in the deaths of most of its passengers, as well as the crisis surrounding the Azerbaijani diaspora in Russia. Whereas earlier Azerbaijan, within the framework of its multivector foreign policy, sought to maintain a strategic partnership with Russia, this is now far less of a priority for Baku. Demonstrative elements may also be linked to recent developments in the Middle East: the fall of Assad’s regime in Syria and the rise of Turkey-friendly forces, as well as major Israeli strikes — supported by the United States — against the Iranian “axis of resistance.” These events appear to have led President Ilham Aliyev to conclude that Russia’s and Iran’s influence in the Middle East is weakening. At the same time, in the spirit of multivector diplomacy, Aliyev sought to “balance” his deepening contacts with the United States by making a working visit to China on 30 August 2025, during which he exchanged a handshake and brief conversation with then-present Russian President Putin. Thus, Aliyev is leaving open the option of engaging with the China–Russia axis if necessary.

In Armenia’s case, the issue lies in longstanding tensions between Russia’s leadership and Pashinyan’s government. The unresolved conflict with Azerbaijan had represented the sole obstacle preventing Armenia’s full reorientation toward the West. With Trump’s assistance, that obstacle is now beginning to disappear. Moreover, within Armenia’s multivector foreign policy, Yerevan may now have less need to use Tehran — already weakened by Israeli and U.S. actions — alongside the United States and France as a balancing partner in the security sphere. As a “safety net,” however, Armenia remains a member of the Russia-centered CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Union, and it has not severed ties with Tehran completely.

Overall, an analysis of the policies of Armenia and Azerbaijan in late summer and early autumn 2025 reveals clear similarities with the strategies of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan discussed above. In all the cases, the focus is on multivector foreign policy, on “boosting” the Western vector through engagement with the Trump administration, on economic diplomacy, and on the crucial role of the Trans-Caspian route. The only difference lies in diplomatic style: Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, while strengthening the American vector, seek to avoid conflict with other foreign policy vectors (above all Moscow), whereas Azerbaijan and Armenia act much more assertively — though still maintaining elements of a multivector “insurance policy” by preserving a certain level of relations with China, Russia, and, in Armenia’s case, Iran.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 141 (July 10, 2025)

None of the Muslim states bordering Iran to the northeast (they are usually called ‘stans’, from the Persian word “country”)—including Central Asian post-Soviet states (Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan), Pakistan and Afghanistan —are willing to become entangled in Tehran’s escalating confrontation with Israel or the West. This is especially clear in the case of the former Soviet Central Asian secular republics. The Central Asian states adhere to multi-vector foreign policies that balance between Russia, China, the West, and the Islamic world, carefully avoiding entanglements in ideological or military blocs. Even Iran’s most conservative immediate neighbor, Turkmenistan, has officially declared itself neutral.

This approach was also obvious in the recent Israeli-Iranian clash. According to observers, neither Israel nor Iran are key partners for the Central Asian countries in the political, military, economic, or security spheres, as well as – at least for the time being—in the foreign trade sphere. At the same time, they fear that a full-scale Iranian-Israeli conflict could negatively affect transport and communication projects aimed at providing Central Asian countries with access to Iran’s seaports in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea coast, which provide further access to the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and East Africa.

In addition, a tough confrontation between Israel and Iran could trigger the radicalization of Islamist circles that actively promote pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli narratives. Finally, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan fear that an escalation of the conflict between the US, Israel and Iran raises concerns not only because of the nuclear threat but also because of the possible collapse of governance in Iran, which would provoke a mass exodus of refugees to the east – through Afghanistan to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The regimes that employ militant Islamist ideologies—such as the Taliban in Afghanistan or the leadership in Pakistan —are unwilling to offer Iran more than occasional expressions of rhetorical solidarity or anti-Israeli sentiment. While these regimes may echo elements of Iran’s discourse for domestic or symbolic reasons, they have shown no inclination to become militarily involved in Tehran’s confrontation with Israel, and certainly not with the United States. Their priority remains regime survival and internal stability, not ideological adventurism on behalf of regional allies. The sectarian divide between Sunni and Shīʿa Muslims is important from this point of view, but pragmatic considerations are key determinants of foreign policy. The Taliban, despite their strict Islamist Sunni worldview, are primarily focused on consolidating power within Afghanistan and avoiding renewed international isolation in the condition of extreme economic crisis.

