Why Is Tashkent Reluctant to Reconnect with Ethnic Uzbeks Abroad?

Apart from 29 million Uzbeks living in Uzbekistan, there are almost 3 million ethnic Uzbeks in neighboring Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, and another 2 to 4 million ethnic Uzbeks in Afghanistan, making Uzbeks the most populous ethnic group in Central Asia.

Yet, Tashkent has never actively pursued kin-state politics.

Political scientist Dr. Myra A. Waterbury defines a kin-state as “a state that represents the majority nation of a transborder ethnic group whose members reside in neighboring territories.” Kin-minorities or national/external-minorities are groups that share a culture with the majority group that a kin-state represents.

Kin-states usually try to establish close ties with their ethnic minorities abroad and this activism tends to target two groups. “Minorities by will” are made up of ethnic diasporas formed through migration and usually live far from their homeland, for example, Armenians or Turks in Germany. “Minorities by force” refers to transborder ethnic communities.

Sociologist Rogers Brubaker calls these minorities “accidental diaspora” as they accidentally became minority groups following the disintegration of the larger political entities in which they lived: the Habsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman Empires, for example, and later the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. Those groups used to be part of “multinational political structures” and suddenly found themselves separated from the groups they feel they share a common culture and identity with.