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This August, Uzbekistan passed a constitutional law formalising the legal status and powers of the Presidential Administration, headed by Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s daughter, Saida Mirziyoyeva. The new law grants the Administration extensive authority to coordinate state bodies, oversee the work of hokims (local governors), implement judicial reforms, and exercise anti-corruption powers. Under the new law, the head of the Administration automatically becomes deputy chairperson of the Security Council, which oversees the armed forces and matters of national security. The body reports to and is subordinate only to the President, while all its members are granted lifetime immunity from criminal prosecution. These extensive powers have fuelled speculation that Mirziyoyev is preparing his daughter to succeed him, potentially consolidating dynastic rule in Uzbekistan. But is this really the case? Are the rules of the game now set, or could the game itself still change? To answer these questions, we are joined by Rafael Sattarov, a Boston-based political analyst specialising in Central Asia and the broader post-Soviet space. Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe

This is the final story in our series of audio features — also available as long reads — made possible by the International Press Institute. To continue enjoying free access to our audio documentaries, please upgrade to a paid subscription. Home should be a safe place. But for Yasoman Yatimzoda, a 21-year-old from Dashtak village in the Darvoz district of Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan region, it proved deadly. On August 13th, as she went about her daily tasks, a stray bullet entered her home through a window and ended her life. It soon became clear that the bullet had come from Afghanistan’s Darwaz district, located on the opposite bank of the Panj River. The Taliban’s Foreign Ministry stated that it had been fired by “destructive and opportunistic individuals”, elements seeking to create disorder in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province and fuel distrust between the neighbouring countries. But the tragic death of the young woman was not the first time violence in Badakhshan had spilled across the border. In January this year, four armed men who had crossed illegally from Afghanistan were shot by Tajik border patrol. Later that month, three Afghan nationals were killed in a shootout with Tajik border guards. They were carrying four bags of opium and hashish. Earlier, in November 2025, five Chinese nationals were killed in two separate attacks in Tajikistan launched from Afghanistan. In total, 20 armed clashes were reported along the Tajik-Afghan border in less than two years. This figure does not include targeted assassinations, skirmishes, or unrest within Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province, which continued throughout this year, making it one of Afghanistan’s most unstable regions. But this was not always the case. While drug trafficking has long been a problem along the Tajik-Afghan border, the level of instability the region has experienced in the recent months has been unprecedented. It has also prompted the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a military alliance bringing together Russia and several of its allies, to strengthen security along the Tajik-Afghan border, modernise border infrastructure, and supply weapons and advanced surveillance equipment. A province on edge Mohammed sits on a plastic chair on a hotel balcony, squinting in the intense September sun. It is hot, and he is anxious. He asks to remain anonymous, fearing repercussions. Under Taliban rule, it is better to be careful, especially now, when the streets are full of law enforcement officers from outside the region. In February this year, the Taliban deployed an additional 1,000 police officers to Badakhshan to strengthen security and tighten their control over the province. The road to Fayzabad, the regional capital, now passes through dozens of checkpoints. They are more frequent than in other provinces, and the checks are more thorough. Every now and then, a police officer checks the documents of passengers in passing vehicles. It is hard to say whether these controls serve any purpose beyond appearances. Fayzabad is full of Taliban fighters, too, a rare sight in this part of Afghanistan. Mohammed now lives in Fayzabad, but he was born in Darwaz district, across the river from the village where the Tajik woman was killed. This year, his home district made international headlines several times, and for all the wrong reasons. In a straight line, Darwaz is about 160 kilometres from Fayzabad, but the road passes through mountains and rough terrain, and the journey can take up to 12 hours. Until last March, Mohammed worked as a miner at a gold mine in Darwaz. He never liked the job, but it paid well compared with other work available in Badakhshan, one of Afghanistan’s poorest provinces. He earned enough to cover his expenses and even save some money. He had got the job two years earlier, together with his brother. It was hard, dirty, and dangerous work. Dozens of miners had lost their lives in recent years while working in the mines. But with his journalism degree offering few prospects in the new Afghan reality, the job was good enough. After the Taliban returned to power in 2021, gold mines – many consisting of makeshift tunnels – sprang up across Badakhshan. In previous years, most gold extraction had been artisanal. The former Islamic Republic government had never managed to develop the mining industry on an industrial scale. Extraction was too costly, too complex, or too risky. When the Taliban took over, the security situation improved, as the Taliban themselves had previously posed the main security threat. Large-scale extraction became more feasible. It was a cold day in March when Mohammed vowed never to return to mining. He was preparing to enter the tunnel when he heard gunshots. “We were there, witnessing everything, and it was extremely dangerous for us. Then my brother got injured, and we thought we were all going to die there. I think it was the Taliban who shot him. Fortunately, my friends were safe, and my brother was the only one who got injured,” Mohammad says. “We were miners. We worked in a mine. We couldn’t get anywhere. The Taliban were shooting.” You can support Turan Tales on Buy Me a Coffee! Get a membership or make a one-off donation to help us bring the next episodes to life Mohammed’s brother was shot in the leg. When the fighting ended, Taliban forces helped to take him to a hospital in Fayzabad. He survived, but his injuries were serious. He is still undergoing treatment in Kabul to make a full recovery. “The clashes affected everyone in the area. Many people were injured, and some were taken to hospital. The fighting continued, and people went without food for days,” he says. In Darwaz, the Taliban were not fighting their government’s enemies. They were fighting one of their own: Juma Khan Fateh, the self-styled Sultan of Darwaz. The Sultan of Darwaz Juma Khan Fateh is not a typical Taliban commander. He is not Pashtun but a Sunni Tajik, a member of an ethnic group that makes up much of Badakhshan’s population. He was born into a poor family, most likely in 1984. He finished school after the US invasion of Afghanistan and joined the HALO Trust, a humanitarian organisation that clears landmines, in 2009. This could have been the beginning of a lasting career with Western organisations. But Fateh’s temper set him on a different path. In 2013, he allegedly organised a failed assassination attempt against his boss at the HALO Trust and went into hiding. It was probably around that time that he joined the Taliban. “Despite having no militant background, either with the Taliban or with government forces, he became a prominent militant in Darwaz, at the northernmost tip of Badakhshan. Because of his uniqueness, he became quite high-profile in a region where the Taliban had few other contacts or people to rely on. He became an important Taliban commander,” says Fabrizio Foschini, a senior analyst at the Afghanistan Analysts Network. When the Taliban returned to power, people like Fateh proved to be valuable assets. In Badakhshan, a remote, mountainous region, they already had a man they could rely on. “What happened was that someone who was not considered a trusted Taliban member, with a long record of militancy or strong ideological ties to the Taliban leadership, became a major figure at the local level,” Foschini says. “The Taliban did not have a very well-developed organisation in Badakhshan. They probably had not even expected to win so easily. They had a number of commanders, and overnight these people became very important because they had conquered an entire province – one of the largest, with a reputation for being strongly anti-Taliban.” Historically, Badakhshan was home to several Central Asian ethnic groups, including Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmens, and Hazaras. Pashtuns, who make up the majority of the Taliban movement, were not well-represented in this remote, mountainous regi… Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe

