Kazakhstan renames capital 'Nursultan' after ex-president

Kazakhstan's parliament Wednesday voted to rename the country's capital in honor of long-time ruler Nursultan Nazarbayev, a day after he resigned as president.

"Astana is now officially renamed Nursultan," the state-owned Kazinform news agency said after a parliamentary vote. Kazakhstan's new interim president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev proposed renaming the capital after he was sworn in following on Tuesday.

In his first official act, Tokayev asked to change the name of the capital "Astana" into "Nursultan," which means "Sultan of Light" in Kazakh and other Turkic languages.

Astana, the government's showpiece project on the Ishim River in northern Kazakhstan, took over as the capital more than 20 years ago. It replaced Kazakhstan's largest city Almaty as the capital in 1997 and was transformed from a minor provincial town into a futuristic city.

Astana was previously known as Akmolinsk, Tselinograd and Akmola. As Tselinograd - the name from the 1960s to the 1990s - the city was at the heart of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's campaign to cultivate the country's vast steppes.

(CGTN)