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Kazakhstan will not change its name to get rid of the “stan” ending, the country’s Foreign Minister Yerlan Idrissov said in a recent interview for Spain’s La Vanguardia.
When asked if Kazakhstan would change its name to be more distinguishable from the other Central Asia states, the Minister labeled such speculations as “media tricks”. “They shouldn’t be taken seriously. Kazakhstan will remain Kazakhstan, to a greater extent with each coming year”, the Minister said, emphasizing that the nation seeks to strengthen its international image and enter the club of the top 30 nations in the world.
The Minister also said the nation sought to be the bridge between Europe and Asia. “The Eurasian Economic Union has all the prerequisites to be a bridge between Europe and Asia. One of the prerequisites is the recent agreement among Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus to build a common market to facilitate free movement of goods, services, workforce, and capital”.
Minister Idrissov expressed the opinion that the EXPO-2017 “would be a global platform to showcase new technologies related to sources of energy”.
Early February 14 Tengrinews.kz cited Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev as saying the possible change of the country’s name should be publicly discussed.
“Kazakhstan has the “stan” ending like many other nations of Central Asia. Foreigners are showing interest in Mongolia, whose population only stands at 2 million people [as compared to almost 17 million in Kazakhstan].
Mongolia has no “stan” ending in its name. Maybe we should consider renaming Kazakhstan into Kazakh Eli [Kazakh version for Kazakh People]; however, such a change must be publicly discussed to know the opinions of common people”, he said when attending a school in Atyrau in the West of Kazakhstan.
