On September 14, 2018, a video posted on a Kyrgyz music channel on YouTube quickly sparked controversy. The song “Kyz (Girl)” sung by 19-year-old Zere Asylbek kyzy has as its theme respect for women. Its lyrics express Asylbek kyzy’s hope for a better future in which she isn’t told “don’t wear that, don’t do that.”

Nevertheless, most of the negative comments on the video were directed at the clothing worn by her and the other women featured. Asylbek kyzy wore a purple bra, skirt, and jacket, while the other women appeared in a variety of outfits ranging from attire evocative of traditional Kyrgyz and Islamic culture to modern, informal clothing and even bikinis. In response to the strong backlash and heated debate, the Kyrgyz music channel disabled comments on the video. Yet the ratio of likes to dislikes stood at 44% and 56%, respectively, reflecting a public split over the appropriateness of the message Asylbek kyzy sought to spread. What lies behind this controversy?

From Zere Asylbek kyzy’s “Kyz (Girl)” video (Photo: Nick Potts)

A divided public

A similar debate erupted in Kyrgyzstan in July 2016. Billboards showing a woman in traditional dress and a woman wearing a black-and-white niqab (a face-covering veil worn by Muslim women) were put up along the streets. The billboards bore the message, “Poor people, where are we heading?” In other words, the niqab was framed as a Middle Eastern garment and a symbol of a culture imposed from abroad on the Kyrgyz people. Local authorities funded the campaign, and President Almazbek Atambayev also expressed support.

Like “Kyz,” the “Kairan elim” (“Poor people”) campaign sparked a social backlash and split public opinion over the stance conveyed by its message. Opponents of the campaign protested by burning and tearing down the billboards, and some even put up alternative billboards. Those showed a woman in traditional Kyrgyz dress alongside a girl in a miniskirt, with a message claiming that Western culture was being imposed on Kyrgyzstan’s “poor” people.

At first, these debates were about women’s clothing, rights, and freedoms. More fundamentally, however, they reveal deep public rifts over who counts as Kyrgyz, what defines the culture, and where the nation should be heading. Some wish to revive ethnic values and traditions; others seek an identity grounded in a shared religion; still others look for the nation’s future in a contemporary era said to be dominated by Western culture.

These identity questions have become more publicly debated with the spread of mass media technologies. Yet the debates themselves stem from Kyrgyz history—particularly the last century, when the borders of the Kyrgyz Republic were drawn by the Soviet Union and religion was suppressed under communist ideology, and in the history that followed independence from the USSR in the early 1990s. To understand today’s crisis of Kyrgyz identity and the controversies over women’s appearance, it is therefore essential to examine the history of the Kyrgyz people.

Bishkek market (Photo: Jasmine Halki / Flickr [CC BY 2.0])

Kyrgyz identity before Soviet rule

Although Kyrgyzstan’s territory has shrunk since the previous century and the Kyrgyz Republic has been independent for only 27 years, the history of the Kyrgyz people spans more than two millennia. The ancient Kyrgyz were nomads classified among the Turkic peoples, and their religious practices included shamanism, animism, totemism, polytheism, monotheism, and ancestor worship. By origin and language, the Kyrgyz are related to the wider family of Turkic peoples who have spread across Asia and into Europe throughout history.

There is evidence that in ancient Turkic nomadic societies, including among the Kyrgyz, women held high status—indeed, they occupied the highest positions in religious practice. However, with the spread of Islam between the 8th and 12th centuries, women’s status among the Kyrgyz declined. Islamization also changed traditional clothing: instead of hats made of animal fur, women began to wear long scarves that covered the face. In contrast to the Middle Eastern niqab, though, Islamic-style attire in Kyrgyzstan remains bright and colorful even today.

Moreover, owing in part to their nomadic way of life and the resulting religious diversity in Kyrgyz society, pre-Islamic beliefs persisted and Islamic rules and traditions were relatively relaxed. In this period, Kyrgyz identity formed around the degree to which one was tied to particular socio-political groups, language, ethnicity, shared culture, and religion. Because of constant inflows of migrants and periodic rule by different empires, a broader sense of national identity mattered little, if at all, to the Kyrgyz. That changed dramatically with some 70 years of domination of Central Asia by the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union, which reshaped Kyrgyz identity, traditions, norms, and social structures.

