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There is a lament about politics in Kyrgyzstan: Every five to 10 years, the country tires of its increasingly repressive president and throws him out. From 2005 to 2020, this held true. But 2025 has come and gone with no revolution, as candidates loyal to President Sadyr Japarov won a dominant majority in last November’s elections.
As the nation of 7.4 million people has wavered between periods of mounting autocracy and flashes of revolution, many Western advocates and policymakers hoped that Kyrgyzstan could become the first Central Asian country to achieve a robust democracy. Now the question is whether Japarov, who became president after the country’s last uprising in 2020, has instead figured out how to more securely consolidate power.
Last month, Japarov fired the head of Kyrgyzstan’s security services, Kamchybek Tashiev—a longtime ally and the country’s second-most powerful politician. In an interview with the Kabar state news agency, Japarov said Tashiev’s removal protected society from “division,” alleging that Tashiev’s supporters were pushing for him to run against Japarov in next year’s presidential election.
Japarov has acted quickly to purge anyone associated with Tashiev from Kyrgyzstan’s power structure. Tashiev has laid low, but Japarov isn’t done yet: On March 16, authorities accused Tashiev and his family of a $45 million corruption scheme involving Kyrgyzstan’s state oil company, which could be the nail in his political coffin.
Kyrgyzstan’s march into a new and perhaps more permanent season of illiberalism underscores a global wave of democratic disillusionment and shows the unique challenges of building an “island of democracy” in Central Asia, as some analysts have previously labeled the country.
Though it seems increasingly unlikely, it’s still possible that the popular Tashiev could go into Kyrgyzstan’s political opposition. According to Nurbek Toktakunov, a lawyer and activist, genuine opposition could open a window for the return of the relative pluralism that Kyrgyzstan enjoyed after the country’s 2010 revolution—when the country had a vibrant civil society and press, free and fair parliamentary elections, and a somewhat competitive 2017 presidential election.
But if Japarov’s bid to eliminate his last potential competitor works, and Tashiev “simply goes away, then there’s the danger that the consolidation of vertical power will go on,” Toktakunov said. Kyrgyzstan may again slip toward the entrenched autocracy of its neighbors.
Several men in uniforms and tactical gear are moving quickly outdoors. One man in a grey uniform jacket and a fur hat holds a stone in his hand, while another man in black riot gear and a helmet carries a baton. They appear to be looking toward something off-camera with concerned expressions. Trees and a few bystanders are visible in the background.
Kyrgyz riot police break up demonstrators during a rally by Japarov supporters in Bishkek on March 2, 2020. Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP via Getty Images
Japarov and Tashiev built their careers as a nationalist activists and parliamentarians during the era that followed the 2010 revolution. Both were vocal critics of the government at the time, rallying for the nationalization of the country’s largest gold mine and getting arrested for attempting to storm parliament during a rally in 2012.
Japarov attained more power in 2020, in the aftermath of another uprising. Angered by parliamentary elections that watchdogs and opposition groups characterized as rigged, thousands of protesters forced the resignation of President Sooronbay Jeenbekov. Supporters sprung Japarov from prison, where he was serving time for organizing the kidnapping of a regional governor. (He rejects the charges as politically motivated.)
In October 2020, Japarov declared himself acting president, was confirmed by parliament, and moved quickly to secure his position by pushing through a constitutional rewrite that moved Kyrgyzstan from a parliamentary to a strong presidential system. In January 2021, he was overwhelmingly elected to the presidency—and the constitutional changes were approved by referendum.
Even before Japarov took the helm, human rights advocates warned that Kyrgyz leaders were eroding media freedoms and pursuing their opponents. But in the wake of the 2020 revolution, the screws have tightened. Since Japarov came to power, Kyrgyzstan’s Freedom in the World score has fallen by one-third, with Freedom House changing its designation from “partly free” to “not free,” joining all its Central Asian peers.
Kyrgyzstan’s now docile parliament has passed restrictive laws, including a Russian-style foreign agents law, which forces nonprofits, including media organizations, to register if they receive any funding from abroad. The regime is applying maximum pressure on activists, critics, and the media through other levers, too.
“What makes the current regime look different is the extent to which they’ve really managed to dominate both the state institutions … and the outside, external environment,” said Shairbek Dzhuraev, a Bishkek-based political scientist who leads the Crossroads Central Asia think tank. “It became so easy to end up in jail that you wouldn’t just take risks.”
Take the case of Kanyshay Mamyrkulova, a journalist whom prosecutors charged with “calling for mass disorder” and “inciting inter-ethnic hatred” over a series of Facebook posts mocking a summit between the leaders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan last year. Mamyrkulova spent months in jail and was sentenced to four years of probation. The sentence effectively silenced her: She can’t report, speak out on public issues, or leave the country.
A woman with dark hair and a black coat stands in a group, looking upward and smiling. A person in the foreground holds a smartphone with a white cable attached.
Journalist Kanyshay Mamyrkulova waits for her appeals hearing to begin at the Bishkek City Court on Feb. 10.Alexander Thompson for Foreign Policy
Last month, while Mamyrkulova sat on a bench in a Bishkek courtroom, her lawyers argued before a panel of appeals judges to have her sentence reversed. “We’ve come to a critically dangerous point where political analysis brings legal scrutiny, criticism of a foreign leader is incitement of inter-ethnic hatred, and public, political rhetoric is extremism,” her lawyer, Asel Argymbaeva, told the court. “That’s not justice. That’s the criminalization of opinion.”
