Is Almaty Mayor Dosayev The One Who Told Le Figaro: I Can Never Be Kazakhstan’s President As I Belong To Junior Zhuz? – OpEd
Eadaily.com, a Russian pro-Kremlin media outlet, in an article by Alan Pukhayev entitled ‘In Kazakhstan, they want to abandon the shared history of Kazakhstan and Russia’ said: “Agents of foreign influence in the Kazakh government are conscientiously fulfilling their task of creating a historical and mental separation from Russia. The latest thing that the Kazakh authorities have done is the renaming of Yuri Gagarin Avenue in Almaty into Yermek Serkebayev Avenue. [In this regard,] I would like to recall a statement made by President Tokayev at the Central Asia-Russia summit in October 2022. “Our countries are destined to be together. We must protect our shared history and create a unified future for the well-being of our people. Stability and security in each of our countries have a direct influence on the development of the region”, he said.
However, it seems that the ‘Harvard boys’ in the Kazakh government do not agree with him. For them, what the US Ambassador to Kazakhstan, Daniel Rosenblum, says is much more important”.
Those reproaches by the Russian pro-Kremlin media outlet seem to be leveled at Yerbolat Dosayev, Mayor of Almaty, a city, where that avenue is. Experience shows that this kind of verbal attack by the Russian media on high-ranking Kazakh officials does not remain without consequences. Here are some examples.
On January 11, 2022, President Tokayev appointed Askar Umarov as Minister of Information and Social Development of Kazakhstan. The Tsargrad TV reacted to this with a series of materials describing the latter as an ‘open Russophobe’. This Russian media outlet also called President Tokayev’s decision to appoint him minister ‘an outrageous gesture’. Other Russian media picked up its initiative. They were joined by some of Moscow’s officials and Russian politicians. There was a lot of noise. Some Russian politicians, experts, and journalists went so far as to describe Kazakhstan’s Minister of Information, Askar Umarov, as ‘a person with nazi and chauvinist views towards Russians’. He once, according to Russian media said, while addressing Kazakhstani Russians, the following: “You do not forget that you are an imposed diaspora here, not autochthons, and be thankful that your rights are respected, and no one is driving you away from here, as it is the case with colonizers in some other countries”. Yevgeny Primakov, who heads the Russian Foreign Ministry’s international cooperation agency Rossotrudnichestvo, reacted to the appointment of Askar Umarov as Minister in the following way: Rossotrudnichestvo ‘won’t cooperate with Russophobic trash’. He added: “Rossotrudnichestvo does not maintain contact, work or co-operate with Russophobic garbage, so that rules out any co-operation on our part with this Minister and the Ministry he leads”. Dmitry Rogozin, the then Roskosmos (space agency) director, advised Askar Umarov on Twitter not to visit the Baikonur cosmodrome. “Minister Askar Umarov is not welcome at the Baikonur Cosmodrome”, he wrote.
The result was not long in coming. Askar Umarov was relieved of his office on September 2, 2022. He held his position as Information Minister just for seven-plus months.
On September 2, 2022, Darkhan Kydyrali was appointed Minister of Information and Social Development of Kazakhstan. The Tsargrad TV reacted to this news very restrained: “A certain Darkhan Kydyrali has been appointed Minister [of Information] in his [Umarov’s] place”. As far as can be judged, the Russian propaganda media did not pay much attention to him until mid-August, 2023. But then the situation changed. There was information that the website of the Russian Tsargrad TV channel was blocked in Kazakhstan by the decision of the Ministry of Information and Social Development. The head of the Ministry made an explanatory statement.
Darkhan Kydyrali said that the blocking of the website of the Russian Tsargrad TV channel was due to the adoption of measures to ensure information security. The Minister of Information stressed that this topic should not be politicized.
“There is no need to look for political subtext in this. As in any State, information security is important for us. Therefore, content, a site that poses a threat to the information space, contradicts our Constitution, the legal norms of our state, and the law on the media, is blocked”, the minister said in an interview with Qazaqstan TV.
