Kurmanbek Bakiev is one of the most famous political figures of Kyrgyzstan of our time. He was able to come to power thanks to one revolution, but lost it as a result of another. Nevertheless, Bakiev Kurmanbek Salievich remains one of the brightest personalities in the recent history of Kyrgyzstan. The biography of this person will be considered by us in this review.
Birth and childhood
Bakiev Kurmanbek Salievich was born in August 1949 in the village of Masadan, which belonged to the Jalal-Abad region of the Kyrgyz SSR, in the family of the chairman of the local collective farm, Sali Bakiev. In addition to Kurmanbek, the family had seven more sons.
The childhood of the future president ended, barely beginning. After graduation, workdays came.
Labor career
Kurmanbek Bakiev began working in 1970 from the bottom. He got a dispenser at one of the factories in the city of Kuibyshev (now Samara), and a year later a loader at a fish processing plant. He stayed at this workplace for two whole years.
The next two years (1974-1976), Kurmanbek Bakiev paid back his homeland, serving in the Soviet army. After demobilization, he continued his working career, first working as a machine gunner, and then as an energy engineer. In parallel with his work, he studied at the Institute of KPI as a computer engineer.
After Kurmanbek Bakiyev graduated from a university in 1978, thus having received higher education, he decided to return to his homeland, to the Kyrgyz SSR. He moved to the regional center of Jalal-Abad, where he immediately received the position of chief engineer at one of the local enterprises.
In 1985, Bakiev went on an increase, as he was appointed director of the plant in the small town of Kok-Zhangak.
First steps in politics
As a member of the CPSU, Bakiyev Kurmanbek made his first steps in the political field in Soviet times. In 1990, he was appointed first secretary of the local city branch of the party.
After some time, he becomes the head of the Council of Deputies of the city of Kok-Zhangak. In 1991, he received the post of deputy head of the regional Jalal-Abad Council of Deputies. And a year later, after Kyrgyzstan entered the independent path of development, Bakiyev Kurmanbek received the post of head of the state administration of Toguz-Torous region.
The year 1994 was marked by another major promotion. Bakiev became deputy chairman of the State Property Fund. This was already a position of a completely different level.
Further political career
From that moment on, Bakiyev was at the top of the Kyrgyz politicum.
In 1995, he received the post of head (akim) of the Jalal-Abad regional administration. Two years later, he was offered to take an equivalent post in the Chui regional administration. But this was only the middle of Bakiev’s political career. The most important achievements were waiting for him to come.
Prime Minister
Bakiyev established himself as a very good regional leader, therefore Askar Akayev, the permanent president of Kyrgyzstan from the very moment of his independence, offered him the post of head of government. So, in December 2000, the politician Kurmanbek Bakiev became the prime minister.
From the first days in the new chair, the aspiring premier developed a vibrant activity. Already at the beginning of 2001, he signed a secret agreement with representatives of Uzbekistan on the issues of delimitation - a very painful problem since Soviet times.
But in early 2002, opposition protests began, which forced Kurmanbek Bakiyev to resign in May. However, he was not going to leave politics, and in the same year he was elected to the Kyrgyz parliament.
In 2005, Kurmanbek Bakiyev was re-appointed Prime Minister. The politician returned to the highest echelons of power.
The Tulip Revolution
At the same time, in the same 2005, opposition protests began against the incumbent President Askar Akayev, called the Tulip Revolution.
Protestants forced Akayev, who feared for his own life, to leave the country. The acting president under the Constitution has become Prime Minister Bakiyev. He managed to agree with the opposition on the holding of democratic elections of the head of state.
Presidency
Kurmanbek Bakiev managed to win a landslide victory in the presidential election. He enlisted the support of opposition leader Kulov, who withdrew in exchange for a promise to the post of prime minister.
After coming to power, Bakiyev really fulfilled his promise, and made Kulov prime minister, as well as allowing some other opposition members to work in the Kyrgyz government.
But soon the confrontation between the president and the opposition flared up with renewed vigor. At the end of 2006, Bakiyev insisted on the resignation of the head of the Kyrgyz parliament, and at the beginning of next year, Kulov was also dismissed from his post.
After these events, Bakiev initiated changes to the country's constitution, which were supposed to further expand the powers of the president. So, the post of prime minister was liquidated, and his functions were transferred to the president. In addition, the new constitution enshrined the provision according to which the deputy corps was to be formed by 2/3 of representatives of parties, and by 1/3 of nominees in territorial districts.
In a referendum, by a majority of votes, the new constitution was upheld. After that, Bakiyev dissolves the parliament, and in the extraordinary parliamentary elections, his Ak-Zhol party convincingly wins. True, the election results were called into question by independent observers.
In 2009, the next presidential election was held, in which Bakiev received about 90% of the vote. But, again, these results were called into question by international observers.
New revolution
Meanwhile, the opposition in Kyrgyzstan began to raise its head. In 2010, large-scale demonstrations flared up again against the current government, which turned into an armed struggle. Protesters seized the presidential administration, and Bakiyev himself had to flee to his native Jalal-Abad region.
Although Bakiyev refused to resign, an interim government was formed in Bishkek, led by Roza Otumbaeva. Kurmanbek Salievich issued an appeal in which he condemned the actions of the protesters and stated that he was going to move the capital to the southern regions of the country, where he enjoyed a certain popularity.
In the end, Bakiev and representatives of the interim government managed to agree. Kurmanbek Salievich resigned in exchange for security guarantees for him and his family.
Life after retirement
Having resigned as president in April 2010, Kurmanbek Bakiyev moved with his family to a permanent residence in Belarus, where the president of this country, Alexander Lukashenko, granted him political asylum. But a few days later Bakiyev refused to recognize the previously signed resignation letter, said that he was the only legitimate president.
In response, the interim government of Kyrgyzstan issued a decree on the removal of Bakiyev from power and filed a request to Belarus to extradite the former president, which was rejected by the Belarusian authorities.
In 2013, Bakiyev was convicted in absentia in Kyrgyzstan. He was sentenced, which appears twenty-four years in prison.
At the same time, Kurmanbek Bakiyev is currently living with his family in the city of Minsk and, according to unconfirmed reports, has already managed to obtain Belarusian citizenship.
In Kyrgyzstan itself, in 2011, the interim government was replaced by the popularly elected president Almazbek Atambayev.
A family
Kurmanbek Bakiev met his second half, Tatyana Vasilievna, while still a university student in Samara. His wife was Russian by nationality. But the marriage, in the end, ended in divorce, although two sons were born in it - Marat and Maxim.
Kurmanbek Bakiyev has not officially registered a relationship with his second wife. But in this civil marriage, two children were also born. It was with them and with his common-law wife that Bakiyev moved to Belarus.
