Most countries have enjoyed the WTO membership, but some counties faced economic and political disturbance after joining the WTO. An excellent example of the former could be China, and one of the latter can be Kazakhstan. In fact, the country went economic recession after getting WTO membership, and most of the critics blamed the WTO membership. This gives a bad impression to neighboring countries such as Uzbekistan in Central Asia. This paper tries to assess the WTO membership hurt the economy of Kazakhstan. It investigates the reasons why the accession took nineteen years from submitting application, and discussions on the impact of WTO membership and the country's geopolitical issues. Then, it tries to analyze why the country suffered an economic recession with the simulation using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, based on its tariff liberalization schedule as a WTO member. The paper underlines that the WTO membership is not a cause for an economic recession for Kazakhstan. JEL Classifications: F13, F15, F17 Key Words: Kazakhstan, WTO membership, oil price, CGE model View recording of presentation