Kyrgyzstan

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Kyrgyzstan lies farther from the sea than any other individual country on Earth. Even its rivers cannot reach an ocean, because every one of them empties into a closed drainage system. Yet this landlocked nation in the mountains of Central Asia, home to more than 7.4 million people, has sat at the crossroads of Silk Road merchants, Mongol horsemen, Chinese dynasties and Russian tsars. Its capital is Bishkek, and its neighbours are Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China. The listener may wonder who the Kyrgyz are and why their flag carries a golden sun with forty rays. How did a people of mounted herders keep their identity through conquest after conquest? What did it cost them to be pulled into a new kind of state, and what did they build when that state fell away? And how does a small mountain republic, with few roads and almost no coastline of influence, hold its own between giants?

  496824

• 2. Mountains Without a Coast

  ›

  More than four-fifths of Kyrgyzstan is mountain, part of the Tian Shan range, which is why people sometimes call it the Switzerland of Central Asia. Valleys and basins make up the remainder. The tallest summit is Jengish Chokusu, which climbs to 7439 metres in the Kakshaal-Too range along the Chinese border. Geologists regard it as the northernmost peak above 7000 metres anywhere in the world. The lowest ground, at Kara-Daryya, sits at just 132 metres.

  In the northeastern Tian Shan lies Issyk-Kul, called Ysyk-Köl in Kyrgyz. It is the country's largest lake and the second largest mountain lake on Earth after Titicaca. Traders travelling between the Far East and Europe once stopped on its shores. Today hotels, resorts and boarding houses line the northern side, with the busiest beaches around Cholpon-Ata and nearby settlements such as Kara-Oi, Bosteri and Korumdy. More than a million visitors a year came in 2006 and 2007, though instability has reduced that number since.

  Heavy winter snow in these peaks melts into spring floods that often do serious damage downstream. The same runoff also drives hydroelectric plants. The principal river, the Kara Darya, flows west through the Fergana Valley into Uzbekistan, where it meets the Naryn, another major Kyrgyz river. Together they form the Syr Darya, which once ran into the Aral Sea. It no longer arrives, because water is drawn off upstream to irrigate cotton fields in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and southern Kazakhstan.

  Farmland is scarce. Less than 8 percent of the country is cultivated, mostly in the northern lowlands and along the edges of the Fergana Valley. That valley, in the southwest, is subtropical, and summer heat there reaches 40 degrees Celsius. In the coldest highland districts, temperatures stay below freezing for roughly 40 days, and snow falls steadily even over some desert areas. The country holds seven terrestrial ecosystems, from montane conifer forests to Pamir alpine desert. In 2019 it scored 8.86 out of 10 on a forest integrity index, ranking 13th of 172 countries.

  Tucked into the Fergana Valley is Barak, a village of 627 people entirely surrounded by Uzbek territory but administered as part of Kara-Suu District in the Osh Region. Kyrgyzstan also contains four Uzbek enclaves. Sokh covers 325 square kilometres and was 99 percent Tajik in the 1993 count. Shakhimardan covers 90 square kilometres and was 91 percent Uzbek. Chong-Kara, about 3 kilometres long and 1 wide, and Jangy-ayyl, a dot barely 2 or 3 kilometres across, are far smaller. Two more enclaves belong to Tajikistan. Vorukh spreads across 17 villages on the Karavshin river about 45 kilometres south of Isfara, and Lolazor lies near the Kairagach railway station. Nobody agrees on how many people live in Sokh; the 1993 figure was 42,800, but estimates climb as high as 70,000.

  8081828349

• 3. Forty Tribes and a Hero

  ›

  One proposed meaning of the word Kyrgyz is forty tribes. The number may point to the forty clans that Manas, a legendary hero, is said to have united. The Persian suffix -stan simply means place of, so the country's name can be read as the land of the forty.