The appeals court later cleared Mamyrkulova of the conviction for “inter-ethnic hatred” and cut her probation to three years; it upheld the “mass disorder” conviction.
Scenes like this have become more common under Japarov. In 2024, courts ordered the liquidation of the investigative news site Kloop, throwing its journalists in prison and declaring it “extremist” after it continued to operate from abroad. The lengthy, though ultimately unsuccessful, prosecution of 27 activists and politicians, including women and older people, for their opposition to a 2022 border treaty with Uzbekistan sent another strong signal that criticism from anywhere brings consequences, Dzhuraev said.
A week before the November elections, security forces arrested two leaders of the left-leaning Social Democrats—the only remaining political opposition. Prosecutors allege that they were plotting a coup. “Criticism rouses the people,” said Toktakunov, who is defending the two leaders in court. “Of course that’s a danger for the authorities, and so they mustn’t allow it.”
Two young people walk past a white ice cream kiosk on a sidewalk. A campaign poster for Gulnaz Halilova is pasted onto the kiosk's shuttered front.
Young people walk past a campaign poster affixed to an ice cream stand on Mambetov Street in the Vostok-5 neighborhood of Bishkek on Nov. 27, 2025.Alexander M. Thompson for Foreign Policy
For Japarov’s supporters, Kyrgyzstan’s booming economy is a sign that his leadership is working. Thanks in part to surging gold prices and its role as a conduit for sanctioned goods en route to Russia, the country now has one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Per capita GDP rose more from 2021 through 2024 than during the decade before the 2020 revolution.
Under Japarov, the government budget has also tripled, as the state has cracked down on tax evasion and organized crime. “They have done 10 times more in these five years than in the 30 years under the other presidents,” said Usen Nurmanbetov, a recently retired official in Kyrgyzstan’s construction workers’ union who supports Japarov.
The government’s critics are quick to forget the stagnation and chaos during the era of parliamentary government, said Marlen Mamataliev, a Japarov ally who was recently elected speaker of parliament. “So many problems had built up that people had stopped believing in our future,” he said. “Now everyone’s gotten that belief back.”
Two workers use ropes to hang a large green campaign banner for Dastan Bekeshev on the side of a concrete apartment building. The banner partially covers an existing advertisement for Alenka chocolate.
Workers secure a massive election poster for Deputy Dastan Bekeshev to the side of an apartment block in the Kok-Zhar microdistrict of Bishkek on Nov. 10, 2025, the day campaigning began in Kyrgyzstan’s snap parliamentary elections. Alexander Thompson for Foreign Policy
Though he wasn’t on the ballot, the November elections appeared to confirm Japarov’s hold on Kyrgyzstan. Election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe did not report widespread fraud in the elections but noted that the “restrictive campaign environment stifled candidate and voter engagement.”
Government supporters counter that the results were evidence not of repression but of success. “A sort of deal has been proposed and agreed to,” Edil Baisalov, the deputy chair of the cabinet of ministers, said in a TV interview the day before the Social Democrats leaders were arrested. In exchange for rapid economic growth and infrastructure development, “let’s talk and discuss all this a little less,” he said.
Japarov’s supporters argue that Kyrgyzstan’s erstwhile parliamentary democracy was holding back the country’s development. Political parties turned ministries into a spoils system, and elections became a lucrative industry for corrupt politicians and journalists, Mamataliev said.
“We ended up with a wild democracy,” Mamataliev said, adding that the Kyrgyz people “won’t allow” totalitarianism and that the country will “gradually” return to parliamentarianism when it is politically mature.
Toktakunov, the lawyer, agreed that Kyrgyz parliamentary democracy was flawed—but so is every young democracy, he said. “From that churn, democracy could’ve emerged from within,” rather than be imported by Western donors, he said.
Tashiev’s ouster adds a new twist to the story. The tough-talking security chief spearheaded many of the government’s most popular programs, including its anti-corruption campaign. He retains a solid base of support in the country’s south and could launch a legitimate challenge to Japarov. “The single biggest elephant in the room is the presidential elections,” said Dzhuraev, the political scientist. “In Kyrgyzstan, things change very quickly.”
But a showdown between Japarov and Tashiev would ultimately amount to a contest of personalities, not politics: The two former allies share a similar illiberal vision. With the corruption allegations looming, Tashiev might instead have to face the very security apparatus he built. Though Japarov has not officially announced a reelection bid, in a speech last year he predicted that he would win 90 percent of the vote.
Small pockets of dissent still exist, even in parliament. Last November, Dastan Bekeshev, a long-serving independent member of parliament, won his Bishkek constituency in a landslide. He returned as one of the last critical voices in the legislature—albeit one who speaks of change from within the system and avoids the opposition label.
Bekeshev has downplayed Tashiev’s dismissal. It’s just the country’s latest “turbulence,” not a fundamental change, he said recently on social media. But he acknowledges that troubles can accumulate.
“We often don’t know and don’t value what we have, then when we’ve lost it, we start to cry,” he said in an interview last year. “Now we’re reevaluating those things that were an irritation earlier. It turns out that we do need democracy. We do need freedom.”
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