Kazakhstan, formally the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental landlocked republic in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. It is bounded to the north and west by Russia, to the east by China, to the southeast by Kyrgyzstan, to the south by Uzbekistan, and to the southwest by Turkmenistan. Its capital is Nur-Sultan, which was formerly known as Astana until 2019. Until 1997, Kazakhstan's capital was Almaty, the country's biggest city. Kazakhstan is the world's biggest landlocked nation, the largest Muslim-majority country by geographical area (and the northernmost), and the world's ninth-largest country overall. It boasts a population of 19 million people and one of the world's lowest population densities, with less than 6 people per square kilometer (15 people per square mile).
The nation is economically and politically dominant in Central Asia, accounting for 60% of the region's GDP, mostly via its oil and gas sector; it also has huge mineral resources. It is a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional country with a diversified cultural legacy, according to official documents. Kazakhstan is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Commonwealth of the Independent States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Organization of Turkic States, and the International Organization of Turkic Culture.
Kazakhstan's area has traditionally been populated by nomadic people and empires. The ancient Iranian nomadic Scythians occupied the region in antiquity, and the Achaemenid Persian Empire extended into the contemporary country's southern territory. Turkic nomads with ancestors in several Turkic republics, including the First Turkic Khaganate and the Second Turkic Khaganate, have occupied the land since the 6th century. The Mongol Empire, led by Genghis Khan, controlled the country in the 13th century. The Kazakh Khanate captured most of the country that would eventually become modern Kazakhstan in the 15th century.
The Kazakhs evolved as a separate Turkic community by the 16th century, split into three jüz. Throughout the 18th century, they attacked Russian land, prompting the Russians to expand into the Kazakh Steppe; by the mid-19th century, the Russians technically dominated all of Kazakhstan as part of the Russian Empire and released all of the slaves taken by the Kazakhs in 1859. Kazakhstan's territory was reconstructed numerous times after the 1917 Russian Revolution and the subsequent commencement of the Russian Civil War. Within the Soviet Union, it was created in 1936 as the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. During the breakup of the Soviet Union from 1988 to 1991, Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to proclaim independence. Human rights groups have labeled Kazakhstan's government as authoritarian and the country's human rights status as deplorable.