Kyrgyzstan to host World Nomad Games in 2016

It has been scheduled that in Spring 2016, Kyrgyzstan hosts the World Nomad Games which will be held up to the next three months.

Over 400 athletes from 40 countries including Afghanistan gathered in a resort on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul to compete in wrestling, archery, Kok Boru (a game where mounted riders face off over a dead goat), Ordo (a Kyrgyz board game) and Kyz Kumai (chasing women on horseback).

The first World Nomad Games were held in 2014 and featured 350 participants from 18 countries. Events included traditional sports like wrestling, hunting with eagles and equestrian events.

The Kyrgyz government cast the Games as an event of global significance, with a strong undercurrent of nation building: “The Games will give a powerful boost to rehabilitating original national sport disciplines and reviving the spiritual consciousness and historical memory of nomadic peoples of the world,” said Kyrgyz ambassador to Kabul.

The Nomad Games are also part of Atambayev administration’s objective of strengthening collaboration among Turkic-speaking nations.

The idea of the Games first appeared during the 2011 visit of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Kyrgyzstan.

Atambayev has repeatedly said Turkey is a top partner. Though he attended a victory event when Erdogan won the Turkish presidency in August, Erdogan did not appear at the Games in Issyk Kul.

Indeed, decades of talk of Turkic brotherhood (four of the five Central Asian nations plus Azerbaijan speak a language related to Turkish) have failed to produce concrete results.

Most meetings of Turkic nations end in potboiler platitudes, but little action. Despite the Atambayev administration’s invitations to other Turkic presidents, the only foreign leader who attended the Games was the president of the Russian republic of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov.