Astana

At a joint meeting of the two chambers, Kazakhstan's parliament passed a law renaming the state capital Astana to Nursultan in honor of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, TASS reported.

The members of the Magglias (Lower House) and Senate (upper) unanimously voted in favor of the proposal. The law is considered adopted and is now due to be signed by the president.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani have once again met in the Russian city of Sochi to determine the fate of Syria. Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov gave an interview to Hürriyet Daily News right after the trilateral summit. Peskov answered our questions in Turkish.

Q: How was the summit?

Right now, in modern circumstances where there are heightened tensions among the global players, for Kazakhstan, the biggest challenge we see is to contribute to the reduction of these tensions among these key-players, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan Roman Vassilenko told AGERPRES in an interview.

U.S. special representative for Syria James Jeffrey had talks in Ankara during a meeting for a joint working group on Syria, a few days after he suggested the U.S. wanted the Astana process — the three-way negotiations between Turkey, Russia and Iran — to be brought to an end.

Any progress in efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis was achieved thanks to the Astana and Sochi processes while the Geneva process was in a stalemate, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Dec. 5, noting that remarks made by a U.S. envoy undermining the Astana process was "unfortunate." 

The special envoy to Syria has suggested ending the Astana talks on the future of the country, promoting the U.N.-led Geneva talks.

The 11th round of Syria peace talks in the Astana format started on Wednesday with a meeting between the representatives of Russia and Syria's Bashar al-Assad regime in the Kazakh capital, reported Anadolu Agency.

Russia, Turkey, and Iran will hold the next round of talks on Syria on Nov. 28-29 in the Kazakh capital Astana, Kazakh foreign minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov said on Nov. 19.

Vucic recalled that it is now difficult to get investments from Turkey because of the high inflation rate and the minimum wage of 210 euros in that country - much lower than in Serbia. "Why should somebody come to us from Turkey, when they can pay their workers less in their own country, and find as well-trained a workforce as we have.

On the eve of participating in an inter-religion conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, the Serbian president told reporters that the president of Kazakhstan is organizing this gathering for the sixth time in order to contribute to moving various traditional churches closer together.