  That number is stitched into the national flag. A yellow sun with forty rays sits on a red field, and red stands for peace and openness. At the sun's centre is the tunduk, the wooden crown of a yurt, the portable dwelling of steppe nomads. The tunduk shows up across Kyrgyz architecture. Before 1992 the republic flew a Soviet-era banner with two broad blue stripes and a thin white stripe between them.

  The Epic of Manas keeps the hero alive. This storytelling tradition is a trilogy about a warrior who gathered scattered tribes into one nation in the 9th century, and its plot follows the Kyrgyz meeting other Turkic peoples and the Chinese. UNESCO has placed it on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list, and it carries the memory of the nomadic Kyrgyz.

  The Kyrgyz were historically semi-nomadic herders who lived in round felt tents called yurts and tended sheep, horses and yaks. The pattern survives in the seasonal move of herding families to the high summer pastures known as jailoo. In the Fergana Valley, settled Uzbeks and Tajiks traditionally farmed irrigated lowland instead. Craft traditions grew from the herding life. The komuz is a three-stringed lute, tush kyiz are large embroidered wall hangings, and shyrdak and ala-kiyiz are felted carpets for yurts. The carpets were inscribed in 2012 on UNESCO's list of intangible heritage in need of urgent safeguarding.

  Bride kidnapping, called ala kachuu, is illegal but still practised. Whether it is truly traditional is debated. Arranged marriages were the old custom, and one way out of an arranged match was to stage a consensual kidnapping.

  Horses shape the national games. Ulak Tartysh pits two teams of riders against each other for the headless carcass of a goat, which they try to carry into a tub or a marked circle. At Chabysh is a horse race that can exceed 50 kilometres. In Jumby Atmai, riders gallop and shoot at a thread holding a bar of precious metal to a pole. Kyz Kuumai sends a man after a galloping girl who wants to give him a kiss, and if he fails she may chase him with her horsewhip. In Oodarysh two riders wrestle until one falls, and in Tyin Emmei they snatch a coin from the ground at full gallop. Ulak Tartish also marks Nowruz, the spring festival held on the vernal equinox.

  Newer sports have arrived as well. At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Aidyn Smagulov won bronze in men's 60 kilogram judo, the country's first Olympic medal.

  2430414968

• 4. Empires and Exile

  ›

  In 840 AD the Kyrgyz state reached its greatest extent after defeating the Uyghur Khaganate. Its first form was the Yenisei Kyrgyz Khaganate. From the tenth century the Kyrgyz spread as far as the Tian Shan and held that territory for about 200 years.

  The Mongol expansion changed everything. By the 12th century Kyrgyz power had shrunk back to the Altay Range and the Sayan Mountains, and in the thirteenth century the people moved south. In 1207 they became part of the Mongol Empire, and by the source's account they did so peacefully.

  Later centuries brought one overlord after another. The Kyrgyz tribes were overrun by Mongols in the 17th century, by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty in the mid-18th century and by the Uzbek Khanate of Kokand in the early 19th. In 1842 the tribes broke away from Kokand and united as the Kara-Kyrgyz Khanate under Ormon Khan. When he died in 1854, the khanate fell apart.

  Russia's turn came next. Qing China ceded the eastern part of the land, mainly the Issyk-Kul Region, to the Russian Empire through the Treaty of Tarbagatai. Russians called the territory Kirghizia, and it was formally incorporated in 1876. Revolts followed, and many Kyrgyz relocated to the Pamir Mountains and Afghanistan. After the suppression of the 1916 rebellion against Russian rule, many more went to China.

  Movement across the mountains was a habit rather than a rare crisis. Many ethnic groups in the region are split between neighbouring states. In an era of porous borders, families crossed the ranges depending on where life seemed better, whether that meant better rains for pasture or kinder rulers.

  In 2016 the country marked the centennial of the 1916 uprising, known as Urkun, by unveiling a monument at the Ata-Beyit memorial complex.

