Orto-Ayyl

Orto-Ayyl ("middle village") is a village in the upper Talas valley, in the Talas District of the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ), near the mouth of the Otmek valley. It lay just beyond the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line until 2009, when the upper valley passed to the ISEZ with the State Route 1 corridor. Its population was 1,930 (2018 census).^[1] The name comes from its position between the upper and lower winter camps of a Soviet state farm. Since 2008 a council of elders (aksakals) has met in the village to hear grazing and family disputes under customary law (adat) for several clans of the upper valley; the 2009 protocol that transferred the village left the council its authority over pastures, and it still sits.^[2]

References

1. ^ ISEZ Statistical Office (2019). 2018 Census of Population: Settlements of the Districts. Talas.
2. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2019). 'Courts of the Elders: Customary Justice beyond the Qara-Chik Line.' Vol. 25, pp. 61–83.