On July 31, 2026, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov and his wife Aigul Japarova receive Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his wife Mehriban Aliyeva in Cholpon-Ata, on the northern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul.
The program is that of a complete state visit: welcome ceremony with honor guard and anthems, tête-à-tête, Interstate Council, signing of fifteen documents including a treaty of allied relations, exchange of the highest decorations, state banquet.
Official photographs show the two couples standing under a wooden dome, in front of three Azerbaijani flags and three Kyrgyz flags.
Outside the Palace
Cholpon-Ata, on the northern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul
The site is dedicated to the writer Tchinguiz Aïtmatov. There is a house museum, an avenue of sculptures, copies of petroglyphs, monuments to Atatürk, Pushkin and Confucius, and five white chapels representing five religions.
The complex also has a Kyrgyz yurt, presented to visitors as a space where you take off your shoes, try on traditional clothes and where national headdresses are displayed.
In other words, Kyrgyzstan received a state visit to a place that tourists can visit on an ordinary day, for a ticket.
Three elements make up the staging.
The yurt. Traditional habitat of Kyrgyz nomads, called boz üy: circular wooden frame, felt covering, braided ropes. Its manufacturing know-how is inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, inscription from 2014 extended in 2025.
The tunduk. The wooden crown that closes the top of the yurt, visible above the four personalities. All the roof poles rest on it. This motif appears in the center of the sun of the national flag, surrounded by forty rays representing the forty tribes united, according to the epic, by the hero Manas.
Felt. In the photograph taken outdoors, facing the lake, the four personalities pose on a brightly colored carpet rolled out on the lawn. Its patterns are those of shyrdak, made of cut and sewn pieces of felt. Ala-kiyiz and shyrdak have been on the UNESCO Urgent Safeguarding List since 2012.
Facing Lake Issyk-Koul, the two couples pose standing on a felt carpet rolled out on the lawn. No decoration is yet worn.
The flag itself has recently been reworked. On December 19, 2023, Parliament modified the design of the sun by fifty-nine votes to five, so that its rays evoke a sun and not a sunflower. The tunduk remained in the center.
A couple receives a couple
Cholpon-Ata, July 31, 2026. Under the wooden dome, from left to right: Aigul Japarova, Mehriban Aliyeva, Ilham Aliyev and Sadyr Japarov. Above the heads, the tunduk, which also appears in the center of the Kyrgyz flag.
The official press release is explicit. The banquet is not offered by one head of state to another. It is presented by President Sadyr Japarov and First Lady Aigul Japarova, in honor of President Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva.
Four names, two couples.
The photographs follow the same logic. The two wives appear on each protocol image, on the same level as their husbands. They also followed a separate program in the gardens of Ruh Ordo, accompanied by a guide in embroidered Kyrgyz costume.
The chosen framework is no stranger to this. A yurt is not an administrative building. It’s a house, and we welcome family there.
The choice of Ruh Ordo is not isolated.
The site had already hosted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2018 and Turkish Vice-President Fuat Oktay in 2021. The same week, Cholpon-Ata also hosted Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, then a consultative meeting of six heads of state from Central Asia and Azerbaijan.
Hosting outside the capital, in a heritage setting open to the public, is a practice and not an improvisation.
A receiving State always chooses what it shows.
On that day, Kyrgyzstan showed no marble, no columns, no ceremonial hall. He showed a wooden frame, a felt carpet and a circular crown, in a park where you enter with a ticket.
The ancestral was not an accessory placed next to the ceremony. It constituted the entire setting, and two families took place there.
Sadyr Japarov leads Ilham Aliyev through the Ruh Ordo cultural center. Behind them, the monument to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.Aigul Japarova and Mehriban Aliyeva in the gardens of Ruh Ordo, accompanied by a guide in embroidered Kyrgyz costume.
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