by Erhan Dogan, Marmara University (Istanbul, Turkey)
As part of the EU-funded Central Asian Law Project, I spent a total of three months at Taldykurgan University in Kazakhstan between 31.07.2022-30.09.2022 and 19.06.2023-19.07.2023.
When I first flew to Kazakhstan, I was not alone. Our Swiss project partners were also there. I met the Swiss team at Almaty airport. From the airport we went to our hotels. I thought we were in different hotels, but by chance we were in the same hotel. That day we went on a guided tour of the city, led by Prof. Peter Finke from the University of Zurich. I found Almaty to be a well-planned and beautiful city. It is a modern city with lots of cafes, restaurants, beautiful parks and people. Almaty was the first capital of independent Kazakhstan, later the capital was moved to Astana. During the day we bought our local sim cards, saw and explored the Tsum (a shopping mall that you can see in any ex-Soviet city), did a little sightseeing in the city.
At the end of the day, on the recommendation of Peter Finke’s Kazakh student whom we met there, we went to a Lagman restaurant. Lagman is a type of noodle that is part of Uighur cuisine. My choice was “Gurug Lagman”. It was a delicious handmade noodle. It became one of my favourite dishes during my stay in Kazakhstan.
The next day we left for Taldykurgan, the town where our partner university was located. Zhetysu University kindly sent us a minibus to Almaty to take us to Taldykurgan city. It was a hot day. The journey took about three hours. On the way we saw a city full of casinos. The driver introduced the city to us as the Las Vegas of Kazakhstan. The city was Konaev City. After Konaev City we saw an artificial lake and a resort called Kapchagay, which was organised as a kind of holiday resort. We were surprised to see a beach in the middle of the vast Kazakh steppe.
I was impressed by the vastness and emptiness of the steppe between Almaty and Taldykurgan. The area we travelled through was only a small part of Kazakhstan and you can drive for hours without seeing a residential area. I felt the vastness of Kazakhstan on this trip.
After the vast and empty steppe, we suddenly entered a kind of oasis. This is how I can describe what I saw. The steppe was dry and yellowish, but Taldykurgan was an oasis of different shades of green. It was a fertile land.
The university kindly provided us with accommodation in Taldykurgan. They allocated us the ground floor of a student dormitory, which was used as a guest house for visiting researchers. The building, we were later told, was originally built as a five-star hotel. Somehow it was never finished, and by decision of an official authority it was handed over to the university to be used as a student dormitory and guesthouse. The hotel building was huge and impressive. It was right next to an artificial lake. From my balcony I could see the lake. It was so relaxing.
The day after we arrived in Taldkurgan, we went to the university. They showed us our offices and we settled in. During the day we were introduced to the Vice Rector of the University by the Head of the International Office. I must say that the Head of the International Office was a very helpful and professional person. She helped us throughout our stay in Taldykurgan, along with the local project coordinators.
During our stay, we also met the rector of the university. We exchanged ideas on how to develop cooperation between our universities. In addition to the research I did there, I also spent some time developing cooperation between my university and the university in Taldykurgan. Later, I made efforts to sign a Memorandum of Understanding between Marmara University and Zhetysu University. The memorandum was finally signed by both rectors. Now we have a framework through which the two universities would extend their cooperation to the future, exchange students and academic staff.
During my days in Taldykurgan I had a chance to see the surroundings of the city thanks to Prof. Peter Finke and Dr Meltem Sancak. They kindly accepted me to join their excursions in and around the city. I had a chance to see Dovlet Bazaar, I also saw Balpik Bi Bazaar. Seeing bazaars in Central Asia is a great teaching experience. You have the chance to observe the food that people eat, you have the chance to observe the things that they bring to the bazaar to sell. As well as the visible things of everyday life, you also have a chance to see the less visible things that are demanded and sold in the market.
In the following days we were invited to a house party by one of the professors at the university and her husband. They served us the famous Kazak food called “Beshbarmak” (five fingers). This is a dish made from horse meat. It was my first experience of tasting horse-meat. Although the idea of eating horse-meat was foreign to me, I joined the feast, I tasted it. What I can say about this experience is not much, it was a different experience. We were also served some pieces of boiled sheep’s head. I learnt that this was served to the distinguished guests, so it would be unkind not to try it. Again, a very different experience.
The same host also invited us to experience horse riding during the following days. We went to their fields and tried to ride a horse. During this experience I had an accident. This little accident caused some minor health problems like vertigo for the rest of my stay in Kazakhstan. I had some health checks and continued my research with some delays.