Strategically, the most important position is that of Pakistan, which possesses a powerful military and nuclear weapons. However, Pakistan, for its part, maintains a delicate balancing act between its Sunni Islamic ideological identity and its geostrategic interests, including its relations with Gulf countries, China, and the United States. For both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the costs of direct military confrontation with Israel and, especially, with the U.S., far outweigh any potential gains from aligning with Iran. Thus, Iran remains largely isolated in its most radical positions, able to extract only rhetorical sympathy—but no substantive backing—from even its most ostensibly ideologically aligned neighbors.

Ultimately, the most Iran can realistically expect from its post-Soviet and eastern Islamic neighbors is rhetorical sympathy or diplomatic hedging. Strategic alignment—especially on issues as sensitive as nuclear deterrence or military escalation—is a line none of them are prepared to cross. Since Pakistan’s position is strategically the most crucial, and in light of the spread of false claims that Islamabad pledged support to Iran with its nuclear arsenal, let us examine the current state of Iran–Pakistan relations. Later, we will also consider some tensions between Iran and the Taliban—in the context of general strategic relations between Tehran and Islamabad.

On June 16, 2025, a video appeared on social media and in some newspapers showing Iranian IRGC General and National Security Council member Mohsen Rezaei allegedly appealing to Pakistan for support. In this supposedly authentic footage, Rezaei, speaking on Iranian state television amid an intense missile exchange with Israel, stated: “Pakistan has assured us that if Israel uses nuclear missiles, Islamabad will also attack it with nuclear weapons.”

This statement, which appeared to invoke Pakistan’s nuclear capacity, was swiftly and categorically rejected by Islamabad. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar dismissed the claim outright as “fake, fabricated” based on analysis from fact-checkers like iVerify Pakistan that confirmed no credible Iranian source supported the claim. He also emphasized that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is reserved solely for defensive purposes against direct threats to its sovereignty—implicitly referring to its longstanding conflict with India. “This is irresponsible and false news,” said Dar. He added, “From our side, there has been no such statement. It was fabricated.” Dar said, “We have checked that it was an AI-generated clip and it was fake. He warned that Pakistan should be very careful, saying, “This is not a children’s matter. This is a serious war, like ours with India.”

“A second whisper campaign on X (formerly Twitter), citing an unverified report from Israel’s Channel 10, alleged Pakistan had warned Washington it would launch nuclear strikes on Israel to defend Iran”. This statement was also refuted in Pakistan as disinformation: Pakistani government has never told anything like that to Washington.

This reaction is particularly understandable given Pakistan’s own precarious security environment, especially its enduring rivalry with India. In early May 2025, following a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22 (claimed by Indian authorities to be perpetrated by Pakistan-linked militants), India launched a series of missile and airstrikes on Pakistani territory—code-named “Operation Sindoor”—on May 7 2025. Pakistan responded by launching a combination of drone and artillery strikes. These events marked the most significant military escalation between the two nuclear-armed rivals in decades, raising intense concerns of a potential slide toward nuclear confrontation. International diplomatic alarm was immediate. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance intervened, mediating a ceasefire by May 10, 2025, after approximately four days of high-intensity conflict. The specter of nuclear escalation was not hypothetical; both nations had prepared their nuclear command systems for potential activation.

In this situation Islamabad must guard against rhetoric that could be interpreted as involvement in third-party disputes, thereby preserving its deterrence credibility and avoiding unnecessary diplomatic fallout. Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine remains strictly defensive; any military entanglement—especially in foreign-driven escalatory scenarios—could inadvertently cross unwelcome nuclear thresholds. After nearly going to war with India, any participation—rhetorical or otherwise—in another state’s nuclear discourse would be highly destabilizing and strategically counterproductive.  Adding further complexity is the history of strained bilateral relations between Pakistan and Iran, particularly in the border region of Balochistan. Pakistan–Iran relations in Balochistan are governed by a fraught mix of counterinsurgency cooperation and repeated provocations. Frequent militant activity and military incursions reinforce mutual suspicion.