As an example, Darkhan Kydyrali pointed out that since 2016, more than 40 websites registered abroad had been blocked in Kazakhstan. “The site you mentioned is one of them. We warn publications about the need to comply with our standards, but if the media do not comply with our requirements, then they will certainly be blocked. And regardless of whether it is foreign or domestic media, we urge everyone to observe and respect our laws”, he added. What happened next?
Here is what the Novye Izvestiya newspaper has to say in this regard: “After the blocking of the Tsargrad TV channel in Kazakhstan, calls for radical action against the neighboring country began to be heard among the Russian patriotic public… There were reports that in Kazakhstan ‘a hunt has begun for the defenders of the Russian world’. Even calls for active action began to be read in some passages by Tsargrad”. Konstantin Malofeyev, who owns the Tsargrad TV Channel and had founded the Tsargrad website, came out with a very robust statement on the Kazakh Information Ministry’s decision.
After a few days, on September 1, 2022, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev dismissed Darkhan Kydyrali from his ministerial post. It is noteworthy that he received the Kazakh Minister and heard the latter’s report on the performance of the Kazakh Information Ministry only 20 days before that. Then Kassym-Jomart Tokayev issued instructions to Darkhan Kydyrali. Nothing, it seemed, portended dismissal. But Darkhan Kydyrali was soon dismissed.
On June 3, Eadaily.com published the above-mentioned article about Gagarin Avenue in Almaty on May 31, 2024. On June 3, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev met with Almaty Mayor Yerbolat Dosayev and heard the latter’s report on the performance of the Almaty city administration. Then the Kazakh President issued instructions to Yerbolat Dosayev. Time will tell what’s next…
And here is what else to be said on this occasion. Zhaiyk Karibzhanov, in his article entitled “How Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich: ‘The last high-ranking Mohican’ has been kicked out” and published by zonakz.net on April 8, 2004, reported the following: three days earlier, on April 5, Zhaksylyk Doskaliev, who had earlier been the sole Kazakh Government member as Minister for Health, representing the Junior zhuz, or West Kazakhs, also known as Alshyns, was dismissed. There was also information there that he had previously been publicly subjected to accusations of tribalism by Kazakh MP Erasyl Abylkasymov, who is said to belong to the Jalaiyr tribe of the Senior zhuz just as does the current Kazakh president, Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev. Yerbolat Dosayev, a native of Almaty, was then appointed in his place as Minister for Health of Kazakhstan.
In his piece, Zhaiyk Karibzhanov further said: “A unique situation has now emerged on the [Kazakh] government Olympus. Nothing like this has perhaps happened in more than 80 years of the existence of the republic in the autonomous, union status, and then in the sovereign status. What such a course could or should mean is difficult to say, as this all smells like an arbitrary practice directed against West Kazakhs as a whole plus their representatives in the center [of the State] in particular”. Then it was thought that among government members, there was none from the Junior zhuz, or West Kazakhs, also known as Alshyns.
But here is what French newspaper Le Figaro’s François Hauter wrote around the same time in this regard: “For all Kazakhs, political life boils down exclusively to the internal struggles of hordes [zhuzes] and clans [tribes]. ‘The transfer of the capital to the city of Astana neutralized the aggressive tendencies of the Middle zhuz towards the Senior one because Astana is located on the territory of the Middle zhuz’, explains a keen observer. ‘I can never be the President of the Republic [because] I belong to the Junior zhuz’, a young Minister said confidentially” (François HAUTER ‘Guerre de clan dans les steppes kazakhes’, mardi 21 septembre 2004, page 4).
The Kazakh media had then already formed the idea that there were no representatives of the Junior zhuz in government. And no one had denied it at the time. However, the above report by François Hauter in Le Figaro showed that this idea was mistaken. But since that young Kazakh Minister was not named by François Hauter, his identity has continued to be kept incognito until the present day. And one can only make assumptions about who this unnamed Minister might have been. In this context, we now only know one thing: according to Wikipedia, Yerbolat Dosayev, who was appointed as Minister for Health of Kazakhstan instead of Zhaksylyk Doskaliev in April 2004, though he is a native of Almaty, is also a member of the Junior zhuz. Is he the one who said in 2004 to the French newspaper Le Figaro’s François Hauter ‘I can never be the President of the Republic [because] I belong to the Junior zhuz’? Only François Hauter can tell whether this is the case or not.
