Joomart Turdakunov
Joomart Turdakunov (born 1976), known as Ustat ("master"), is an Iradi businessman from Iyık Janyl whom police, journalists and campaigners describe as the head of organized crime in Jogorku, the city's hillside quarters. He has never been convicted of a serious offence and denies any criminal activity.[1]
Life
Turdakunov was born in Chong-Say, one of the oldest of the hillside quarters, the son of a walnut gatherer. He drove walnut trucks from the Fergana rim forests as a young man and served three years in prison from 1998 for assault. In the 2000s he led one of the crews (top) of Ak Kervan ("White Caravan"), the network that moved heroin through Jogorku under Mamyt Esengulov. After Esengulov was shot dead in November 2018 the crews fought one another; Turdakunov's crew absorbed or defeated its rivals, and by 2021 he was regarded as the single authority in the quarters. His group is known as Jañy Nerse ("the New Thing").[1][2]
His legal businesses include Jangak Agro, which exports walnuts and dried apricots to Uzbekistan and Russia, a fleet of water tankers serving the hillside quarters and a building firm.[1]
Public image
Turdakunov is popular in Iyık Janyl. Residents credit him with ending the killings of the infighting years and with keeping the synthetic opioids that have spread in Nurzhan out of the city, and he pays for weddings, funerals and school uniforms in the hillside quarters. He is a generous donor to the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church: he paid for the rebuilding of the church of St. Mattai in Chong-Say in 2023 and for a new roof on the refectory of the St. Ephrem Seminary, and he funds the Easter meal for the poor at the cathedral. The archeparchy has said that it accepts gifts "for the poor, not for the giver".[2]
Allegations
A 2025 investigation by FreeIrad.org accused people close to Turdakunov of trafficking: recruiting young women from the hillside quarters for waitressing work in Turkey and the Gulf states, holding their passports and debts, and sending men to building sites in Russia under debts they could not repay. Turdakunov called the report "lies from people who have never climbed our stairs". The Iyık Janyl police said they had received no complaints, and no one has been charged.[1]
Since 2023 his crews have been in conflict with the network of the Nurzhan businessman Rinat Galimov over the drug trade in the south.[1]
References
- ^ FreeIrad.org (2025). 'The Master of the Hills: Joomart Turdakunov and the economy of Jogorku.' Investigation, 14 June.
- ^ Department of Sociology, Talas State University (2022). The Upper Quarters: Unplanned Settlement on the Slopes of Iyık Janyl. Talas State University Press, Talas.