President Mirziyoyev’s Pivot to Central Asian Cooperation: Progress Made over Two Years
Uzbekistan, which shares common borders with all the Central Asian states and Afghanistan, has become a key trendsetter in the region during the past two years. Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who came to power after the death of the country’s first president, Islam Karimov, in August 2016 and won the election in December 2016, is the driving force of Uzbekistan’s pivot towards Central Asia. From the onset, he has taken decisive and concrete steps to develop mutually beneficial relations with the Central Asian neighbors and made the region the main priority of Uzbekistan’s foreign policy.
Albina Muratbekova
Senior Research fellow
Dr.Albina Muratbekova is a research fellow of the Eurasian Research Institute at H.A.Yassawi Kazakh Turkish International University. Albina holds a PhD degree in Oriental Studies from Al Farabi Kazakh National University. She was a Fellow of the EUCACIS PhD support programme, Fudan Fellow 2017, a visiting student of the Cambridge Central Asia Forum at the University of Cambridge along with being an exchange student at Lanzhou University. Previously, she had worked at the international departments of Narxoz and AlmaU universities on the implementation of the internationalization strategy of th