Administrative divisions of Kyrgyzstan
When the Kyrgyz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Kyrgyz ASSR) was established in 1928, it was divided into 7 "cantons", 52 "volosts", 6 "gorods" towns, 2 "sluts" (urban type developments) and 416 rural councils. During the Soviet period the administration was altered and the land was divided in regional "oblasts" (administrative regions - although most of the territory belonged to an oblast, some areas were placed under direct Republican control), "rayon" (district) and "selsoviets" (rural communities known as "suts" or towns - "gorod" ... the Russian word can mean either town or city).
Following independence the "selsoviet" was replaced by the "ayil-kenesh". An ayil-kenesh may encompass a number of small villages.
There are seven oblasts: Batken; Chui; Djalal Abad; Issyk Kul; Naryn; Osh and Talas. The capital, Bishkek, is a separate identity with it's own status - autonomous and independent but equivalent to an oblast. In 2003, the second city of Osh was granted the same status as an oblast. In addition there are 52 disticts, 430 ayil-keneshes and also 21 towns and 29 "urban type settlements" - making 480 entities in the third tier of local administration.
Each of the settlements are categorised according to a number of criteria. These are used to fix things like salaries of government employees and social security benefits.
The first of these is altitude. It might seem odd to count this as a criteria in a country that claims to be over 90% mountainous, - as a general rule of thumb, anything over 1500m is considered mountainous. However, to assist the classification, officially any settlement at an altitude of less than 1200m asl is considered "lowland", anything between 1200m and 2500m is categorized as mountainous and over 2500m as "high-mountain".
Another is remoteness. There are several factors that could be considered in defining this, but the following methodology is used. An index is calculated for each settlement based on the distance from the capital, Bishkek, the oblast and ayil-kenesh centres. This results in a minimum value of 1.0 for easily accessible places, and a maximum of 1.75 for the most remote. According to this statistic, the most remote settlements of Kyrgyzstan are to be found in the At Bashi region of the Naryn oblast - with a value of 1.51. There are some surprises, however, in that Chatkal records a value of only 1.34 - mainly because it is only a short distance from Tashkent - although there is no road link to the city.
A third form of classification is between urban and rural settlements. Although this is a common distinction well understood internationally, there is little consensus about how the distinction is determined. Each country defines the terms to meet their own situation and conditions. Kyrgyzstan has inherited the system in the former Soviet Union which defined the term according to administrative form of local government. To make matters more complicated, however, in the Kyrgyz Republic towns are classified according to administrative rules: Bishkek and Osh, which have a special status equal to that of an oblast; towns which are subordinate to oblast administration, and those which are subordinate to rayon (district) administration. In recent times (since 1977) the proportion of the population living in the urban environment has been falling.
The Association of Cities of the Kyrgyz Republic was established in 2000 as a voluntary, non-commercial, non-governmental organization established by city governments (councils) to promote political, economic, cultural and informational links, cooperation and development among the cities in the Kyrgyz Republic. It seeks to assist the further development of local self-government and to represent and promote the common interests of its members. It has 26 member cities:
Bishkek, Balykchi, Batken, Djalal-Abad, Isfana, Kant, Karabalta, Karakol, Karak-Kul, Kara-Suu, Kerben, Kok-Jangak, Kochkor-Ata, Kyzyl-Kya, Mailuu-Suu, Naryn, Nookat, Osh, Sulukta, Talas, Tash-Kumyr, Tokmok, Uzgen, Cholpon-Ata, Shopokov, Shamaldy –Say (an "urban type development")
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- Administrative divisions of Kyrgyzstan from Kyrgyz Travel Encyclopedia