Turkmenistan is one of the world’s most isolated countries, and getting in and out is a real challenge. Nevertheless, Turkmen diaspora communities do exist abroad. Turkmens work and study in other countries, and many send remittances to support their families back home. In this episode, we look at how difficult it is to leave Turkmenistan. Who manages to leave, what motivates them, and where do they go? We also explore how Turkmen diaspora communities operate and how the security services try to infiltrate Turkmen communities abroad. To answer these questions, we are joined by Gulshat A. Rozyyeva, a research scholar at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University. Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe

My guest today, Almira Tabaeva, has been studying feminism and female agency in Central Asia. As an Uzbekistani citizen herself, she has drawn on her family archive and family memories to tell a bigger story about women in the region: their history, lives, and agency. Going against the currents of Western feminist thought, as well as the modernist ideas of the Soviet era, she has coined the term “Suzani feminism” to describe the reality of female agency in Uzbekistan. This is something we will discuss today. Almira holds a PhD in Education and is the author of articles on gender, education, and ethics in Central Asia. Her research draws on decolonial feminist theories and arts-based methods. Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe

The Ilkhom Theatre, founded in 1976 by Uzbekistani theatre director Mark Weil, is an institution like no other, not only in Central Asia but far beyond it. Brave, unconventional and visionary, it has provided a space for freedom of expression and social commentary, often going against the current despite a hostile political climate. And that spirit continued even after the tragic murder of its founder in 2007. To talk about the Ilkhom Theatre and the legacy of Mark Weil, I’m joined by Irina Bharat, Director of International Programs at the Ilkhom Theatre since 2005. Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe

In the context of Central Asia, there is one insufferable metaphor that makes my eyes roll every time I see it. And unfortunately, we all see it often. It’s the metaphor of the Great Game. Whether we are analyzing the diversification of Central Asian countries’ international partnerships or writing about investment in critical minerals, lazy editors love repeating the same old frame: the Great Game. But what if the metaphor were not only annoying but also inaccurate? What if the “Great Game” — the supposed 19th-century struggle for influence in Central Asia between the Russian and British empires — never existed? To talk about that, I am joined by Alexander Morrison, a historian of empire and colonial warfare at the University of Oxford. He is the author of numerous publications, including The Russian Conquest of Central Asia: A Study in Imperial Expansion, 1814–1914. Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe

