Karakalpakstan (Uzbekistan)

Last modified: 2024-01-28 by victor lomantsov
Keywords: karakalpakstan | uzbekistan | asia | kazakhstan |
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by António Martins-Tuválkin

• Presentation of Karakalpakstan
• Flag of Karakalpakstan
• Law About the State Flag of the Karakalpakstan
• Historical Flags of Karakalpakstan
• Independentist Flag (?), 2022

See also:

• Uzbekistan

Name: Republic of Karakalpakstan (?)
Location: Central Asia
Status: Part of the Republic of Uzbekistan

Notes: The Karakalpaks are a minority grouping whose region was originally part of Kazakhstan, then the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, and finally part of Uzbekistan.
Stuart Motholt 17 September 1995

The flag of Karakalpakstan has a remarkable resemblance with the flag of Uzbekistan. The biggest diference: the band in the middle is ochreous.
It was adopted on 10 april 1993.
Source: Vexilla Nostra no. 188
Mark Sensen, 23 February 1996

At http://weecheng.com/silk/uz-nukus/nukus1.htm we can se a photo taken on location in Nukus, regional capital, showing a mural painting on a regional government building tower depicting both flags, flat, side-by-side http://weecheng.com/silk/uz-nukus/govtbldg.gif, although the shade of yellow is weird (weathering?, but see normal yellow in the cloth flag hoisted at the same location), the specs of the stripes are clear, Karakalpakstan matching the national flags and slicing the latters fimbriations in two halves. The crescent seems to be the identical to the national flag, and the stars bigger and fewer, taking the same area, set in two staggered rows, 2+3.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 31 March 2010

As suposed by some people, the central stripe of the Karakalpakstan flag is brown (nor yellow) and means the arable earth and the desert.
Jaume Ollé, 11 June 2010

Reported flag
image by Dirk Schönberger

"Nations Without States" (James Minahan, 1996) describes a "national flag" supposedly used by Karakalpakstani nationalists. It is very different than the flag of the Karakalpakstan shown,

It is a green flag with a gold, downward pointing crescent above a gold five-pointed star which in turn is above a gold device, called a dzungara (a type of ceremonial vessel.
Ned Smith, 19 March 2001

Art. 4th. The national flag of the Republic Karakalpakstan is a rectangular panel consisting of three horizontal stripes blue, ocher and green. A white and red fimbriation separates the ocher-colored stripe from the others.
Length of the flag - 250 cm; width - 125 cm; width of the blue and green stripes equal to each other 42 cm; width of the ocher-colored stripe, located in the middle of the flag - 34 cm; width of the white edging 1,0 cm, and the red edging 2,5 cm.
On the top blue stripe a crescent moon (with the convex side facing the flag pole) and at its right (when viewed from the front of the flag) five five-pointed stars in white, equal to each other.
The crescent formed by the intersection of two circles, whose diameters are respectively equal to 22 and 19 cm; the centers of the circles lie on line separating the blue stripe into two equal parts. Distance between centers of these circles 4 cm; distance from the flag pole to the crescent 20 cm.
The stars lie in a rectangle of 30 cm x 15 cm. The distance from the hoist to that rectangle is 42 cm.
The stars arranged in two rows as follows: the upper row consists of two, the bottom - of the three stars, each star fits into a circle of diameter of 10 cm; the lower point of a crescent and the top tips of the lower row of stars are 10 cm above the the top of the white stripe.
The front and back side of the flag are symmetrical.
...
in Nukus city
December 14th, 1992
Law No 229/XII

Text of Law founded by Antonio Gutiérrez, 28 July 2010

Karakalpakistan was created ASSR into the Russian SSR on 1932. Adopted a flag in 1934.
Was ceded to the Uzbekistan SSR on 1936 and adopt new flag in 1937.

In 1940 the karakalpak language, that was written in turk-latin characters since 1940, adopted the cirilic's characters, and in 1941 the Republic adopted a new flag.

In 1952 adapted her flag to the flag of mother republic.

The current flag was adopted 14 February 1992.
Jaume Ollé 18 November 1996

Established as Kara-Kalpakstan AO within Kazakh ASSR (Russian SFSR) on 16 February 1925.

Transferred to Russian SFSR on 20 July 1930.

Transformed into Kara-Kalpakian ASSR on 20 March 1932.

Transferred to Uzbek SSR on 5 december 1936. Mark Sensen 19 November 1996

by Jaume Ollé
(1934)

by Jaume Ollé
(1937)

by Jaume Ollé
(1941)

by Jaume Ollé
(1952)

Reported flag
image by Jaume Ollé

Massive demonstration in Nukus, claiming for the independence of the republic. According current constitution Karakalpakistan is a sovereign republic with right of self detemination with a referencum, and the uzbek government is trying to change this. The president uzbek, when know the magnitude of the protests , offered that the constitution of Karapalkistan remain unchanged, but the agitation persisted. There's already 5 death. There's few photo of the events and is unclear that flag are using the independentists, but probably the republic official flag.

Two patterns observed. The possible explanation that the red stripe is due to the red water of anti-riot canons don't seems to be real because they afected strictly the central stripe, no the fimbriation neither other stripes. In all, it's unlikely that the independentist have a specific flag to much similar to the official one; it can be a manufacturer uncorrect version or some hand made flags
Jaume Ollé, 4 July 2022

So far, it is important to highlight that the flags seen during the demonstrations include the already reported flag, however, the middle stripe is seen in red color in several videos:
- 0:06 onwards (YouTube video #1)
- 0:07 onwards (YouTube video #2)
- 0:02 onwards (YouTube video #3)
Here's some additional information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Karakalpak_protests
Esteban Rivera, 4-6 July 2022

In Jaume's image, white fimbriations should be wider in the official flag, about the same width as that of the red fimbriations. Yellow should incline more towards orange, as in the current FOTW image of the flag. In the unofficial flag, red is correctly presented as inclining towards orange; however, the bottom fimbriation is in a much lighter shade of yellow, or maybe also white, looking yellow only due to an optical illusion produced by its placing between orange-red and green, two colors which share a yellow component. After having watched the videos reported by Esteban, though, I am inclined to say that there may be two unofficial versions, one with both fimbriations white and the other with the bottom fimbriation yellow.

There is also an erroneous version of the flag, which was photographed in Nukus on 2009-12-30: https://commons.wikimedia.org/..Hotel_Rahnamo.JPG

There, the red and white fimbriations have swapped places, their widths are equal, and there also seem to be additional, much narrower, outermost white fimbriations - in this case, I am even more certain that those are both white - considering their width, there is not much sense in giving them different colors.
Tomislav Todorovic, 6 July 2022