Nursultan Nazarbayev

It is time to affirm the friendship between Serbia and Kazakhstan with developed economic relations, Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic said on Friday.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev's upcoming visit to Serbia, scheduled for mid-year, will be an ideal opportunity to forge more specific cooperation in joint industry projects, Nikolic said.

Turkey and Kazakhstan will be two central countries in Eurasia in the fields of energy, trade and transportation, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu said Feb. 6.

Davuto?lu met Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev during a two-day official visit to Kazakhstan to further develop relations in the fields of transportation, energy and trade.      

Tajikistan's President Emomali Rakhmon on Jan. 27 named his eldest daughter his chief of staff, in the leader's latest appointment of a relative to a top post.

The president of the impoverished central Asian country appointed his 38-year-old daughter Ozoda Rakhmon to the role after she served as deputy foreign minister since 2014, Rakhmon's office said.

The negative rhetoric in the war of words between Turkey and Russia is on the decline amid heightened tensions in the wake of Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavu?o?lu said on Dec. 11.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has confirmed his readiness to hold a meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin over the incident of last week when Ankara fighter jets downed a Russia plane for allegedly violating Turkish airspace.

Energy-rich Kazakhstan sacked its national bank chief on Nov. 2 as the ex-Soviet Central Asian nation struggles to deal with low oil prices and the impact of Russia's economic crisis.   

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev "agreed to launch a joint pilot project," Tanjug reported.

The agency quoted Nikolic saying, during his state visit to Kazakhstan, that the project will see "investments from Kazakhstan help restart production in a factory in Serbia."

Energy-rich Kazakhstan announced on Aug. 20 it was abandoning its currency band for a free-floating exchange rate, in a move that triggered a 23-percent fall in the value of the tenge against the U.S. dollar.

Kazakhstan?s veteran leader Nursultan Nazarbayev celebrates his 75th birthday today, in good shape and vastly popular, but the expected fireworks and fanfare mask uncomfortable questions about the future of the second-largest post-Soviet economy. 

Kazakhstan reelected on Sunday President Nursultan Nazarbayev for fifth consecutive five-year term, with early results showing that the incumbent won with 97.7 % of the votes.

According to Kazahkstan's Central Election Commission, the voter turnout stood at record 95.11 %, the BBC reports.