A petition asking Kazakhstan to phase out conscription and build a professional army of contract soldiers appeared on the country's official e-petition portal on September 25, 2026. By September 28 it had been viewed more than 37,000 times. The authorities have until October 21 to decide whether it can start collecting signatures.
It comes days after 14 service members died in a naval exercise on the Caspian Sea, most of them conscripts. Whether the petition gets any further is another matter: Kazakh law bars petitions on defense, and a similar one failed review two years ago.
What the petition asks for
The petition asks the Defense Ministry to run the numbers first and only then decide whether to end the draft. Its list of questions to study includes:
- how many troops the armed forces actually need;
- what pay, housing and benefits for contract soldiers would cost;
- how to keep a trained reserve (people who can be called up in a war) without conscripts;
- what investigations into military incidents have found;
- how other countries handled the switch.
It also calls for parliamentary and public hearings and for the findings of the Caspian investigation to be made public. The author describes the goal as an army of "professionally trained servicemen who have voluntarily chosen military service as a profession" (our translation of the petition text, in Russian).
The Caspian tragedy behind it
On September 24, during the Khazar Qorgany 2026 naval exercise 43 km (27 miles) from the port city of Aktau, a storm swept 17 service members into the sea as they landed from a boat. Three were rescued. Fourteen died: a senior lieutenant, a sergeant and 12 sailors, most of them conscripts (Meduza, Kazinform).
Kazakhstan held a day of national mourning on September 25. Investigators opened a criminal case for negligence and breach of navigation rules, and five officers, including the navy's chief of staff, were named suspects.
On September 27, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev replaced Defense Minister Dauren Kosanov with Aidos Myrzakhmetov and gave officials 10 days to draft a military reform plan. "Service in the army should not instill fear and horror," he said (The Astana Times). His instructions cover command, spending, personnel and training. Ending conscription is not among them.
Why the petition may never reach a vote
That will be settled by October 21, and the odds are unclear: the law expressly bans petitions on defense. Kazakhstan's petition rules are set out in its Administrative Procedural Code, the law on how state bodies handle requests from citizens:
- 50 citizens must back a petition within 20 working days. This one has done that.
- Reviewers then have 20 working days to check it against the law. That deadline is October 21.
- If it passes, the petition has six months to reach 50,000 signatures from Kazakh citizens, each confirmed with a digital signature.
- If it gets there, the ministry has up to 40 working days to respond, including a public discussion and a working group with the author and members of parliament.
The ban sits in Article 90-2, which lists subjects a petition cannot cover. Item nine is questions of "defense, national security and public order" (code text, in Russian). If reviewers decide that army recruitment counts as defense, they will reject the petition and give their reasons.
Two years ago a similar petition never made it to a vote. "For the abolition of compulsory military service" went up on the same portal on September 9, 2024, gathered its first 50 signatures and failed review on October 4 (epetition.kz). The portal does not show why, but before the decision the Defense Ministry said defense questions cannot be the subject of a petition and that ending conscription "would undermine the security of the entire state" (NUR.KZ, in Russian).
The new text is more careful. Instead of an end to the draft, it asks for a study and hearings. Whether that is enough is up to the reviewers.
Who would be affected
About 44,000 people will be drafted in Kazakhstan in 2026: more than 21,000 men aged 18 to 27 this spring and about 23,000 by the end of December. Each serves 12 months (Orda.kz, Zakon.kz, in Russian).
The petition is addressed to the Defense Ministry, but conscripts do not serve only in the army. Of this fall's 23,000, just over 12,000 go to the armed forces. Nearly half go elsewhere: 7,000 to the National Guard, 3,000 to the border service, and the rest to the emergencies ministry and the State Security Service. In 2024 the ministry said contract soldiers already made up about 70% of military personnel.
How other countries did it
In Europe the move to a contract army took years, and several countries later brought the draft back:
- France suspended conscription by a 1997 law. Its last conscripts went home in November 2001.
- Germany suspended the draft in 2011. Since January 2026, 18-year-old men must fill in a questionnaire about their readiness to serve. Service stays voluntary, but parliament can bring back compulsory service if too few people sign up.
- Sweden dropped conscription in 2010 and brought it back in 2017.
- Lithuania suspended it in 2008 and reinstated it in 2015.
- Latvia gave it up in 2006, and its first new conscripts arrived in July 2023 (OSW).
The petition itself lists pay, housing and budget costs among the questions to settle. Europe's experience adds one more: how many people are willing to serve voluntarily, and whether that is enough.
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