Central Asia
Kazakhstan’s capital will be called Astana again
The Presidential Palace in the center of the capital of Kazakhstan. photo
© Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP/dpa
Astana, Nur-Sultan and now Astana again: The Kazakh parliament has voted to call the capital back to its previous name.
More than three years after being renamed, the capital of Kazakhstan is to be called Astana again. That was decided by the parliament in the city currently called Nur-Sultan.
A constitutional amendment passed unanimously also stipulated that the president of the Central Asian country can only be elected once for a period of seven years. Head of state Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has yet to sign the law on the amended constitution. This is considered a formality.
A presidential decree is still needed to rename the capital of the oil-rich ex-Soviet republic. Tokayev, 69, is in favor of returning to the old name. Astana became Nur-Sultan in March 2019 – in honor of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who stepped down from power after around three decades. More than a million people live in the glittering metropolis in the north of the country, which was pounded out of steppe sand.
Protests in early 2022
China’s neighbor, with a population of 18.5 million, was rocked by bloody protests earlier this year. Among other things, this led to a break with Nazarbayev, who had been given far-reaching powers even after his resignation, and his family, who had run the country’s fortunes.
During his time in power, Nazarbayev had the city in northern Kazakhstan built with futuristic buildings modeled on the Gulf States. In 1998 he gave it the neutral name Astana, Kazakh for capital. In Soviet times, the resource-rich republic’s center of power was in Almaty, the most populous city in the south of the country.