Archive · 2026 · From the print edition of Friday 24 April 2026, Vol. 34, No. 10,367
Across Irad"Trucks, walnuts and apricots": Turdakunov on the Sary-Tash seizure
Kyrgyz border guards detained five men, four from Iyık Janyl, with a truck of cigarettes and military-surplus electronics. The businessman Kyrgyz officials link to the route says he deals in fruit.
IYIK JANYL — The Kyrgyz Border Service has detained five men, four of them from Iyık Janyl, after stopping a truck at Sary-Tash in southern Kyrgyzstan carrying 2,400 cartons of cigarettes and about 300 military-surplus radios and laptops, a Border Service spokesman in Osh said on Wednesday. The truck had Kyrgyz plates and was heading for the Chinese border.
Kyrgyz officials have linked the route, which they say has run since 2024 through the Fergana rim and southern Kyrgyzstan to Kashgar, to crews close to Joomart Turdakunov, the Iyık Janyl businessman whom police and journalists describe as the authority in the hillside quarters of Jogorku. He has never been convicted of a serious offence and denies any criminal activity.
Reached by telephone at the offices of Jangak Agro, his walnut and dried-fruit exporter, Mr. Turdakunov said he knew nothing about the seizure. "I have trucks, walnuts and apricots. That is all I have," he said, and hung up.
Relatives of two of the detained men, in Chong-Say, said the men had gone to Kyrgyzstan as hired drivers and did not know what they were carrying. The ISEZ Ministry of Internal Security said it had not been told of the arrests and that the route "does not pass through any post of the ISEZ".