Political and constitutional-legal transformations in Central Asia countries (1991–2021).

Abstract

The aim of the article is to determine the specifics of political processes related to decommunization in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan), to study the variability of the main vectors of post-Soviet transformations of the respective societies. Reforms in Kazakhstan could theoretically pave the way for civil society, but so far they are more of an imitation. Uzbekistan is distinguished by the state's struggle against Islamic fundamentalism, which gave rise to Islam Karimov to pursue a tough internal policy. Democratization shifts after his death, but the prospects and irreversibility of these reforms are now highly questionable. Kyrgyzstan is the only society in which civil protest has real force, but the presence of clan-patriarchal system, ethnic conflicts, the tendency to use force and the weakness of the central government do not allow building a civil society in this country. Turkmenistan is characterized by boundless authoritarianism, and Tajikistan is the only country that has survived a fierce civil war in which the Islamic religion is most powerful. Each of the five Central Asian states has its own unique characteristics, but none of them has built a civil and democratic society, and the transformation cause of political regimes into democracies remains at the level of rhetoric. In these countries, political alterations have affected mainly the area of institutions, without changing the semi-feudal procedures and practices, and the process of democratization itself has been limited to pseudo-reforms. Civilizational and local-cultural features make the values of civil society unattractive not only for political elites, but also for the majority of the population, thus in the near future we can hardly expect significant progress in this direction. Moreover, Central Asian countries are under the influence of three powerful regional leaders –Russia, China and Iran – whose cultural and historical values are far from Western liberal-democratic ones. The situation is further complicated by the factor of Islamic fundamentalism, which will almost certainly intensify after the Taliban's victory in Afghanistan.