FROM MARGINS TO MAINSTREAM: NATIONAL-PATRIOTS AND KAZAKHISATION IN THE MAKING OF POST-NAZARBAYEV KAZAKHSTAN

Kurmanov B. Abishev G.
2026 Routledge

Asian Affairs
2026

The 2022 Qandy Qantar (‘Bloody January’) protests in Kazakhstan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the following month have galvanized significant shifts in Kazakhstan’s nation-building policies under President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Drawing on media and social-media analysis, survey data, and interviews with national-patriotic intellectuals and officials, this article shows how these groups have been co-opted into Tokayev’s political institutions, such as the new National Qurultay, an appointed consultative body under the President with a mandate to promote national unity and social cohesion, while the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan, created by Tokayevs predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev, has been marginalized. But while Tokayev promotes Kazakh language and culture, commonly framed as Kazakhisation, his approach remains cautious and avoids overt exclusion of other ethnic groups. The study argues that post-Nazarbayev nation-building is being recalibrated through institutional reforms shaped by the dual pressures of the 2022 Qandy Qantar and the war in Ukraine, signalling a gradual, state-managed shift from a civic-based identity toward a controlled process of ethnocratization.

Kazakhisation , Kazakhstan , nation building , Nationalism , Tokayev

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Institute of Public Policy and Administration, Graduate School of Development, University of Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
Faculty of Journalism and Political Science, L. N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Astana, Kazakhstan

Institute of Public Policy and Administration
Faculty of Journalism and Political Science

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