  3231334941

• 5. From Frunze to Bishkek

  ›

  In 1919 Soviet power was established in the region, and the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast was created inside the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Russians used the phrase Kara-Kirghiz until the mid-1920s to tell the Kyrgyz apart from the Kazakhs, who were also called Kirghiz. On the 5th of December 1936 the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic became a full union republic.

  During the New Economic Policy, which lasted roughly until 1928, the Bolsheviks set up a standard tax system with higher rates for nomads, meant to discourage wandering lives. They also divided Central Asia into five nation-states. Literacy rose sharply, and cultural, educational and social life developed. Under Stalin, Moscow stressed Kyrgyz national identity partly to fight tribalism, since kinship through the male line clashed with the idea of a modern nation state. For people who had never known national institutions, that process was difficult and ambivalent.

  The five-year plans of the late 1920s brought collectivization and giant collective farms called kolkhoz. Russian settlers took the best pasture. Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Turkmen nomads were forced to settle on land with poor farming potential. Between 1928 and 1932 nomads and peasants resisted, mostly passively, and in the Kirgiziya area there was guerrilla opposition. The region suffered relatively more deaths from collectivization than any other.

  Glasnost barely touched Kyrgyzstan in the late 1980s. The press gained a somewhat more liberal tone, and the Union of Writers founded a new publication, Literaturny Kirghizstan. Unofficial political groups were forbidden, but several that arose in 1989 over a severe housing shortage were allowed to operate. The last Soviet census, that same year, showed a capital unlike the country around it. In Frunze, now Bishkek, ethnic Kyrgyz were only 22 percent of residents, while more than 60 percent were Russians, Ukrainians and other Slavs. Nearly 10 percent were Jewish, which was very unusual in the Soviet Union.

  In June 1990, tensions between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks flared in the Osh Region, where Uzbeks are a minority. Plans to take over Uzbek collective farms for housing triggered the Osh Riots, and 186 people died. A state of emergency and curfew followed. In October, Askar Akayev, the youngest of five sons in a collective farm family from the north, was elected president. On the 15th of December 1990 the Supreme Soviet renamed the republic the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, and in February 1991 Frunze took back its pre-revolutionary name, Bishkek.

  Economics seemed to argue against leaving. In a March 1991 referendum on keeping the Soviet Union as a renewed federation, 88.7 percent of voters said yes. Then, on the 19th of August 1991, the State Emergency Committee took power in Moscow, and an attempt was made to depose Akayev at home. When the coup collapsed, Akayev and Vice President German Kuznetsov quit the Communist Party, and its entire bureau and secretariat resigned. The Supreme Soviet declared independence on the 31st of August 1991.

  In October 1991 Akayev ran unopposed and won 95 percent of the vote. On the 21st of December 1991 Kyrgyzstan joined the Alma-Ata Protocols with the other Central Asian republics and entered the Commonwealth of Independent States. Full independence came on the 25th of December, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist the next day. The country joined the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1992. A new constitution on the 5th of May 1993 made Kyrgyz Republic the official name.

  Independence Day is still marked each the 31st of August. A 2013 Gallup poll found that 62 percent of Kyrgyz people thought the Soviet collapse had harmed their country, while only 16 percent thought it had helped.

  3536394050

• 6. Revolutions and Reversals

  ›

  In March 2002, in the southern district of Aksy, police shot dead five people protesting the arrest of an opposition politician. Nationwide protests followed. Akayev began a constitutional reform process, but the February 2003 referendum was marred by irregularities, and its amendments strengthened the president at the expense of parliament and the Constitutional Court.

  Parliamentary elections on the 27th of February and the 13th of March 2005 were widely seen as corrupt. Protests brought down the government in a bloodless coup on the 24th of March, and Akayev fled with his family. The events became known as the Tulip Revolution. Kurmanbek Bakiyev, an acting president and former prime minister, won the July presidential election with 88.9 percent of the vote. His support faded as corruption persisted and several members of parliament were murdered. Large protests hit Bishkek in April and November 2006.

