CURRENT AFFAIRS

Detailed explanation-1: -On 16 July 1999, Astana was awarded the medal and title of the City of Peace by UNESCO. In March 2019, the Kazakhstani government renamed the city Nur-Sultan to honour the country’s outgoing long-term authoritarian president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Detailed explanation-2: -Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has agreed to restore the former name of the country’s capital just three years after he renamed it in honour of his predecessor, his spokesperson said.

Detailed explanation-3: -ALMATY, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Kazakhstan’s parliament renamed the Central Asian nation’s capital from Nur-Sultan to Astana on Friday, the latest move by government officials and politicians to distance themselves from the former Soviet republic’s first president.

Detailed explanation-4: -By 2006, Kazakhstan was generating 60 percent of the GDP of Central Asia, primarily through its oil industry. In 1997, the government moved the capital to Astana, renamed Nur-Sultan on 23 March 2019, from Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, where it had been established under the Soviet Union.

Detailed explanation-5: -The city was called Akmola between 1992 and 1998. At the initiative of then President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Kazakh capital was moved from Almaty to Akmola in December 1997. Akmola was renamed Astana (which means the capital in Kazakh) in May 1998.