Shifting status of women under Soviet rule and the construction of national identity

Since falling under the control of the Russian Empire in the late 19th century, Central Asia remained under Russian and then Soviet rule until the early 1990s. This period saw rapid modernization. Russian culture spread through compulsory education, while religion, nomadic lifestyles, and some of the region’s traditions and norms were suppressed.

When the peoples of Central Asia resisted the Russian Empire and, after the October Revolution of 1917, the Red Army, religion played a special role in uniting them. Recognizing that Central Asia lacked national identities and that Islam could serve as a unifying force, the Communist leadership created new administrative units based on differences in the languages of major indigenous groups. The goal was to divide the population and thereby make rule easier. This ethnolinguistic partition of Central Asia was far from complete, however, because peoples had mixed and coexisted, especially in larger cities. Even so, the partition simplified administration.

As a result of this partition, the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast was established in 1924, effectively fixing Kyrgyzstan’s present borders. It became the Kyrgyz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1926 and, on December 5, 1936, the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic. Under the materialist ideology of the Communist Party, there were campaigns across the USSR to eradicate religion. In Central Asia, Islamic legal and educational institutions were closed, and traditional culture was pushed from the public sphere into the private.

Statue of Lenin in Bishkek (Photo: mauro gambini / Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])

The anti-religion campaigns targeted Central Asian women in particular, because under the Communist system the strictures of Islamic society were ideologically and economically unacceptable. Communist ideology demanded equality in all social spheres, and women were expected to engage in productive labor—something that was economically beneficial. Between 1921 and 1923, laws were enacted banning Islamic practices such as polygamy, kalym (a payment to the bride), and marriages without the bride’s consent, and setting the minimum marriage age at 16 for women and 18 for men. In 1927, emancipation campaigns accelerated, with major efforts to stop Central Asian women from wearing the veil. Women who chose not to wear veils were granted privileges, while the husbands of those who did could face fines or imprisonment.

By the mid-1930s, women fully veiled were rare. Especially in rural areas, even to this day one sees women with brightly colored headscarves. Through communism, propaganda disseminated via the education system and mass media, and the shared experience of World War II, a sense of state identity emerged within the Soviet republics of Central Asia. But this identity was closely tied to the USSR as a whole, and the idea of national independence was not widely shared in Central Asia before the Soviet collapse. For example, in a March 1991 referendum held in the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic, 96.4% voted to preserve the Soviet Union. In other words, Kyrgyzstan’s independence was not the result of a liberation struggle.

Traditional Kyrgyz clothing (Photo: Ninara / Flickr [CC BY 2.0])

Independent Kyrgyzstan and an uncertain future

The sudden independence of the new Kyrgyz state brought a crisis of identity, while also presenting multiple avenues for creating a new national identity. The Soviet Union had bound together different communities through communist ideology, but that ideology had failed. People in Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere in Central Asia were thus forced to answer questions of who they were, what bound them together, and where they should be heading. Answers differed—and sometimes clashed—depending on whether people lived in rural or urban areas, spoke Kyrgyz, Russian, or Uzbek, and whether they were young or old.

To bring people together and ease tensions such as the ethnic clashes in 1990 in Osh (a southern city) between the Kyrgyz majority and Uzbek minority, it was necessary to forge a strong national identity within a new framework. In such circumstances, even the country’s name became contested. While the name means “land of the Kyrgyz,” the loosely drawn borders encompassed other ethnic groups whose identities also had to be considered. Nevertheless, the government advanced nation-building centered on Kyrgyz ethnic heritage. To foreground culture and promote ethnic sports practiced across Central Asia, it launched the World Nomad Games.

Opening ceremony of the World Nomad Games (2008) (Photo: Save the Dream / Flickr [CC BY 2.0])

The government advocates modernization and secularization in Kyrgyzstan, anticipating that adopting an ideology of Islamic revival would invite challenges to its rule and undermine social stability. Among the younger generation, some—like singer Zere Asylbek kyzy—embrace this modernizing direction and further demand gender equality and the freedom to choose their futures. But as long as women are closely tied to national identity, women’s clothing will remain a central point of contention in debates over the desired future of the state.

Writer: Kamil Hamidov

Translation: Ryo Kobayashi

Graphics: Saki Takeuchi

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