Kyrgyzstan's politics: a presidency rebuilt after parliament's decade

What the current constitution gives the president

Article 89 of the constitution approved in April 2021 says it in one line: executive power in the Kyrgyz Republic is exercised by the president. The president decides the structure and composition of the Cabinet of Ministers, presides at its meetings, gives it instructions, can cancel its acts and is personally responsible for its results. The chairman of the cabinet is at the same time head of the Presidential Administration, and the president appoints the chairman, the deputies and the ministers with the consent of the Jogorku Kenesh.

The president is elected directly for five years and may not be elected for more than two terms. A candidate must be at least 35, speak the state language, have lived in the republic for at least 15 years in total, present a national development programme and gather at least 30,000 signatures. Removal is hard by design: a charge needs a two-thirds vote of all deputies, initiated by at least half of them, and the conclusions of a special commission, the Prosecutor General and the Constitutional Court.

The design reversed the one before it. The constitution approved in June 2010 after the April revolution had moved power to an expanded parliament, limited the president to a single six-year term and capped any one party at 65 of the 120 seats. The text of 2021 went the other way, and Britannica describes it as returning the country to a presidential system and reversing the expanded parliament. Critics called it the Khanstitution, the Wikipedia country article records. Freedom House, in its 2025 report, says the changes concentrated political power in the presidency and reduced the size and role of the parliament.

How the Jogorku Kenesh has changed shape

The legislature has been rebuilt with almost every constitutional change since the Soviet era, and its size is a running record of the swings between president and parliament.

The Wikipedia histories describe the two chambers of 1995 differently: the history article counts a 35-seat full-time assembly and a 70-seat part-time one, the politics article 45 and 60 seats. Both add up to 105. The October 1994 referendum that created the two-chamber Jogorku Kenesh also allowed the constitution to be amended by referendum, and referendums have reshaped it repeatedly since: amendments in February 1996, October 1998, February 2003 and October 2007, new constitutions in June 2010 and April 2021, and a vote on the form of government in January 2021.

The constitution of 2021 fixes the chamber at 90 deputies elected for five years. A deputy must be at least 25, can be recalled under a constitutional law, and can be prosecuted only with the consent of a majority of all deputies unless caught in the act.

How are deputies elected under the new law

The electoral law was amended on 9 June 2025, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and the early parliamentary elections of 30 November 2025 were the first held under it. The country is divided into 30 constituencies, each electing three deputies. The three candidates with the most votes win, on condition that no more than two of a constituency's seats go to candidates of the same sex, which guarantees each sex at least 30 of the 90 seats. Parties must keep either sex to no more than 70% of their candidates, and at least 15% of the candidates on party lists must be younger than 35.

The effect showed at once. The IPU recorded 20 women among the 90 deputies in December 2024 and 30 in February 2026, a share of 33.3%. The average age of deputies at the 2025 election was 46.3.

The OSCE's election office, ODIHR, deployed an observation mission for the November vote at the invitation of the Central Commission for Elections and Referenda, with a core team of 12 experts from 11 participating states in Bishkek and 30 long-term observers across the country. It issued its statement of preliminary findings on 1 December 2025.

Turnout has been the weak point of recent votes. Britannica notes that turnout in 2021 was consistently below 40%, much lower than in previous years, and that the November 2021 parliamentary election gave a firm majority to the president's allies.

Which parties have held the Jogorku Kenesh

Parties counted for little in the first decade. Britannica records that the Communist Party of Kirghiziya turned itself into the People's Democratic Party as the Soviet Union collapsed and lost influence, and that under Akayev parties stayed marginal, partly because dozens of them proliferated and partly because of obstacles that kept them from gaining ground. Informal groups such as Ashar, meaning solidarity, did more to open the process.

The switch to party lists changed that. Bakiyev's Ak Zhol became the first party to hold a majority, winning nearly four-fifths of the enlarged parliament at the December 2007 election, which local and international observers criticised for bought votes and excluded candidates. After 2010 the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan, founded in 1993, dominated, but by the end of the 2010s infighting had split it into several factions. In the October 2010 election five parties passed the 5% threshold; in October 2020 four passed a threshold of 7%, three of them close to the government, and the result was annulled after protests.

