Talk:Turkestan (growing area)
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Why Turkestan is a growing area
- The UNODC's Illicit drug trends in Central Asia (2008, p. 23) notes illicit cultivation in "Shimkent" in 2007. Shymkent was then the centre of South Kazakhstan Region; the report does not say whether the city or the province is meant.
- The interior ministry reports cultivation in the province by name: in South Kazakhstan Region in 2015 and 2019 (Zakon.kz), and in Turkestan Region in 2020, 2021 and 2023 (Zakon.kz, Kazinform, NewTimes.kz). In 2024 it named Turkestan Region among the places to which growers were moving (Bizmedia.kz).
- The press reports plantations in Otrar district (2009), on the Syr Darya (2022) and in Sozak district (2025), and yard crops in Saryagash, Keles, Tolebi, Ordabasy, Tulkubas, Sauran and Sayram districts, in the city of Turkestan and in Shymkent, from 2012 to 2026. Senators counted 162 people convicted in South Kazakhstan of growing prohibited plants in the three years before 2018 (Tengrinews.kz).
- The area is drawn on the whole province because the ministry reports the province as a whole and the sites lie across it.
- No source read reports wild cannabis gathered in the province. Every report is of sown cannabis.
The name
The bare name Turkestan belongs to the historical region of Central Asia, and the city would also claim it, so the growing area takes the qualifier: Turkestan (growing area). The province is Turkestan Region. A page on the city would be titled Turkestan (city). The province was called South Kazakhstan Region (Южно-Казахстанская область, ЮКО) until 19 June 2018, and the sources up to 2018 use that name. Türkistan is the Kazakh form.
Growing status
The status is Active. The sources report sown plots and plantations from 2009 to 2026. No source says that growing has ended.
Extent and border
- The border is a proxy: Turkestan Region (OpenStreetMap relation 215739) with the city of Shymkent (relation 3389772), which lies inside it and was part of the province until 2018. The union is about 117,000 km², the figure in the infobox.
- Most of the province is not under cannabis. The plantations reported hold from one plant to about a thousand.
- The infobox point (43.22, 68.45) is the centre of the shape. The border is not drawn from accession or news points.
- Several growers came from outside the province: the Otrar growers of 2009 from Almaty and Kyzylorda regions, two of the three Sozak growers of 2025 from Kyzylorda Region.
Growing region
The area has no parent growing region. No source read treats Turkestan Region and Kyzylorda as one cannabis landscape, and the province lies outside the Tian Shan (growing region).
Accessions
No accession from the province has been described yet.
Sources
- Before 2000: no older source found says hemp was grown in the province. The Brockhaus and Efron entry for Chimkent and its district names wheat, barley, rice and cotton and no hemp, and so does the Small Brockhaus entry for the whole Syr-Darya oblast. The Resettlement Administration surveys, Masalsky's Туркестанский край (1913) and the Flora of Kazakhstan were not read.
- Kazinform (8 October 2009): the article prints the byline "Татьяна Пылаева"; the page's metadata names Татьяна Никитина. The printed byline is cited.
- Kazinform (3 July 2012): the 77 plants of the Мак-2012 campaign include the Saryagash case; the Shymkent yard of about 90 plants is reported separately and is not counted in them.
- NewTimes.kz (8 August 2023): the Sauran case is reported by the regional police; the article says nothing of how the plants were used.
- Kazakh-language press was searched without result; Shardara, Maktaaral, Kazygurt and Baidibek districts gave no report of cannabis grown.
- The National (14 September 2009): an interior ministry official said that cultivated strains from India were first registered in "southern Kazakhstan" in 1926 and harvested for fibre until 1950. The article is about the Chu valley and does not name the province. It is not used.