The Kazakh authorities are promoting a pro-Western and anti-Russian “opposition”
We already wrote earlier in a March article about the emergence of a new pro-Western opposition in Kazakhstan represented by the “National Coordination Council of Opposition Forces” and the “El Tiregi” party of ex-deputy Nurzhan Altayev, which is supported by certain groups in power and is oriented toward Ukraine, Turkey and the United States.
Now they have become extremely active and intend to take control of the protest movement in the country in order to manipulate and redirect anger towards Russia and China.
So, last week, on June 15, a press conference was held in Nur-Sultan (Tselinograd) by Nurzhan Altaev, who complained that his party was denied registration seven times. However, despite its unregistered status, the pro-Western El Tiregi party is not going to give up active activities, but on the contrary, is applying to hold rallies and even opening its offices in the regions, which is simply impossible without permission from the authorities.
Nurzhan Altaev at a press conference in Nur-Sultan
For example, a rally was announced on June 25, which, according to Nurzhan Altaev, will definitely be agreed upon. At the same time, the right-wing national liberals are going to speculate specifically on social issues, although previously, working in the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs and being a member of Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan party, the ex-deputy himself sanctioned and supported many anti-social reforms.
“Some people related to the authorities in our country decided to collect recycling fees. Moreover, the recycling fee does not go into the country’s budget, but into the pockets of certain people. This is tens of billions of tenge per year. Recycling leads to higher prices for agricultural products. You see that potatoes now cost 500 tenge per kilogram. Some people decided to make toll roads, which were already built at public expense. Again, Kazakhstanis will pay money into some pockets. 70% of people with disabilities do not have housing,” he listed to journalists the problems on which fans of “independence” and European integration will rally.
Nurzhan Altaev and Mikho Saakashvili in Kyiv
Activists of the “movement against unjust decisions”, who last week actually occupied the reception building of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Kazakhstan in Nur-Sultan, unexpectedly decided to join the rally.
“People turned to our party for help. They give until June 25th. People want the courts to reconsider their decisions and correct miscarriages of justice. If Asanov does not accept them, we will demand his resignation. People are joining our rally on June 25,” said one of the co-founders of the El Tiregi party.
This activation of the pro-Western pseudo-opposition, and even in the capital, is not accidental, since serious social discontent has really accumulated in the country, which is ready to result in spontaneous riots and protests, and in the situation of the liquidation of all trade unions and old opposition parties, it is necessary to channel it into a harmless channel and preferably Russophobic and anti-Russian. And this manifested itself immediately when the same Nurzhan Altaev spoke out against Russian investors in the North Kazakhstan region.
Thus, he, like other Kazakh nationalists, latched on to the conflict at the mining and processing plant, which employs less than 300 people and has recently changed ownership. The incoming Russian company is presented as the main culprit of all the troubles, and the entire pro-Western camarilla has now been mobilized in order to present this case as an attack on “independence” and “sovereignty” - either from Russia or from China.
“In North Kazakhstan there is a mining and processing plant, which for various reasons they are trying to take away from the owners and transfer it to foreigners. There is unofficial information that they want to make a Chinese company the final owners. The state wants to take it away,” says Nurzhan Altaev.
At the same time, neither the El Tiregi party, nor the National Coordination Council of Opposition Forces, nor other nationalists say anything about the need to nationalize mining enterprises from European and American corporations or revise enslaving subsoil use contracts with them. After all, it is Western capital that controls two-thirds of the production of Kazakh oil, gas, non-ferrous and ferrous metals.
But this is a forbidden topic for them, like the environmental disaster in the Caspian Sea and on the rivers of Western Kazakhstan, where shallowing of reservoirs occurs due to the construction of canals by American companies and the use of groundwater to fill voids resulting from pumping out oil and gas. The desertification of vast territories and the over-exploitation of local workers by foreign owners does not concern the pseudo-Swedish opposition at all. On the contrary, it is Russia that is being presented as the enemy of the Kazakh people.
At the same time, all these pro-government national liberals can unite and already recognize each other as a real political force. Thus, consolidation and joint activities of El Tiregi and the Democratic Party, created by the nationalist Zhanbolat Mamai and the main pro-American public figure in the country Sergei Duvanov, are possible. In recent months, the Democratic Party has been noted for holding authorized anti-Chinese rallies and commemorating the “Holodomor.”
That is why Nurzhan Altaev is now making curtseys in relation to Zhanbolat Mamai, who today is also heroized by the Kazakh press as a fighter against the ruling Nazarbayev party Nur Otan. That is, now these characters are being intensively molded into the image of principled “oppositionists” who must fill the resulting vacuum and seize leadership of the protest movements in the country with the aim of introducing radical nationalist ideology into the ranks of activists, directed both against neighbors and against national minorities and Russians inside the republic.
Zhanbolat Mamai
All these processes of consolidation of pro-Western forces in Kazakhstan are supported by the oligarch Margulan Seisembay, who now lives in Kyiv. It was not for nothing that last year he organized the trip of the same Nurzhan Altaev and an entire delegation of national liberals with the assistance of the Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan to Ukraine Darkhan Kaletayev to meet with Mikheil Saakashvili and deputies from the Servant of the People party. Although he announced in March for the second time that he was allegedly retiring from public activities, he still continues to be in contact with another pro-Western youth movement “Oyan, Kazakhstan” (“Wake up Kazakhstan”) and continues to finance the far right.
Margulan Seisembayev with Mikheil Saakashvili and Vladimir Zelensky
Interestingly, against the backdrop of repression against various unregistered parties and movements, ex-deputy and ex-Nurotan member Nurzhan Altaev opens an El Tiregi office on June 17 in the most populous Turkestan region, where nationalist sentiments are strong. In Shymkent, at the grand opening of the new party headquarters, pseudo-veterans “Afghans” who had previously organized rallies in support of the Nazi and Russophobe Margulan Boranbai, who was charged with inciting national hatred, appeared as new party members.
It is precisely these cadres that now form the grassroots structures of the El Tiregi party, among whom there are ardent Pan-Turkists. It is not for nothing that the “leader” of this political entity declared that he would follow in the footsteps of the Turkish fascist organization “Gray Wolves”.
But it is noteworthy that the very next day after the opening of the office in Shymkent, in Turkey itself there was a high-profile murder of a 20-year-old pro-Kurdish activist by a Gray Wolves militant. Apparently, it is precisely these traditions of murder, kidnapping and torture that this tame “oppositionist” wants to spread to Kazakhstan.
The old oppositionists themselves say that he is tame, accusing him of having connections and working for Elbasy’s middle son-in-law and the main oligarch, Timur Kulibayev. And this is so, since it is his patronage that ensures the immunity and legal activities of Nurzhan Altaev and Co. against the background when hundreds of real activists are in prison. By the way, the portal Abai.kz, the mouthpiece of the Russophobic and anti-Russian campaign, also belongs to this oligarch.
Oligarch Timur Kulibayev
It turns out that it is beneficial for the elite to promote and build up pro-Western national-liberal and nationalist forces in the country, which support the processes of decommunization and de-Russification, rehabilitation of punitive forces and accomplices of the German fascists and recognition of the Holodomor.
True, like Yanukovych, they think that they will be able to control and direct these Nazis against Russia, ensuring the gradual drift of the country towards the West. But it may happen that at a turning point in history, the sons, having become disobedient, can simply devour their own creators and masters.
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