What are the People's Kurultai and the elders' courts

Two institutions in the 2021 text take their names from older Kyrgyz practice. Article 7 makes the People's Kurultai a public representative assembly, deliberative and supervisory, which makes recommendations on social development. It can propose the dismissal of members of the cabinet, the president addresses it each year alongside the parliament, and it sends representatives to the Council of Justice, the body that selects judges. Britannica describes it as a separate body of delegates that presents recommendations to the president and the legislature, chosen by a procedure set in law.

The constitution also gives citizens the right to set up aksakals' courts, courts of elders that hear cases with the aim of reconciling the parties. Their decisions can be appealed, and they are financed from local budgets. The Wikipedia politics article describes elders' courts hearing property and family disputes and low-level criminal cases under loose supervision by the prosecutor's office.

The formal courts are headed by the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court. Their judges are elected by the Jogorku Kenesh on the president's submission, from candidates the Council of Justice nominates; at least two thirds of that council are judges. Britannica also names a Supreme Economic Court for commercial cases.

How are the regions governed

Kyrgyzstan is a unitary state of seven regions: Batken, Chüy, Issyk-Kul, Jalal-Abad, Naryn, Osh and Talas. Bishkek and Osh are cities of national significance outside any region. The regions are divided into 44 districts. Each region is headed by an akim, a governor appointed by the president, and district akims are appointed by the regional ones. Local councils, called keneshes, are elected, and the president schedules their elections and may dissolve them in cases the law sets out.

What do outside observers say about rights

Freedom House rated Kyrgyzstan Not Free in its 2025 report, with 26 points out of 100: 4 of 40 for political rights and 22 of 60 for civil liberties, down from 27 the year before. It gave zero points out of four for judicial independence and for due process. Its report for 2024 records a law signed in April of that year requiring NGOs with foreign funding that engage in vaguely defined political activities to register as foreign representatives, after which many groups closed down rather than register. In July 2024 the Supreme Court upheld a 2023 order to shut the investigative outlet Kloop, and in October four journalists linked to the exiled reporter Bolot Temirov were convicted of inciting unrest.

The same report notes a mob attack on an international student dormitory in Bishkek in May 2024, after which 41 people reportedly sought medical attention.

Who does Kyrgyzstan stand with abroad

Kyrgyzstan belongs to both the Russian-led groupings and the wider Eurasian ones. It is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union, which it entered as a full member in 2015 after abolishing customs controls on the Kazakh border. It also belongs to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Organization of Turkic States and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and it joined the World Trade Organization in December 1998.

Military ties have shifted with that balance. In 2001 the government let US and allied forces set up a base at Manas airport for operations in Afghanistan; parliament voted in 2013 to end the lease and US forces left in July 2014. A Russian air base was set up in 2003 to support a CIS rapid reaction force, and its lease was renewed in 2012 for 15 years. After the April 2010 revolution, the Wikipedia account records, a member of the interim government said that Russia had played its role in removing the president, while a White House adviser said the change of power was neither anti-American nor a Russian-backed coup.

How was the border with Tajikistan settled

The border with Tajikistan in the Fergana Valley had been contested since independence, along Soviet-era lines that left enclaves and disputed villages. Clashes over land, roads and water recurred, and two were heavy. In spring 2021 fighting killed 55 people and injured nearly 300, the Eurasian Research Institute reports, citing Asia-Plus. In September 2022 the institute counts around 100 dead; the CACI Analyst gives more than 100 dead and over 100,000 Kyrgyz citizens forced from their homes. Human Rights Watch found apparent war crimes by both sides in 2022.

Talks resumed late in 2022, and the delimitation was completed in early December 2024. The presidents of the two countries signed a treaty on the state border in Bishkek on 13 March 2025, the Kyrgyz parliament ratified it on 19 March, and instruments of ratification were exchanged in Khujand on 31 March. The same day the presidents of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan agreed the point where their three borders meet.

The sources give the length of the border differently: 972 kilometres in the CACI Analyst, 1,006.84 kilometres in the Eurasian Research Institute paper and 984 kilometres in the Wikipedia geography article. According to the head of the State Committee for National Security, speaking to parliament on 27 February 2025, each side received 190 hectares in the exchange of land. Human Rights Watch reported, citing media, that the Kyrgyz village of Dostuk would pass to Tajikistan and its residents would be moved and given extra land, and that the treaty provides for shared management of water and bans drones and heavy military equipment along the line. The CACI Analyst criticised the secrecy of the talks and the sidelining of parliamentary debate and civil society, and Freedom House notes that a similar border deal with Uzbekistan in 2022 had led to protests and the arrest of leading activists.