DOMESTIC POLITICAL RISKS IN THE CENTRAL ASIAN COUNTRIES AND THEIR CONNECTION WITH EXTERNAL PRESSURES

Abstract

Domestic political risks in Central Asian countries are growing and interconnected with the external pressures imposed by the big powers and regional actors. Since their independence in the early 1990s, these states – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – have maintained the policies of regime concentration, national identity making, and socio-economic trans-formations. However, their internal political orientations were fragile due to weak institutions, long authoritarian influences, corruption, limited metropolitan room, and repeated socio-economic imbal-ances. These risks not only create domestic instability but also make Central Asia more exposed to the impact of outside factors. International rivalry, particularly between the United States, Russia, and China, alongside regional actors such as Turkey, Iran, and the European Union, has increased the foreign-dimensional aspects of domestic threats.
The linkage between internal risks and external tension is particularly witnessed in several areas: regime security, where leaders’ dependence on foreign actors for authenticity and existence encourages policy compromises; socio-economic threats, where depending on remittances, foreign investment, and export markets generates vulnerabilities; security risks, where regional instability — such as terrorism, extremism, or the spillover from Afghanistan — intersects with the geopolitical order of business of external actors. These overlapping dynamics create a cycle in which external constraints add to internal vulnerability, while internal fragility attracts deeper foreign interventions and probing into the region’s political and economic life.
This article argues that understanding Central Asia’s domestic political threats cannot be de-tached from the comprehensive geopolitical environment. The originality of this study lies in explor-ing how internal fragility and external influence reinforce one another, producing hybrid risks that undermine sovereignty, weaken state institutions, and complicated regional stability. The article showcases how Central Asian states at once resist and accommodate the tensions, disclosing a con-tradictory impression of both exposure and strength. The findings suggest that unless the internal structures of these countries are not strong, expand their external relations, and improve socio-eco-nomic inclusiveness, the circle of need and unreliability will continue.