Kyrgyz special services announced the disclosure of a conspiracy to seize power

The State Committee for National Security (GKNB) of Kyrgyzstan detained more than 30 people who were allegedly preparing to seize power by force. Five of them, including the chairman of the Eldik Kenesh party, Roza Nurmatova, were placed in a temporary detention facility, the 24.kg portal reported on June 6, citing the press center of the Kyrgyz special services. On the eve of June 5, footage of the detention of probable conspirators in one of the private houses appeared in the Kyrgyz segment of social networks. A little later, the State Committee for National Security provided an audio recording of the telephone conversations of the detainees. On the same day, the press secretary of President Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Peskov, said that “the Russian authorities are closely monitoring incoming reports of an attempted coup” in the Central Asian republic.

In total, according to the State Committee for National Security, the organized group included more than 100 people across the country, the roles between which were distributed in advance. “This criminal group throughout the year purposefully recruited supporters into its ranks and recruited the most disgruntled citizens across the country. The organizer and ideological inspirer is a civil activist and chairman of the Eldik Kenesh political party, the agency said in a statement. According to the Kyrgyz secret services, Nurmatova regularly held meetings with her supporters, “ideologically manipulated them” and prepared a plan to seize power.

The department added that the suspects were supposed to receive money from foreign sources in the near future, and then they intended to overthrow the government, taking advantage of public discontent “on some issue.” All the detainees, according to the security forces, confessed, and “the seized material evidence confirms their criminal intentions.” At the same time, the department did not specify what evidence they seized.

According to the Central Election Commission of Kyrgyzstan, the Eldik Kenesh party was registered on July 4, 2008 and re-registered on May 21, 2010. For 13 years, the party and its representatives have not taken part in local or republican elections. Eldik Kenesh attempted to register for the parliamentary elections in 2020, but did not go through the procedure due to the fact that they did not pay the electoral deposit. One of the program guidelines of the party is the return of the constitution of 1993 to Kyrgyzstan and the restriction of “the unlimited power of the head of state.”

Party leader Nurmatova also runs the public charitable foundation AvaZar. In 2005, she worked as the head of the government’s social policy department. Two years later, she participated in the parliamentary elections from the Asaba Revival Party, but could not be elected. In the presidential elections of 2011, she was one of the representatives of the candidate of the current head of the State Committee for National Security, Kamchybek Tashiev, who subsequently took 3rd place, gaining 14.3% of the vote. A year later, she also led the headquarters of the Ata Zhurt nationalist party of the same Tashiev. Nurmatova took an active part in the rallies in October 2012, as a result of which the current president Sadyr Japarov and Tashiev were detained and convicted under the article “forcible seizure of power.” Then Nurmatova called it “political persecution.” They were released under pressure from protesters after another revolution in October 2020, which resulted in the resignation of then-president Sooronbai Jeenbekov.

At the end of March, at one of the round tables, Nurmatova criticized the imposition of “Western values ​​on Kyrgyzstan – the cultivation of same-sex marriages, gender reassignment (transgenderism), asexuality and bestiality.” At the same time, she called herself a “Soviet person.”

The information provided by the authorities about an allegedly impending coup in Kyrgyzstan does not inspire confidence, Stanislav Pritchin, a senior researcher at the Center for Post-Soviet Studies at the IMEMO RAS, believes. “Although Nurmatova worked in the government in the past and was actually a confidant of the incumbent president, she is not a figure who could pose a threat to the political regime: her political weight in the republic is extremely insignificant. The names of major political figures or oligarchs are also not named. Perhaps in this way the authorities are getting ahead of the curve and trying to intimidate the opposition,” the expert believes.

By such actions, the authorities probably want to completely clear the political field from opposition figures in parliament in the future, continues the Kyrgyz political scientist Mars Sariev. First of all, we can talk about a possible attempt to link the leader of the opposition center-right party Butun Kyrgyzstan Adakhan Madumarov or a prominent deputy from the Alliance party Zhanarbek Akaev to the conspiracy, the expert believes. In the last parliamentary elections in 2021, their parties received six seats out of 90 in parliament. Then the Ata-Jurt party won the majority of seats in the legislative body – 15 seats. “I doubt that they can be involved in these events: these politicians are extremely cautious and have never crossed a dangerous line. On the other hand, in Kyrgyzstan, after the events of 2020, the political field has long been sterile,” the expert concluded.