  The Manas Air Base tested Bakiyev's balancing act. Roughly 1,000 US military personnel had been there since 2001, using it as a staging post for operations in Afghanistan. On the 3rd of February 2009 Bakiyev announced it would close, and parliament approved the move on the 19th of February by 78 votes to 1. After quiet negotiation among Kyrgyz, Russian and American diplomats, the decision was reversed in June. Annual rent rose from 17.4 million dollars to 60 million. The American military finally left in 2014.

  In April 2010 protests over corruption and rising energy prices ousted Bakiyev. He fled to Kazakhstan with relatives, including his son Maksim and his brother Janish, then sought asylum in Belarus. Roza Otunbayeva led the interim government. In June, ethnic violence between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in Osh and Jalal-Abad killed more than 400 people. Dozens of Uzbek religious and community leaders were then arrested, including the journalist and activist Azimzhan Askarov, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2010. A court reinstated that sentence on the 24th of January 2017.

  A June 2010 referendum nevertheless passed with about 90 percent approval on 70 percent turnout. The new constitution created a single six-year presidential term and barred any party from holding more than 65 of 120 seats. The October 2010 parliamentary elections were peaceful. Almazbek Atambayev was sworn in as president on the 1st of December 2011 and served until 2017, when his ally Sooronbay Jeenbekov succeeded him. In 2015 Kyrgyzstan joined the Eurasian Economic Union after abolishing customs controls on its border with Kazakhstan.

  The next break came in October 2020. Disputed parliamentary results sparked protests, the vote was annulled and Jeenbekov resigned. Sadyr Japarov, a nationalist politician who had been in prison, was released and made interim president and prime minister. In January 2021 he won the presidency in a landslide. A referendum then shifted the system from parliamentary toward presidential rule, with the president gaining the power to appoint judges. Critics nicknamed the document the Khanstitution, fearing authoritarian drift.

  Pressure on critics grew. In February 2024 courts ordered the independent investigative outlet Kloop to shut down, a move criticised at home and abroad. A foreign representatives law that took effect in April 2024 placed strict oversight on organisations funded from abroad.

  Border disputes with Tajikistan turned violent around the town of Batken in 2021 and 2022, ending in a six-day conflict in September 2022. In March 2025 Japarov and Tajikistan's president, Emomali Rahmon, signed an agreement to mark their shared border and to reopen transport links closed since the 2022 clashes.

  6364656986

• 7. Language and Faith

  ›

  Ethnic Kyrgyz make up 77.8 percent of the population, Uzbeks 14.3 percent and Russians 3.7 percent. Dungans, Tajiks, Uyghurs and Kazakhs each hold a share near or below one percent, and the country counts over 80 ethnic groups. Uzbeks live mainly in the south, Russians mainly in the north. The balance has shifted since independence. The Kyrgyz share rose from around 50 percent in 1979 to over 70 percent in 2013, while Russians, Ukrainians, Germans and Tatars together fell from 35 percent to about 7 percent. Germans, who numbered 101,000 in 1989, emigrated in large numbers to Germany.

  Kyrgyz is a Turkic language of the Kipchak branch, closely related to Kazakh, Karakalpak and Nogay Tatar. It was written in the Arabic alphabet until the twentieth century. Stalin ordered the Latin script in 1928, and Cyrillic replaced it in 1941. Kyrgyz became the state language in 1991, and Russian gained official status in 2000.

  Russian still dominates daily life in some places. A 2020 survey found it was the home language of 55.6 percent of people in Bishkek, against 43.6 percent for Kyrgyz. Nationwide, Kyrgyz led with 70.9 percent, Uzbek followed with 10.7 percent and Russian had 16.3 percent. Russian television is hugely popular, and Russian-language schools, backed by Russian foundations, are often better funded than Kyrgyz-language ones. About 40,000 Kyrgyz a year are reported to russify their names, mostly for career reasons, and in the Naryn Region 800 such changes were recorded among high school students.