Since the 1980s, Iran’s Sistan–Balochistan and Pakistan’s Balochistan provinces have been epicenters of militant separatist insurgencies (Jaish al-Adl, Baloch Liberation Army). Both nations accuse each other of either harboring or failing to adequately suppress these groups. In 2014, Iranian border guards briefly occupied Nok Kundi (inside Pakistan) and launched rocket attacks that injured civilians, triggering Pakistani protests and diplomatic tension.  Iranian missile and drone strikes on January 16, 2024, targeted Jaish al-Adl positions in Panjgur, Pakistan, killing civilians, according to Pakistani reports. Between 2023 and early 2024, multiple Pakistani military patrols in Kech and Panjgur districts came under “terrorist” fire traced back to militants allegedly operating from across the Iranian border. Pakistan’s retaliatory Operation Marg Bar Sarmachar (January 18, 2024) saw air, drone, and artillery strikes on militants in Iran’s Sistan–Baluchestan—marking the first Pakistani strike on Iranian soil since the Iran–Iraq War. Both governments are expanding border infrastructure, including fencing projects and planned fortifications by Iran, aimed at curbing trafficking and militant infiltration.

Therefore, amid the Iran–Israel crisis, Pakistan sealed pedestrian crossings at Taftan, Gabd-Rimdan, Chedgi, Jirrak, and Rideeg Mand, citing security and refugee concerns in Balochistan Pakistan’s leadership is acutely aware that militant flare-ups in Balochistan not only threaten internal stability but also risk reigniting tensions with Iran—making regional escalation a constant concern. Despite episodic cooperation, Islamabad and Tehran remain wary, blaming each other for enabling hostile groups—a dynamic that amplifies the strategic significance of any cross-border incident. From this point of view, Pakistan’s refusal to join ideological alignments, such as the Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric in nuclear sphere, is rooted in pragmatic self-interest—a precaution to avoid conflagration along its volatile western flank. Finally, Pakistan already faces considerable challenges from the protracted Afghan refugee crisis, and its capacity to absorb additional pressure along its western frontier is limited.

Also, there is an issue of mutual distrust between Pakistan and Iran, which is deeply rooted in sectarian geopolitics. Pakistan’s historic connections with Sunni, anti-Shīʿa Taliban in Afghanistan is seen by Iran as a direct threat to Hazārā Shīʿa communities and Shīʿa influence in the region. During Taliban rule in the late 1990s and the resurgence since 2021, Hazārā communities have faced severe persecution—forced conversions, massacres, and systemic marginalization . Iran has long championed the Hazārā minority in Afghanistan, supporting groups like Hezb-e Wahdat during the 1990s Afghan civil war to counterbalance Taliban influence and Pashtun dominance.

Iran’s protection of Hazārā and support for rival factions in Afghanistan deeply unsettles Pakistan, which perceives these moves as strategic counterweights to its own regional posture. The result is a nuanced strategic rivalry—marked not by overt hostility—but by proxy competition, border skirmishes, and sectarian undercurrents that profoundly shape bilateral interactions. Tehran continues its backing economically and cultural-religiously, with Hazārā populations seeing Iran as a protective patron amid Taliban ascendancy. This is a situation very similar to Iranian support for Shīʿa groups in the Arab world (in the countries like Lebanon, Syria or Iraq), however, this part of Iranian policy is not so well known in the wider world. Tehran’s proximity to Taliban-held zones and intermittent border skirmishes indicate strategic distrust: Iran supports post-Taliban security actors such as Hazārā militias to mitigate Taliban dominance. There is also the issue of growing sectarian tensions in Pakistan itself. Semi-autonomous North-Western regions of Pakistan like Kurram have seen deadly Sunni–Shīʿa violence—often exacerbated by extremist groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which Pakistan-based Sunni militants (sometimes having good connections with Pakistani army) have funded and supported. Finally, Pakistan and Iran both accuse each other of harboring militant proxies—Pakistan blames Tehran for supporting Hazārā-linked groups, while Iran rhetorically accuses Pakistani military intelligence ISI (together with Israeli Mossad) of backing Taliban/al-Qaeda factions with anti-Shīʿa agendas.

