37Received 04.02.2025. Revised 03.06.2025. Accepted 01.09.2025.
Abstract. After gaining independence, Uzbekistan faced a choice of identity. In the 1990s, several identities competed in the republic: Islamic, secular, Soviet, Turkic, and Uzbek. In the end, Karimov’s version of “moderate” Uzbek nationalism prevailed. It should be emphasized that identity in Uzbekistan is inextricably linked to foreign policy and the international situation as well as the will of the country’s president. All these factors combined have left their mark on identity politics in Uzbekistan. In the 1990s, the authorities of the republic fought and ignored the Islamic and, partly, Turkic identities, but in the second half of the 2010s, they allowed discussions and academic articles on Turkism into the public space. The second president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, changed the situation in identity politics. Since 2016, along with the Uzbek identity, a certain vague meta-identity – the Turkic one – has been developing. Turkishness in Uzbekistan is inseparable from the foreign policy ambitions of local elites and the president’s international agenda. It has existed between “spectacle nationalism” and “spectacular state”. Turkishness as a strategy in foreign policy, as a historical past, and as an identity policy performs certain functions. It is not a way of life or a style of thinking of common people, it is a kind of strategy in Uzbekistan’s foreign policy to increase trade and tourism potential of the republic. Turkishness in Uzbekistan is understood as a kind of a lost form of the historical consciousness of the population. It is intended to replace Sovietism and Islamism at an accelerated pace and create the ideological basis for over-strengthening the role of the state in identity politics. The article is based on the ideas of Marlene Laruelle on the connection of identity with foreign policy, Mary Kaldor on “spectacle nationalism”, and Laura Adams on “spectacular state”.
Keywords: identity, Turkishness, Uzbekistan, Organization of Turkic States (OTS), nationalism, Islamism, “spectacular state”
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