  Script can become a diplomatic issue. In April 2023 Russia suspended dairy exports to Kyrgyzstan after Kanybek Osmonaliev, head of the national language commission, proposed moving from Cyrillic to Latin. President Japarov reprimanded him and stated that no replacement was planned.

  Islam is the dominant faith. The CIA World Factbook estimated in 2017 that 90 percent of the population was Muslim and 7 percent Christian, including 3 percent Russian Orthodox. A 2012 Pew survey found that 64 percent of respondents described themselves as just a Muslim. State atheism was encouraged under the Soviets, and today the country is secular, though Islam's political influence is growing. In a July 2007 interview, Bermet Akayeva, daughter of the former president, said the spread of mosques was "not a bad thing in itself. It keeps our society more moral, cleaner."

  Other traditions persist. Prayer flags are tied to sacred trees, an echo of Buddhism that some trace instead to Sufi Islam. A Roman Catholic community numbers about 600, and Jehovah's Witnesses gather in 5,000 to 10,000 people across Kyrgyz and Russian-speaking congregations. In November 2008 parliament unanimously raised the minimum number of adherents needed to recognise a religion from 10 to 200, and President Bakiyev signed the law on the 12th of January 2009. Around 200 Mennonites were counted in 2022, and one community still lives in the settlement of Rot-Front.

  161136841

• 8. Gold, Remittances and Rails

  ›

  In 1990, some 98 percent of Kyrgyz exports went to other parts of the Soviet Union. When that market vanished, factories and state farms collapsed. Economic performance in the early 1990s was worse than in any other former Soviet republic except Armenia, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, which were all touched by war. The government cut public spending, ended most price subsidies and introduced a value-added tax. Those reforms helped it join the World Trade Organization on the 20th of December 1998. Even so, 22.4 percent of people live below the poverty line, and income levels in Central Asia are lower only in Tajikistan.

  About 350,000 Kyrgyz migrants work in Russia, and their remittances now equal about 15 percent of GDP, down from a high of 35 percent. Agriculture accounted for 35.6 percent of GDP and about half of employment in 2002. Livestock is the largest activity, producing wool, meat and dairy products. High prices for imported fuel and agrichemicals mean much farming is still done by hand and by horse.

  The mountains hold coal, gold, uranium, antimony and rare-earth metals, but almost no petroleum or natural gas, so the country imports both. The government has courted foreign investors to extract and process gold, including at the Kumtor Gold Mine. Plentiful water lets the country export large amounts of hydroelectric power. Main trade partners include Germany, Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. After Beijing launched its Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, China expanded its presence with large infrastructure projects. After the 2022 sanctions on Russia, several regional supply routes were redirected through Kyrgyzstan. Real growth averaged 9 percent a year over 2022-2024, and budget surpluses followed in 2023 and 2024.

  Getting goods across the terrain is hard. Roads wind up steep valleys, cross passes above 3000 metres and suffer mudslides and avalanches, while winter travel is close to impossible in remote highlands. Horses remain common in rural areas, since they reach places vehicles cannot and need no imported fuel. A road built with Asian Development Bank support now links Bishkek in the north to Osh in the southwest, and an offshoot climbs a 3,500-metre pass into the Talas Valley.

  Soviet-era rail lines were laid without regard to internal boundaries, so independence cut them with borders. Kyrgyzstan has only about 370 kilometres of broad-gauge track. A line between Balykchy and Bishkek officially opened in June 2023. Planners also announced a 523-kilometre railway linking China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, with 213 kilometres in China, 260 in Kyrgyzstan and 50 in Uzbekistan. It is meant to run from Kashgar through the Torugart Pass to Jalal-Abad and on to the Uzbek city of Andijan, with construction set to begin in July 2025.

  202764968