Such a conclusion was made by the authors of the report “ISIS: threat for the Central Asia and Caspian region”. The report was based on the results of a long-term monitoring of the activities of the Islamist terroristic organizations in Central Asia and Caspian region carried out within the frameworks of the project entitled “Central Asia: evaluation of risks of the Caspian region security”.
According to the experts, the point diffused by Russian media concerning Russian-speaking people of the Central Asia leaving the region due to oppressions on the basis of the linguistic and civilian peculiarities has nothing in common with the reality. Sociological surveys attested that the most part of Turkmens having obtained Russian second citizenship leave the country due to increased terrorist threat on the part of Islamist radical organizations operating in the region and having sworn allegiance to ISIS (because of Russia’s bombings that lead to numerous civilian victims).
Only 20% of the respondents affirmed that they moved due to bipatrides problem. Another 5% motivated their decision by the absence of possibility for the Russian-speaking contingent to get job in the public sector and absence of education in Russian. About 12.3% motivated their migration by the house registration problems. And 1.9% preferred not to indicate the reason at all. For the rest of respondents the threat emanating from the terrorist attacks committed by ISIS affiliated organizations. These people have described the terrorist threat as the biggest obstacle for their further stay in the country. The declarations of the Russian experts of oppression of the Russian-speaking population of the country are assessed as exaggerated. The respondents point out that they apprehend the acts of revenge from the side of ISIS and other Muslim extremists similar to the case in Moscow where a babysitter killed a child seeking to revenge on the President Vladimir Putin for the death of Syrian children. Newcomers from the Turkmenistan point out the other potential reason of the terrorist attacks which is oppression of the Muslims in the Russian Federation including in annexed Crimea. The arrests of the Crimean Tatar activists and forced migration of the Turkish population from the occupied Ukrainian territory to Turkey may have spawned a wave of violence against Russian public officers in Turkmenistan. Dynamic migration of the representatives of this social stratum has induced a collapse of the housing market of the Republic. The survey was carried out on 10-24 February 2016 among the bipatrides having left the country.
Somewhat similar situation is being observed in the other countries of the region. Thus the experts from “Global Security” have noticed a grave intensification of the migrants’ flow of the social category from such countries as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan and even from the friendly to Russia Kyrgyzstan. As far as analytics concerned political stability in Kyrgyzstan praised by the Moscow analytics and the chairman of the analytical center of the Moscow national international relations university Andrei Kazancev in particular is being greatly exaggerated. In terms of impact of the radical Islamic groups it is the position of the state’s pro-Russian officials and namely their position in respect of Russia’s participation in Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts that constitutes the major problem. In Kyrgyzstan there is a tendency emerging within Russian-speaking minorities to split people on grounds of linguistic and national identity.