Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has agreed to restore the former name of the country’s capital just three years after he renamed it in honour of his predecessor, his spokesperson said.
Tokayev’s spokesman, Ruslan Zheliban, said the president agreed to the name change after an initiative by a group of MPs.
One of Tokayev’s first moves upon taking office in 2019 after president Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped down was to call for Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, to be dubbed Nur-Sultan instead.
Nazarbayev, who led the country for three decades under the Soviet Union and after it gained independence in 1991, relocated the capital from Almaty to Astana in 1997. The move was widely questioned because of the city’s relative isolation in the northern steppes and notoriously frigid winters in which temperatures plunge as low as -51C (-60F).
He made the city into a showplace of gaudy architecture, including an observation tower where visitors can place their hands in a print of Nazarbayev’s.
After he stepped down, Nazarbayev retained enormous influence as head of the county’s ruling party and security council. But Tokayev removed him from those posts after deadly unrest in January that hinged partly on dissatisfaction with the power that Nazarbayev still wielded.
In June, Kazakhs overwhelmingly voted for constitutional changes in a referendum after unrest ended Nazarbayev’s three-decade grip on central Asia’s richest country.
The January bloodshed, which grew out of peaceful protests over a spike in car fuel prices, left more than 230 people dead and prompted authorities to call in troops from a Russia-led security bloc.
Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
