Kazakhstan renamed it’s capital city to honour it’s former president

The Central Asian republic Kazakhstan has announced that the nation has renamed its capital city. The capital city ‘Astana’ will be renamed as ‘Nursultan’. The decision was passed by a vote in the national assembly. Parliament voted that Astana is now called “Nursultan”, named after the country’s 78-year-old former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who resigned yesterday, having been Head of State since 1990.

Kazakhstan’s new president Kassam Jomar Tokayev has proposed the move to rename the capital in honour of long-serving president Nazarbayev, who announced his resignation from the post on March 19 after 30 years rule.

Nursultan, located in the middle of the country, has one million inhabitants, and is the country’s second city and became the capital of 1998, after Almaty (formerly Alma-Ata), in the southeast, which had been the capital in the entire Soviet period, and from independence in 1991.