In conclusion, Pakistan’s measured response to the nuclear aspects of war between Iran and Israel illustrates a calculated approach to regional security. Islamabad is distancing itself from escalatory rhetoric and maintaining a focus on its own strategic imperatives. This is logical, especially considering Pakistan’s own issues with Iran in Baluchistan and Afghanistan and Pakistan’s strategic rivalry with India. Islamabad is carefully avoiding symbolic commitments that could compromise national interests or entangle this state in new conflicts beyond its borders. The same principle can be applied also to the Taliban, which has its own disagreements with Tehran concerning sectarian agenda and Hazārā issue.

These considerations, at least at first glance, also dominate Islamabad’s policy towards the Central Asia. Since late 1990s-early 2000s, Islamabad, which was eager to show a higher profile than India in this region, tried to utilize the independence of the Central Asian republics from the USSR in order to bring to life Pakistan’s dream of strategic depth, believe Melissa Iqbal and Teresita Schaffer. According to them, for Pakistan developing political ties with the Central Asians and to serve as a bridge between them and the rest of the world has much more meaning than simply military space.  The same is true quarter centuries later, while economic cooperation especially in the field of energy with the Central Asia with their 46% of the world’s gas reserves, play even more important role than before. Hence, Islamabad also has to take seriously the Central Asian regimes’ concerns of the Israel-Iran conflict.

PSCRP-BESA Reports No 126 (April 21, 2025)

Astrophysicists define a black hole as an object whose gravity is so intense that nothing — not even light — can escape once it crosses the event horizon. Since the Kremlin launched its full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has begun acting like a geopolitical black hole in its own neighborhood. Facing Western sanctions and battlefield losses, Moscow is accelerating the draw on the two most dynamic economies in Central Asia — Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan — through energy deals, trade manipulation and political theatre. The closer these states drift, the harder (and costlier) it will be for them to break free.

Moscow tightens the energy umbilical cord

Russia has moved aggressively this spring to deepen energy integration with its two most important Central‑Asian neighbors. On 11 April Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak met a high‑level Kazakh delegation in Moscow to “increase transit deliveries of oil and gas” and expand joint projects from coal‑fired power stations to a possible Russian‑built nuclear plant.

Only three days earlier, officials from Moscow and Tashkent signed a package launching practical work on the long‑stalled Trans‑Afghan railway, envisioned as a 573‑kilometre corridor that would tie Uzbek trade routes ever closer to Russia’s rail network. And bilateral trade in gas is booming: Russian exports to Uzbekistan jumped 4.5‑fold in 2024, the countries confirmed this month.

Parallel‑import lifeline poses risks to Central Asian countries

These infrastructure deals are about more than commerce. Western sanctions have choked Russia’s access to sophisticated components, and the Kremlin increasingly relies on Central‑Asian partners to re‑export banned goods. The EU’s 16th sanctions package (February 2024) explicitly black‑listed 53 new firms — 34 of them outside Russia — for “supporting Russia’s military‑industrial complex or engaging in sanctions circumvention.”

Kazakh economists are already warning of the cost: in 2024 Kazakhstan’s trade deficit with Russia widened by 31% as imports of Russian goods surged, cementing what the Association of Kazakhstan Financiers calls “a long‑term trend.”

The Chinese factor—and why the stakes are existential for Moscow

Beijing has become Central Asia’s largest investor, and Chinese firms are negotiating everything from the Power of Siberia‑2 gas link to expanding LNG purchases. China has already overtaken Russia as the top trade partner for every Central‑Asian state except Tajikistan. As one Carnegie paper notes, Beijing’s pledge in 2022 to “resolutely support Kazakhstan’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity” signaled that China, not Russia, now guarantees the region’s security balance.

