Carnegie Politika: What’s Behind Kazakhstan’s Purges and Proposed Parliamentary Reforms?

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev may still have four years left as president of Kazakhstan, but discussions about a possible power transfer have already begun in earnest. The trigger was Tokayev’s proposal to abolish Kazakhstan’s upper chamber of parliament (the Senate) and strengthen the lower chamber (the Mazhilis). Many interpreted this as Tokayev beginning to prepare the ground for a move from the presidency to be speaker of a beefed-up parliament.

For the moment, it’s unclear who would succeed Tokayev as president—not least because anyone seen as a possible successor tends to fall out of favor as Tokayev moves to ensure that speculation about a power transition does not get out of hand.

In his annual state-of-the-nation address on September 8, 2025, Tokayev proposed a unicameral parliamentary system that would be put to a referendum in 2027. He said the aim was to strengthen the legislative branch and move away from a hyper-presidential system. This was the approach he promised to prioritize following deadly protests in 2022 caused in part by anger about the seemingly endless rule and ever-expanding powers of Nursultan Nazarbayev, Tokayev’s predecessor.

In some ways, the suggestion is a surprising one: Tokayev himself was Senate speaker for almost ten years, and it was this post that gave him a platform to become president. To this day, according to the constitution, Kazakhstan’s Senate speaker is the official who becomes acting president if the incumbent president is unable to perform their duties.

Nevertheless, Tokayev now argues that the upper chamber is no longer needed. He says that in the years after Kazakhstan’s declaration of independence in 1991—when the Senate was made up of representatives from Kazakh regions—it had helped maintain a balance between different parts of the country and solidify loyalty to the center. However, he asserts that now Kazakhstan is stable, and the interests of different regions are adequately represented in the Mazhilis.

There was little public reaction to Tokayev’s proposal. Many Kazakhs see the Senate as neither powerful nor independent, and some believe it is a relic of the Nazarbayev era, ripe for abolition amid the ongoing dismantling of the old regime.

Some officials have characterized increasing the powers of the Mazhilis as a step toward democratization. This is unlikely, though, to be the reason for Tokayev’s proposal. The system Tokayev wants to create is one in which Mazhilis deputies are only elected via party lists. But all of Kazakhstan’s political parties are controlled by the authorities, and an end to single-mandate districts and more independent candidates will only strengthen the executive branch’s hold.

In reality, the Mazhilis will only become more powerful if Tokayev takes up the role of speaker when his presidential term ends. This is exactly how many in Kazakhstan interpreted the unicameral reform proposal. After all, Tokayev’s own amendments to the constitution stipulate he must step down in 2029 at the end of his seven-year term. And becoming Senate speaker would be a way for him to avoid Nazarbayev’s mistake of basing his attempted power transition around powerful individuals, rather than institutions. In this way, Tokayev could—on paper—honor his promise to stop being president, while also retaining all his political influence.

It’s true that there are still four years before Tokayev’s presidential term ends, and the situation in Kazakhstan could change dramatically. The history of Nazarbayev’s attempted power transfer shows that even the best-laid plans can go awry (when Nazarbayev made Tokayev president in 2019, he thought he would remain the power behind the throne, but that arrangement was undone by the 2022 protests).

Of course, if Tokayev wants to remain in charge after 2029, he could simply change the constitution and scrap the presidential term limit. After all, his control of Kazakhstan’s political system has strengthened in recent years through growing pressure on journalists, the prosecution of anti-regime activists, independent parties being denied registration, and the banning of demonstrations. Despite Tokayev’s image as a reformer, he has no intention of carrying out real reforms.

However, such a crude approach would be out of sync with Tokayev’s reformist image, which deliberately contrasts with Nazarbayev’s cult of personality. Since coming to power, Tokayev has tried to position himself as a rational and moderate leader who will not cling on to power.

Whatever Tokayev’s exact plans, his likely departure from the presidency in 2029 has prompted growing speculation about a successor. In order to nip this talk in the bud and ensure no credible challengers emerge, Tokayev regularly purges his inner circle. Notably, he fired Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Murat Nurtleu, one of his closest allies, in September. The two men had worked together since the early 2000s, and there was speculation Nurtleu could have been anointed by Tokayev as his successor.

Theories abound for why Nurtleu was fired, including that he was involved in illegally importing goods from China, or that he was behind the 2024 murder of opposition journalist Aidos Sadyqov. No official reason for his departure has been forthcoming, but it’s clear Nurtleu’s exit was needed to ease regime tension and halt speculation about the succession. His removal follows a string of similar dismissals, with Tokayev replacing the defense minister, several presidential advisors, governors, and others over the last year.

All of this reveals Tokayev’s attempts to ensure influential individuals cannot build alternative power centers in the run-up to 2029. While it’s possible he thinks this will help change Kazakhstan’s political culture into one where institutions are more important than individuals, his methods bear the hallmarks of Kazakh authoritarianism: the proposed changes are opaque and are being imposed from above without any real public discussion. Democratic renewal, therefore, is a distant prospect. The Kazakh system traditionally revolves around one person, and it remains unlikely to become one in which institutions—rather than personalities and successors—play a decisive role.