GUEST POST: Turkmenistan's Crisis of Neutrality
Part 4 of Zack Kramer's Central Asia series
Today I’m pleased to send out the fourth entry in Zack Kramer’s look at the Central Asian republics. You can find Zack’s previous essays on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan here at FX, and be sure to look for his take on Uzbekistan coming soon.
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by Zack Kramer
Turkmenistan, Central Asia’s most isolated country, has kept itself out of international affairs since gaining independence upon the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Pursuing policies of economic self-sufficiency and strict neutrality in foreign relations, Turkmenistan has been more reluctant than its Central Asian neighbors to align itself with foreign powers’ regional interests. Despite its isolation, not to mention being consistently ranked one of the world’s most corrupt and repressive countries, Turkmenistan has also been one of the world’s fastest-growing economies for nearly two decades according to the World Bank. However, these economic statistics are based on data produced by the Turkmen government, and the country’s lack of independent media make them difficult to verify. Recent, incidental reports suggest a rapid unraveling of the country’s economic base, partly as a result of its self-imposed economic self-sufficiency project. This article tries to provide background on how Turkmenistan’s peculiar political and economic situations came into place, and to make sense of recent developments within that context.
As their ethnonym suggests, the Turkmen are a Turkic ethnic group. They appear to have originated as Oghuz Turks moved west out of Mongolia and Siberia in the 8th century and intermingled with eastern Iranian peoples already settled in present-day Turkmenistan. The Turkmen language is closely related to modern Turkish, as well as Azeri, and more distantly to Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Uzbek. Islam has been present in the region since the mid-7th century, when parts of modern Turkmenistan were conquered by early Islamic armies and incorporated into the caliphate. Sunni Islam remains the predominant faith, though its practice is tightly controlled by the current Turkmen government. About 80% of Turkmen territory is covered by the Karakum desert, and from ancient times until the present the population has been thinly scattered throughout the sparse land, confined to settlements around its limited sources of water. Today Turkmenistan has the smallest population of the Central Asian countries, numbering a bit over five million.
The Turkmen historically have been organized into nomadic tribes buffeted across the desert by waves of invasion from neighboring peoples, and have only a limited history of urbanization. From the 15th to 19th centuries the Turkmen were at times able to command significant parts of the modern country, only to be pushed to its margins repeatedly by Uzbek khanates or the Persians. Most of the country’s modern cities only appeared in the late 19th century, originally built as forts for the invading Russian Empire.
Inland, Turkmenistan was among the last parts of Central Asia to fall under Russian control, partly due to a concerted Turkmen resistance (culminating at the two Battles of Gok Tepe, in 1879 and 1880). Russia’s interest in Turkmenistan was driven not so much by desire for the territory itself but by the logic of the “Great Game” between Russia and the United Kingdom. The British had pushed from India into Afghanistan, and extending their reach into Turkmenistan would have given them access to the Caspian Sea and thus to the heartland of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. The Russians established the port of Krasnovodsk (now Türkmenbaşy) as a base on the eastern shore of the Caspian in 1869, bringing the rest of Turkmenistan under their rule over the next three decades and establishing the first formal Turkmen-Afghan border through agreements with the British. Turkmenistan’s modern capital, Ashgabat, was also founded during this period as a town along the Trans-Caspian Railway connecting Krasnovodsk with Tashkent and other large Uzbek and Tajik cities recently conquered by Russia.
The Soviet period brought less change to Turkmenistan than many of the other outlying republics. Turkmenistan did not experience the industrialization, modernization, and Russification undergone in Kazakhstan and, to a lesser extent, the other Central Asian republics. The population remained relatively cloistered, and arguably retained a stronger sense of national identity than other ethnic republics. This pattern of relative underdevelopment was reinforced by a 1948 earthquake in Ashgabat, which destroyed most of the city’s buildings and killed tens of thousands of people, probably delaying the city’s development by years or decades. By the 1970s, the Soviet economy had already begun to stagnate and authorities did not prioritize investment in Turkmenistan. The Soviet period saw the discovery of many of Turkmenistan’s substantial natural gas deposits, although exploitation remained fairly limited, with local production focused more on cotton. It has since been determined that Turkmenistan holds the world’s fourth-largest reserves of natural gas. At the end of the Soviet period, living conditions in Turkmenistan remained among the lowest in the USSR despite this resource wealth.
