Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan is a landlocked country situated primarily in Central Asia, with a portion of its territory extending into Eastern Europe, the ninth largest country in the world and the largest landlocked one; its capital is Astana, while Almaty, the capital until 1997, remains its largest city and principal cultural and economic center. The territory has been inhabited since the Paleolithic era, was dominated in antiquity by Iranian nomadic peoples before Turkic peoples arrived in the sixth century, was conquered by the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century, and saw the Kazakh Khanate emerge around 1465 after the Golden Horde's collapse, before Russian imperial conquest was complete by the mid-nineteenth century and the territory was later incorporated into the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan declared independence on 16 December 1991, the last Soviet constituent republic to do so, with the declaration formalized on 26 December 1991. It operates today as a unitary semi-presidential republic under an authoritarian government, led by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, with a population of about 20.5 million and an economy built substantially on oil and gas that accounts for some 60 percent of Central Asia's GDP.