Kyrgyzstan’s President Sadyr Japarov says he has the backing of an overwhelming number of the country’s people. In an interview with state news agency Kabar in April 2022, he said: “I know that 80% of the population supports me.”

Isn’t it curious then that since Japarov made that remark the country’s security service claims to have thwarted multiple calls for unrest and three plots to overthrow his government—though there are questions surrounding all three of the alleged coup attempts.

The Islamic extremists

The most recent plot that Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security (GKNB) claims to have foiled involved Islamic extremists.

On July 5, the GKNB said it had detained five people and seized a huge amount of material connected to a coup attempt planned for Kyrgyzstan’s Independence Day, August 31.

The GKNB provided an inventory of the items found in raids on homes and vehicles of the five suspects; 70 weapons, more than 225,000 rounds of ammunition, homemade explosive devices, two drones, 38 bullet-resistant vests, 200 police uniforms, 150 police caps and 100 military caps.

Literature that was reportedly from a religious extremist group or groups was also found.

The GKNB also explained the alleged plot. The group, it said, planned to organise a large horse-racing event on the outskirts of Bishkek for Independence Day and invite top officials to attend. The national security committee did not elaborate on how the suspects hoped to organise such an event and attract high-ranking state officials as spectators.

The venue was to be packed with young people, with the group’s supporters among them, hoping that once they started a riot, some of the young people would join in. They would assassinate the government officials at the horse race and march into the Kyrgyz capital, killing, burning and vandalising along the way. They planned on looting gun stores and shooting clubs to obtain more weapons and ammunition, it was alleged.

Members of the group wearing police and military uniforms would very publicly tear these clothes off and say they were defecting to the protesters/revolutionaries. Amidst the planned chaos on Bishkek’s streets, the group would seize power.

GKNB chief Kamchybek Tashiyev said the security service knew about the group’s plot almost from the beginning and was just waiting until the right moment to move against them.

Tashiyev did not explain why only five people were detained. Considering the amount of weapons and uniforms, there would have to be at least dozens of people the five suspects were hoping to involve in their overthrow of the government.

The GKNB chief mentioned that the religious extremists also had ties to organised criminal groups and said the group wanted to invite unnamed opposition leaders to join them as they marched through Bishkek.

The People’s Council plot

The alleged coup plot of the Eldik Kenesh (People’s Council) remains a mysterious thing to this day, simply because officials have never provided much information.

On June 5, 2023, the GKNB said it detained 30 people who were preparing a “violent seizure of power.”

They were from the little-known Eldik Kenesh Party and their plan boiled down to creating mass unrest and then taking advantage of the chaos to seize power.

To accomplish this goal, they had apparently enlisted some 100 people “from various social strata in different regions” around Kyrgyzstan.

Kyrgyzstan’s population amounts to more than 7mn people. It was unclear how these 100 people planned to incite large crowds to overthrow Japarov’s administration.

Security chief Kamchybek Tashiyev is usually first to announce a twist in the latest plot (Credit: Kamchybek Tashiyev Facebook page).

Party leader Roza Nurmatova, born in 1959 and, according to reports, a supporter of the president and GKNB chief Tashiyev, was among the detained.

The group allegedly had foreign financial backing for their plan, though it was never revealed who those foreigner supporters were. There was no mention that Eldik Kenesh had acquired any weapons.

More than one year later, the Eldik Kenesh suspects remain in custody, but the entire incident seems to have been largely forgotten in Kyrgyzstan.

The mainstream opposition

The biggest challenge to Japarov’s government came in autumn 2022, though it was by no means clear that it was a coup attempt.

A group of opposition figures – politicians, activists, and journalists – formed the Committee to Protect the Kempir-Abad Reservoir.

The reservoir is located along the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border. In autumn 2022, Kyrgyz and Uzbek officials were close to agreement on the demarcation of their common border in the area around the reservoir. Tashiyev finally stated publicly in early October 2022 that Kyrgyzstan would cede the reservoir in exchange for large tracts of disputed territory.

The decision was unpopular with many in Kyrgyzstan, especially those people living in the reservoir area. Tashiyev’s announcement came after the September 2022 Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border conflict. The showdown meant it was the second straight year that the two countries’ militaries had clashed using heavy machine guns, armoured vehicles and artillery.

Tajik forces crossed into Kyrgyz territory in both late April 2021 and mid-September 2022. Images in the media of more than 100,000 Kyrgyz citizens fleeing the Tajik border area in cars in September 2022 caused many people in Kyrgyzstan to wonder about their government’s ability to mediate border issues.

This dissatisfaction offered political opponents of Japarov an opportunity to challenge the president on an issue sure to gain them some popular support. These opponents formed their committee on October 22, 2022, and the next day Bishkek police raided homes and detained more than 20 people.

Eventually, 27 people from the Kempir-Abad committee were taken into custody on suspicion of plotting to foment mass unrest.

Among them were some of the country’s leading politicians, such as Reforma Party leader Klara Sooronkulova, former parliamentary deputy Ravshan Jeenbekov, former prosecutor general Azimbek Beknazarov, and former GKNB chief Keneshbek Duyshebayev, and some leading rights activists, including Rita Karasartova.

Investigators did not elaborate on how the group intended to spark mass unrest or what their plans were for after the unrest started. The prosecutor general’s office asked the court to sentence all the suspects to 20 years in prison.

On June 14, nearly 20 months after they were detained, a Bishkek court surprisingly acquitted all the defendants.

Admittedly, during the time the committee members were incarcerated, the charge of plotting to incite mass unrest had been so liberally used by police and the GKNB that it no longer seemed very threatening.

When activist Aftandil Zhorobekov called for a car rally to protest plans to make alterations to the national flag design, he was arrested and charged with calling for mass unrest.

Just a few days before the Kempir-Abad detainees were acquitted, two people were detained in Kyrgyzstan’s northeastern Issyk-Kul Province for calling for mass unrest. The pair were dairy farmers who called on people in a WhatsApp group to block roads and waylay dairy trucks to protest a government-ordered reduction of milk prices.

Japarov and Tashiyev have been effective in neutralising political opposition. They came to power after the late 2020 revolution. There were also revolutions in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and 2010. Each ousted a government. So the fear of being overthrown certainly hangs over any Kyrgyz government.

The question to ask is clear: Is the strengthened police and GKNB security proving effective at detecting plots against the government, or is the Japarov administration exaggerating or fabricating coup conspiracies in order to justify using the police and the GKNB to crack down on potential dissent and stay in power?