In late June, my guest today and I travelled to Oziornoye, a Polish village in northern Kazakhstan. It was a special occasion: the 90th anniversary of the deportation of ethnic Poles from the eastern borderlands of the Soviet Union to Kazakhstan. But what exactly has the experience of Polish deportees in Kazakhstan been like? Today, we will talk about that with Ivan Sokolovskiy, an expert on the subject and a PhD candidate in Eurasian Studies at the School of Sciences and Humanities at Nazarbayev University. Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe

Since the 1990s, thousands of ethnic Kazakhs have left Chinese Xinjiang for Kazakhstan to live among their own people and escape Hanification. But crossing the border did not mean escaping China’s reach. Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe

Hi all, I’ve been working as a journalist for over a decade and before that I was an NGO worker, and a student in several different countries. In all of them, left-wing movements, activists, including Marxist groups, were presents in different shapes and forms. I met them regularly during protests, conferences and they were part of my social circles. This is not the case in Central Asia. When I moved to Tashkent in 2018, I wondered where the radical youth is today and why they are not visible. Not as registered groups of course, because we all know how strictly controlled politics in places like Uzbekistan is, but as informal, semi-underground gatherings. I wondered, does Central Asia not need left-wing politics? To talk about Marxism and the left in Central Asia, I am joined by Georgy Mamedov, an independent curator, writer, and activist originally from Dushanbe. His work focuses on critical reinterpretation of Soviet socialism in Central Asia and the broader post-Soviet space. Georgy co-authored and co-edited several books, including A Book on Happiness for Young (and not so) LGBT (and not only) People (Bishkek, 2020), Queer Communism is Ethics (Moscow, 2016), Concepts of the Soviet in Central Asia (Bishkek, 2016), and Bishkek Utopian (Bishkek, 2015). Until recently, Georgy served as an assistant professor of film and media arts at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek. In 2025, he joined the University of Melbourne’s Research Initiative on Post-Soviet Space (RIPSS) as a graduate scholar. In this role, he is working on the research project “Towards a Communist Ideal: Marxism and Marxists under Soviet Socialism.” I hope you will enjoy this one as much as I did. Have a lovely end of the week, — Agnieszka Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe

Central Asia is undergoing rapid social and economic transformation. Digitalisation and internet access are expanding, while new infrastructure and development investments are growing across the region. But despite this progress, many areas remain overlooked by local governments and international institutions supporting development programmes. And the rapid pace of change itself brings new challenges and raises important questions about who benefits from development – and who might be left behind. To talk about development in Central Asia, we’re joined by Akmaral Sman, a Kazakhstani gender and development specialist. Over the past decade, she has worked with NGOs, international financial institutions, and UN agencies, providing technical support on gender mainstreaming in energy, climate change, and natural resource management policies. She was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list and was a receipient of the prestigeous Chevening scholarship. Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe

This week, we’re talking about the much-maligned but also much-overused concept of the “post-Soviet”. To unpack this term, we are joined by Erica Marat, a Washington DC-based academic, originally from Kyrgyzstan. Her research focuses on organised crime, violence, mobilisation, and security institutions in Central Asia, North Asia, and Europe. She is the author of several books, most recently Decolonial Disruptions in Central Asia: Discussion, Practices, and Networks (Cambridge University Press, 2026), co-authored with Aizada Arystanbek. Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe

China’s presence is increasingly visible across Central Asia. Chinese-made electric vehicles are becoming more common on the roads, Chinese companies are investing in the local markets, and more young people are choosing to study in China. Yet research by Edward Lemon and Bradley Jardine found that China is viewed less favourably than any other major power in Central Asia. Why is that? How has Beijing responded to the challenge? And how important is Central Asia to China’s Belt and Road Initiative? To answer these questions, we're joined by Ed Lemon, co-author of Backlash: China’s Struggle for Influence in Central Asia, Research Assistant Professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University and President of the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs. Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe

Tajikistan has emerged as a leading advocate for global water cooperation. Yet as the water crisis worsens across Central Asia and beyond, finding solutions has become increasingly urgent. Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe

In the last interview before the summer break, we speak with Bagila Bukharbaeva, the author of The Vanishing Generation: Faith and Uprising in Modern Uzbekistan. We discuss Uzbekistan’s turn toward religion, unpack the events that led to the Andijan massacre, and examine whether religion has ever posed a genuine threat in the country. We also talk about Bagila’s own experience covering her community, which ultimately led to a years-long ban on her entering Uzbekistan. Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe

This week, we discuss the craft of akyns and aitysh, their poetic duels. We look into the history of this art form, its historical functions, and how these have changed during the Soviet era and since the collapse of the USSR. We also examine the social significance of aitysh and the differences between traditional akyns and those who have turned to journalism. Joining us is Akylai Otkulbek kyzy, a Kyrgyz researcher who focuses on aitysh as a living civic and epistemological practice. She holds a MA degree in International Public Policy from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, and an MA from the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. Get full access to Turan Tales at turantales.substack.com/subscribe