Collective Identity in Central Asia

Abstract

Changing framework or institution for people's identification after the collapse of the Soviet Union is one of main issues to understand political order in contemporary Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) . In this context, constructing suitable collective identity is important project for statebuilding process in this region. As long as surveying institutionalization of citizenship in each Central Asian countries, it consisted with relatively wide tolerance for minorities including Russian citizens or natives. On the other hand, through the institutionalization of border control and visa regime, discrimination among citizenships is getting strict. In Central Asia, there is no appropriate conception to construct institutions, in which combinations of several multi-level identities, such as national, state and regional, harmonize interactively. Region-wide level identities in Central Asia have less affected than state-level ones because of their lack of measures to develop their unity. Although several security frameworks (the former Central Asian Cooperation Organization [CACO], Eurasia Economic Community [EurAsES], Shanghai Cooperation Organization, etc.) are reconstructed with their geographical enlargement, they are too vulnerable to establish a regional security identity. Emerging of the cascading framework of EurAsES-ODKB (Collective Security Treaty Organization) would not be a revival of Soviet identity. It covers only eastern side of Caspian Sea as the area of influence, while GUAM countries ignoring the area for the shifting of their interest toward Baltic Sea region. The cascading framework also needs physical and moral support from China inevitably.