Foreign‑minister Sergei Lavrov’s unusually effusive visit to Almaty on 10 April (“Kazakhstan is our reliable ally”) underscored how urgently Moscow feels the need to out‑charm China. For Beijing, Central Asia is one more Belt‑and‑Road arena; for the Kremlin, retaining influence is a question of regime survival, providing both sanction‑busting channels and strategic depth against isolation, which followed the Russian offensive in Ukraine.

For the Kremlin, holding Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in its orbit is more than nostalgia. These states provide:

• Logistic corridors immune to Western naval power;

• Hard currency from transit fees;

• A covert route for sanctioned technology; and

• Political optics that Moscow is not internationally isolated.

Without them, Russia’s sanctions‑dodging ecosystem collapses.

A rare window for the West

The other gravitational force in the region is now the European Union. At the first‑ever EU–Central Asia summit in Samarkand (April 4), Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a €12 billion Global Gateway package to upgrade transport links (including the Trans‑Caspian Corridor), digital networks and renewable energy.

Less than three weeks earlier, the European Investment Bank signed a €200 million framework loan with Kazakhstan’s Development Bank to finance road upgrades and green power, the first EU‑backed money earmarked directly for the Trans‑Caspian route.

If Washington and Brussels mobilize capital and technology at scale — fast‑track renewable grids, finance container hubs at Aktau and Navoi, and anchor democratic governance reforms — Astana and Tashkent can pull free of Moscow’s orbit and emerge as prosperous, genuinely independent democracies.

Taken together, these initiatives offer Astana and Tashkent an exit trajectory: diversified markets, rule‑of‑law lending standards, and physical corridors that bypass the Russian chokepoints now weaponized by the Kremlin. The opportunity window may be brief, but it is wide — and the thrust it can deliver is powerful enough to counter Russia’s pull before the region crosses the point of no return.

Inside the event horizon: racism and extraction

Moscow’s treatment of Central‑Asian migrants offers a glimpse of life inside the black hole. In a 63‑page report released in March 2025, Human Rights Watch documents “rising xenophobic harassment and violence” against an estimated 3.3 million Central‑Asian workers, including arbitrary detentions and coerced military recruitment for the Ukraine front. “Every day we face discrimination, cruelty from law‑enforcement,” one Tajik migrant told HRW.

Russia’s economic model relies on these migrants while denying them rights — exporting poverty back to their home countries and entrenching patronage networks. The same pattern would apply to Kazakhstan’s and Uzbekistan’s domestic elites if Moscow tightens its grip: security guarantees for ruling circles in exchange for loyalty, cheap commodities, and political alignment with the Kremlin’s war effort.

Can the West counter the singularity?

Physics tells us that to escape a black hole you must apply a force greater than its gravitational pull before crossing the event horizon. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan today stand at a Lagrange point between two massive attractors. The Kremlin’s black‑hole strategy pulls with familiar Soviet‑era gravity; China offers capital with no political agenda at the moment, but will most definitely use the Central Asian countries as a springboard for possible confrontation with the West in the future. For the West, in geopolitical terms, it necessitates the following steps — if they want to pull the key Central Asian states into their orbit:

1. Fast‑track Global Gateway disbursements — roads, dry ports, and green grids that put euros and dollars into local pay‑cheques this year, not in 2030.

2. Link money to transparency: procurement portals, independent courts and civil‑society participation that inoculate big projects against the rent‑seeking Russia thrives on.

3. Enforce export‑control intelligence sharing with Kazakh and Uzbek customs, banking supervisors and freight forwarders.

4. Signal political stakes: high‑level visits, parliamentary partnerships and scholarships that anchor the next generation away from Russian narratives.

Black holes grow by feeding on nearby matter; the more they consume, the stronger their pull. Russia’s war has turned it into exactly that sort of celestial predator — desperate for resources, willing to twist gravity to keep its neighbors in thrall. Yet while astrophysical black holes are inescapable, geopolitical ones are not. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan can still fire their thrusters — Western capital, rule-of-law reforms, and diversified trade routes — and set a trajectory toward genuine sovereignty and prosperity. Whether Brussels, Washington and like‑minded partners provide the necessary thrust will decide if Central Asia spirals inward into eternal darkness, or breaks free into open space.