500 Tenge Baiturrahman

The Baitursynov 500 tenge gold issue is one of several in Kazakhstan's ongoing cultural figures program, this piece honoring Akhmet Baitursynov — linguist, poet, and architect of the modern Kazakh alphabet — who was arrested during the Stalinist purges and executed in 1937. His rehabilitation came decades later, and the renewed official recognition of his contributions to Kazakh language reform made him a natural subject once Kazakhstan began asserting a distinct national cultural identity after 1991.