Investigation
The Master of the Hills: Joomart Turdakunov and the economy of Jogorku
In the hillside quarters of Iyık Janyl one man settles disputes, keeps out the new drugs and gives to the church. Families also say people close to him send their daughters abroad in debt.
From the Irad Times of 14 June 2025.
Ask anyone in Chong-Say who keeps the peace in the hillside quarters of Iyık Janyl and you will be given a name, quietly: Joomart Turdakunov, known in Jogorku as Ustat, the master. Police, journalists and campaigners describe him as the head of organized crime in the quarters. He has never been convicted of a serious offence and says he is a businessman.
Mr. Turdakunov, 49, was born in Chong-Say, the son of a walnut gatherer, and drove walnut trucks from the Fergana rim forests as a young man. He served three years in prison from 1998 for assault. In the 2000s, according to police, he led one of the crews of Ak Kervan, the network that moved heroin through Jogorku under Mamyt Esengulov. After Esengulov was shot dead in November 2018 the crews fought one another for three years. By 2021 Mr. Turdakunov's crew had absorbed or defeated the others. His group is known in the quarters as Jañy Nerse, the New Thing.
What the quarters pay
Residents, police officers and three former members of the crews describe an economy that rests on cross-line smuggling, payments from water-tanker and minibus operators, construction and moneylending. Mr. Turdakunov's legal businesses include Jangak Agro, which exports walnuts and dried apricots to Uzbekistan and Russia, a fleet of water tankers serving the quarters and a building firm. Killings in the quarters have fallen sharply since 2021. He is widely credited with keeping synthetic opioids out of Iyık Janyl, and gives generously to the church.
Passports and debts
Over four months the Times spoke to eleven families in Jogorku whose daughters were recruited for waitressing work in Turkey and the Gulf states, and to six men sent to building sites in Russia. They describe the same pattern: recruiters who say they act for people close to Mr. Turdakunov, travel and visa costs advanced as a debt, passports held on arrival, and wages that never cover the debt. Two of the women have since come home. The others, their families say, are still working it off.
None of the families has gone to the police. “Who would we complain to?” one mother asked. The Iyık Janyl police said they had received no complaints. No one has been charged.
Mr. Turdakunov did not answer our written questions. Reached by telephone, he called the report “lies from people who have never climbed our stairs”.
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