My research was mainly about the experiences of Turkish businessmen in Kazakhstan. My research question was simple. This research question required me to conduct interviews with Turkish businessmen. As there were no Turkish businessmen in Taldykurgan, I decided to go to Almaty for a week. Before going there, I corresponded with people there and made some appointments. My first visit was to the Secretary General of the Turkish-Kazakh Business Council. I had a good interview with the Secretary General, and right after the interview I prepared an interview report. While preparing the report I felt a little dizzy, but I did not take it seriously. After this meeting I went to my second meeting. It was with a professor from one of the most prestigious universities in Kazakhstan, KİMEP. After my meeting with the professor from KIMEP, my dizziness increased. I called my doctor and told her about my problem. She asked me to cancel all my appointments and rest. I followed the doctor’s instructions.
Unfortunately, I had to cancel all the interviews I had arranged. For the rest of the week I went to a clinic in Almaty and they checked my problem. They could not find anything serious, but my problems continued for some time.
I returned to Taldykurgan and delivered the rest of my project commitments. While I was staying at the guesthouse, I also had talked to the students who were staying in the dormitory. The young Kazakh students were so nice. They are not so different from our students in Turkey in terms of their attitudes, expectations of life, worries etc.
Before I left Kazakhstan to go back to Turkey, I also planned to spend a week in Almaty. The plan was simple – go back to Almaty, do some interviews and return to Turkey from there.
In Almaty I had two important meetings. One was with a Turkish company that had invested in this country since the early 1990s. I had a chance to interview them. I asked them about their experience. They were very experienced and knowledgeable people. They understood what I wanted to reserach well. They even arranged an interview for me with a local Kazakh law firm that was serving Turkish clients. The interview I had with this law firm was almost a combination of several interviews I would have with different business people there. The representative of the law firm was so experienced and he showed me the outlines of the Turkish businessmen’s experience in Kazakhstan. Of course, these were just the observations of a law firm, not the original perspective of Turkish companies. At the end of my secondment, I returned to my home university in Turkey.
In the summer of 2023, I planned another secondment to Kazakhstan. This was a slightly more mobile secondment where I had the chance to see different parts of Kazakhstan. Again, I flew to Almaty first. After spending a few days there, I moved to Taldykurgan. I split the last week of my secondment between Almaty and Astana. First I went to Almaty. There I had the opportunity to meet one of my PhD students and her family, who are originally from Almaty. I also had the chance to revisit one of the interviewees I had interviewed a year earlier. After Almaty, I flew to Astana.
Astana is a completely different city. It is a newly built city full of monumental buildings. There I had the opportunity to meet some Kazakh doctoral students who had visited Marmara University and took part my classes a few years ago. I also met another PhD student from Gumilov University, for whom I am an external supervisor. I also visited the Turkish Embassy and spoke to the Turkish Ambassador about the business experiences of Turkish businessmen in Kazakhstan. After the ambassador, I visited the commercial attaché of Turkey there and asked him about his experiences about the Turkish businessmen and their adaptation to the business and legal environment in Kazakhstan. They understood my concerns and research topic/questions well. They promised to put me in touch with some Turkish businessmen through whom I could explore the boundaries of my research topic. In my first correspondence with them, they recommended some names. However, these names and companies did not respond positively to me. Astana is a beautiful and vibrant city. I also had the opportunity to meet professors from Gumilov University. We decided to develop new projects for the future.
One last point. The Turkish and Kazakh languages, despite the gap and differences that would make you think that the language barrier is not easy to overcome, are interestingly closer to each other. Throughout my stay, I somehow began to understand what people were saying, and I had also partially conveyed my messages to them. Among my experiences, my communication with the Secretary General of Zhetysu University is worth mentioning. The Secretary General spoke to me in Kazakh and I spoke to him in Turkish, but somehow we understood each other. Of course, the details were lost, but in 3 months nobody will learn another language at this level, was my final conclusion. There is Kazakh in Turkish and Turkish in Kazakh. So if you want to communicate and you use the vocabulary that is closer to the other language, you can to some extent communicate with Kazakhs as a Turk. There are many possible misunderstandings that are unavoidable, but if you like to communicate and if you are ready to communicate in good faith, these misunderstandings would not cause serious problems. This was the most important and sweetest taste I took away from my secondment to Kazakhstan besides the nice and friendly people that I met there.
