FEB. 11 2021 (The Bulletin) —  Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, the new boy in the Central Asia and South Caucasus leaders’ club, is playing portrait politics. He told officials this week that he didn’t want to see any fawning portraits of himself in their offices, in businesses around the country, schools or universities.

Japarov is keen to frame himself as a man of the people and he has clearly decided that the age-old custom of hanging portraits of the leader in offices is not something that he wants to go in for. 

But it is not as if his predecessor indulged it much, either. Sooronbai Jeenbekov, who Japarov deposed in a coup in October, appeared more modest than most of his Central Asian contemporaries and very few offices carried portraits of him.

The politics of the presidential portrait is one worth considering in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. It is a gauge of personality cults and how the elite want to project their legitimacy and, dare I say it, primacy over ordinary people.

In Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev is still the only portrait hung in offices and official buildings. He is everywhere. His successor Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is nowhere and very much plays the role of appointed official to Nazarbayev’s First President of the Nation act. For Nazarbayev, his legacy based on building modern-day Kazakhstan is central to his self-image. And the portraits, as well as statues and the renamed capital city, reinforce this message.

In Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, leaders’ portraits are ubiquitous too. In Uzbekistan, based on pre-Soviet Khanate tradition, it is the custom to promote the image of the leader. In Tajikistan and Turkmenistan it is a different story. Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon and Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov are busy building dynasties. Both men are grooming their sons as heirs and this requires legitimacy. Hence the portraits, reinforcing their self-styled images as the embodiment of the nation.

Azerbaijan has already established dynastic rule. Ilham Aliyev took over from his father, Heydar, in 2003 and he is careful to remind ordinary people of this dynastic legitimacy by encouraging offices to hang both his portrait and the portrait of his father on the wall.

As for Armenia and Georgia, the leaders eschew portraits. They are also, the least stable countries in the region, other than Kyrgyzstan.

— ENDS

— This story was first published in issue 471 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021