A beer for eight euros at Ankara airport comes with the advantage of free Internet, so while I wait for my flight back home, I may as well jot down a few observations from my trip here.

In Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district, an American woman tells her little son: “Look honey, this is very special about Turkey – they put their flags everywhere! People are really proud of their country. Not like in London”.

A young man approaches me here at Ankara’s airport, looking for help with translations. He’s German of Iraqi-Kurdish descent. He just got back from Erbil, northern Iraq, where he’ll start his job as a football coach this summer. On top of that, he’ll be playing in the Kurdish premier league.

The ruling party, AKP, has re-declared 1 May Labour Day a national holiday. What happened to its traditionally anti-union stance? One cynical observer notes: As hundreds of thousands of workers are laid off, it doesn’t really matter if you give them a day off.

Two EU related anecdotes: At an Ankara university, I see hectic students revise ahead of an exam on nationbuilding in 19th century Europe. The night before, the Istanbul-Ankara Turkish Airlines flight is Almost entirely occupied by a group of French catholic pilgrims. Why? I don’t have the faintest idea. One of the pilgrims tells me that Turkey has no place in the EU, “parce que ils sont les musulmans.”

I got back from Central Asia yesterday – after three weeks of road-tripping with Gareth, Christoph, Ollie and Sascha. We managed to cover quite some distance: Starting in Almaty, we made a 36-hour excursion to Astana (…), then back by overnight train to Almaty, from there by car to Karakol, then a four-day tour along the southern shore of lake Issyk-Kul, after which we stayed in Bishkek for two days; then by An-24 to Osh and directly off to the Alai (afoot the Pamirs) with old driver friend Hadji. After a 40km walk across a big pass, we went back to Osh, Bishkek and finally Almaty. Phew.

There are a few things I’d like to write about in the coming weeks (fingers crossed). First, I definitely found Astana very strange and want to have the post go along with pictures fellow traveler Christoph took. Second, another entry on Sary Moghul is definitely in the pipeline, hopefully I’ll be able to quote Peter’s piece once it’s up on the wires. Again, Christoph made beautiful photos there, so I hope they’ll go along with it. The third one I’m not 100% sure about yet is a more general piece on my impressions this time. As I had the benefit to visit most places for the second or third time over four years, I thought of writing a personal report here. Let’s see how far this gets.

Nice:

Adam Kesher berichtet von der Lage in Kasachstan. Dort werden am 18. August Wahlen abgehalten – allerdings unter einigen merkwürdigen Umständen. Ungefähr zehn Prozent der Abgeordneten des Unterhauses werden von der „Versammlung der Völker Kasachstans“ gewählt, die 1995 ins Leben gerufen wurde, dem Präsidenten Nursultan Nasarbajew untergeordnet ist und so etwas wie eine Vertretung der ethnischen Minderheiten darstellen soll. Da aber deren Zusammensetzung ebenso unklar ist wie die durch die Versammlung Gewählten, ergibt sich ein nicht sonderlich demokratisches Bild. Auch die sogenannte „Legalisierung von Besitz und Geld“ sorgt für Probleme: die Opposition sieht dies als einen Versuch der Geldwäsche – Profiteure dieser seien vor allem Mitglieder der regierenden Nur-Otan Partei (Strahlendes Vaterland) und deren Verwandten. Immerhin zitiert Kesher den Blogger miliz-kz (Link in Russisch) der hoffnungsvoll ist, dass diese Opposition mittlerweile ein gutes Bild gibt und nicht mehr in kleine Grüppchen zerfallen ist, auch wenn das, wie er zugibt, keine große Rolle bei der Wahl spielen wird.

Bankenkrise in Kasachstan

Ein weiteres Thema, möglicherweise noch wichtiger aufgrund der Vorhersehbarkeit des Ausgangs der Wahlen, ist die derzeitige Bankenkrise in Kasachstan. Die oben erwähnte „Legalisierung“, länger anhaltende Gerüchte über einen bevorstehenden Kollaps des kasachischen Bankensystems und nicht zuletzt die US-amerikanische Finanzkrise haben dazu geführt, dass das Thema „Wahlen“ in der kasachischen Blogosphäre verdrängt wurde. Alle großen Banken haben die Anzahlungsrate bei Krediten und Hypotheken drastisch gessenkt, zwei Banken geben bis September überhaupt keine Kredite mehr aus. Für Finanzexperten steht allerdings außer Frage, dass die vorhandenen Stabilisierungsinstrumente (Gold und Devisen Reserven) und der stabile Erdölpreis ausreichen werden, um eine deutlichere Krise abzuwenden.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t solicit any comments to my Master’s thesis on neweurasia. Here is the post, check it out and let me know what you think.

Nathan discussed this video a while ago.

Now, can you imagine the talk of that sober American guy lauding Kazakhstan while seeing Serbian wildlife? No?

BELGRADE — CNN admits to having made a mistake adding sounds from Kazakhstan promo video to sights of Serbian tourist offer.

I gave a presentation on Kazakhstan and the Resource Curse the other day for the Cambridge University International Development Society, thought it might be interesting to some. Download it here. It’s an openOffice file converted to MS Powerpoint format, hope it works on all machines.

Roman Vassilenko, the Kazakhstani US embassy’s spokesman, continues to put up videos about Kazakhstan on Youtube. Together with the fact that he remains the only state official that has ever commented on neweurasia, he could be duly called the cyber ambassador of Kazakhstan, or Kazakhstan’s Web 2.0 spokesman. The latest one he put up is about the tourist destination Kazakhstan:

I uploaded my Bachelor thesis on Kazakhstan. It can be downloaded here.

“Our natural resources are an enormous wealth. Yet, paradoxical as it is, the world experience testifies to the fact that many a country possessing substantial natural resources failed to dispose of them in the best possible way and – consequently – to this day they rate as poor. East-Asian countries marked with most effective and dynamic development happened to be the countries which could hardly boast of natural resources. All this is but to emphasize the fact that actually paramount factors are people themselves, their willpower, energy, persistence and knowledge. In fact, it is the very “key of gold” that would enable us open the door to welfare and independence.

However, a negative world experience is also a good teacher. It shows quite unequivocally that absence of strategies or that of the ability of realization thereof outweighs the notorious potential of natural resources. Hence – the major conclusion we have to make – we have to work out a well-considered strategy and to persistently put it into practice in defiance of all the difficulties. The wealth of the entrails of the earth is the property of all subsequent generations. However the circumstance must not lull us to relaxation. On the contrary, all of us, the Government included, must live and work as though we never possessed it [sic].” – President Nursultan Nazarbayev, ‘Strategy 2030’ (1997)

Following the earlier post on the ridiculously dubbed German version of the Borat trailer, here’s some more of that. My favourite is the Spanish one.

French

Spanish

Borat on French TV

WELT.de: In Deutschland weiß man nicht viel über Ihr Land. Was sind seine Stärken, seine Schwächen?

Borat: Kasachstan ist ein schönes Fleckchen Erde und so zivilisiert wie jedes andere Land – besonders seit den Tulyakev-Reformen 2003. Seitdem dürfen Frauen innen im Bus fahren, Homosexuelle müssen keine blauen Hüte mehr tragen, und heiraten darf man erst ab elf. In Kasachstan behandeln wir alle Leute mit dem gleichem Respekt – sogar die seltsamen. Letzten Mai eröffneten wir das Almaty Zentrum für Zurückgebliebene. Es hat über 300 Käfige und eine öffentliche Zuschauergalerie. Von dort kann man für zehn Tenge die Insassen anschauen, für 15 Tenge kann man Kartoffeln werfen. Warum nicht? Sie mögen’s!