Nasiba Turdieva, a farmer from the Yakkabog district of Kashkadarya region, has been fighting for the past five years to keep the land that was illegally taken from her by order of the Yakkabog district hokim (governor), who claims she signed a “voluntary” land lease termination. Turdieva has been growing grain and grapes on this land since it was allocated to her for 49 years in 2005. She says the land had previously been abandoned, and for 20 years—despite significant irrigation problems—she and her family cultivated grapes and apples and fulfilled state mandated production quotas every year.
Over the past 20 years, the Uzbek government has carried out several chaotic “optimizations of farmland plots,” resulting in farms either being reduced or transferred entirely to the state reserve for reallocation under the pretext of “improving the efficiency” of the country’s land resources.
The mass seizure and redistribution of farmland has been accompanied by systematic lawlessness, corruption, disregard for the rights and interests of farmers, and lack of access to compensation from the government for the unilateral termination of land lease agreements by the state.
Nasiba Turdieva wrote to a local farmers’ telegram channel “Fermer.Uz” that on January 24, 2019, the then hokim of Yakkabog district, Shomurod Donaev, issued an order to return 22.7 hectares of land used by Nasiba Turdieva’s farm, “Tukhtaev Tuychi Amirovich,” to the district reserve. The only grounds for the seizure was “a statement by Nasiba Turdieva on the voluntary termination of a long-term land lease agreement,” allegedly written by her to the district hokim.
However, Nasiba Turdieva claims that she never wrote such a statement. Moreover, for two decades the land has been the only source of income for her family who stand to lose their livelihood which Turdieva has vowed to fight for.
Although the methodology of coercion used by the authorities to seize land via “voluntary” land lease terminations is widely practiced and well documented, it appears officials in this case made an embarrassing mistake. The copy of the statement allegedly written by Turdieva, is written on behalf of “N. Tukhtaev” and signed with the name “N. Tuychiev”—neither of these individuals is known to Turdieva. It appears that the officials who forged the statement did not even bother to clarify who the actual head of the farm was, instead using the name of her farm, “Tukhtaev Tuychi Amirovich,” assuming the names belonged to the person authorized to sign the statement.
In a recent complaint sent to Saida Mirziyoyeva, daughter of the president and head of the presidential administration, Turdieva stated that despite the illegal seizure of her land based on a clearly fabricated statement, the prosecutor’s office, the court, and the hokimiyat (local administration) have been acting in concert and refusing to consider her case.
On November 21, 2025, the Kashkadarya Regional Court of Appeals, without Turdieva’s participation, rejected her appeal and upheld the hokim’s order on the grounds that she had missed the six-month deadline for filing a claim with the administrative court without good reason.
Turdiyeva states that she learned about the seizure of the land only at the end of 2020, after the land was put up for auction and transferred to a new owner who demanded that she vacate the plot she had been using. After Turdieva refused to leave, the new owner applied to the civil court in June 2023, which ruled that Turdieva should be physically evicted from the land. The authorities even sent a tractor to plow her field, but Turdieva refused to be intimidated and obstructed the tractor from entering.
Turdieva refuses to give up and continues writing letters to various government agencies in the hope that someone will hear her. To date, none of the numerous courts recognized the legal arguments put forward by her lawyer regarding her right to at least receive compensation, as provided by law.
“In particular, according to Article 206 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the termination of ownership rights in connection with a decision by a state body to seize a land plot on which residential buildings, other structures, facilities, or agricultural crops are located is permitted only in cases and in the manner established by law. At the same time, the owner must be provided with equivalent property on the right of ownership or fully compensated for all damage caused,” Turdieva’s lawsuit states.
Turdieva is one of hundreds of farmers Uzbek Forum has documented who have become victims of the systemic lawlessness and mismanagement of agriculture by Uzbekistan’s state structures. Under the pretext that “the land belongs to the state,” the Uzbek government regularly violates property rights through mass land redistribution, while local authorities—lacking legal grounds for seizure—use pressure and force to coerce farmers into signing statements of “voluntary” termination of long-term land lease agreements.
Uzbek Forum calls on the government to establish an independent commission to review all land lease terminations that were ostensibly obtained via ‘voluntary’ statements and ensure all farmers have access to compensation in accordance with Article 206 of the Civil Code. Moreover, the Ministry of Justice should uphold Uzbekistan’s constitution and international obligations to ensure that the judiciary acts independently of influence by local government or state actors at all times.