Saparmurat Niyazov had been the leader of Turkmenistan since 1985 as the head of the Turkmen Communist Party. When the USSR collapsed he was declared head of the Turkmen parliament and then elected president in 1992 in an election in which he ran unopposed. Over the next fifteen years, Niyazov consolidated political authority in the country under the banner of Turkmen nationalism, isolationist foreign policy, and a towering if bizarre cult of personality. Political opposition, independent media, and dissent of any kind were quickly eliminated. He was declared president for life in 1999, having established unchallenged and nearly absolute authority over the course of the decade. The Soviet social model of guaranteed employment, housing and healthcare ceased to be viable with the loss of inputs from the broader Soviet economy. Urban unemployment and homelessness rose significantly, healthcare provision deteriorated, and all remaining hospitals outside of Ashgabat were eventually closed in 2005. To ease the burden of the transition, the government introduced programs promising free utilities for all citizens, including water, gas, and electricity, as well as salt, and significant subsidies for gasoline, cooking oil, and grains. These programs were financed with revenue from gas and oil exports, which increased (if inconsistently) over the course of the 1990s and helped the economy to recover.
As the economy stabilized, Niyazov’s rule grew increasingly capricious. In 2001 he published the Ruhnama, a historico-philosophical text on the Turkmen nation that all citizens were required to study and revere, and ordered the construction of grand statues of himself and other lavish monuments. The president made a litany of outlandish decrees that were passed into law unchallenged. For example, Niyazov had the Turkmen word for bread changed to “Gurbansoltan”, the name of his late mother. Such decrees reflected not only his strange personal preferences, but more importantly his truly unchecked power. Unsurprisingly, when Niyazov died suddenly in 2006, there was no system in place for choosing a replacement.
Through unknown machinations, Minister of Health Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, formerly Niyazov’s personal dentist, emerged as the favored successor, with the backing of Turkmenistan’s military. It has been rumored that Berdimuhamedov is the illegitimate son of Niyazov, but even this would not explain why Niyazov kept his (legitimate) son, Murat, out of politics. Regardless, Berdimuhamedov became interim leader soon after Niyazov’s death and by 2007 had been elected president after running for the office unopposed. He came to power promising an era of “moderation” after the excesses of Niyazov, removing some of the statues of the leader and rescinding some of his more baseless decrees. But Niyazov’s general program of international “permanent neutrality”, economic self-sufficiency, and total repression of all criticism and opposition went unaltered, and the country’s politics have been largely consistent between its two rulers.
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov (Wikimedia Commons)
Other than the Baltic states, Turkmenistan has shown the least interest of all the post-Soviet states in participation in regional integration, refusing to join the Commonwealth of Independent States (though having observer status since 2005), Eurasian Economic Union, or Collective Security Treaty Organization. Russia remains Turkmenistan’s second-largest source of imports, notably metals and food, and the countries have cooperated in the trade and transit of natural gas. Most Russians have left the country since 1991, but today 3-4% of Turkmenistan’s population is thought to be ethnic Russian, concentrated in Ashgabat and Türkmenbaşy (formerly Krasnovodsk). Ethnic Turkmens have the smallest diaspora population in Russia of any of the Central Asian states, and remittances from Russia are not a significant part of Turkmenistan’s national income.
Russo-Turkmen relations have been fairly stable if cool. There are concerns on the Turkmen side about Russia posing a threat to Turkmenistan’s “permanent neutrality” through its ambitions to re-consolidate influence in the former Soviet Union. On the Russian side, there have been concerns about Turkmenistan’s treatment of its Russian minority, who have consistently complained about discrimination and exclusion from Turkmen society, as well as difficulties with their citizenship status.
Turkmenistan has also given the cold shoulder to China’s influence-building efforts in the region. It is the only Central Asian country to refuse membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the only one to show no real interest in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure project. Berdimuhamedov did not attend Beijing’s recent BRI summit, and for their part, the Chinese seem to be planning to have their overland transport network simply transverse Turkmenistan’s eastern desert while bypassing Ashgabat, making it the only regional capital not involved in the BRI’s current schematics. Nevertheless, China and Turkmenistan already have a significant level of economic interdependence. China is Turkmenistan’s largest export market, buying about 75% of its natural gas output since 2010. Turkmenistan had been sending most of its production to Ukraine via Russian transit routes prior to the financial crisis, but it opened a pipeline to western China in 2009 and shifted its export focus. Turkmenistan is now China’s largest supplier of natural gas, accounting for 15-20% of its total gas imports.
Turkmenistan’s external relations are the most transparent aspect of its economy. Overall the country runs a large trade surplus from its gas sales, mostly importing industrial goods and machinery and relatively few consumer goods. The structure and dynamics of its domestic economy are much harder to assess, although of late there are indications that it is in a major recession, likely the most severe in the country’s independent history. Despite strong demand from China, sustained low prices for natural gas have caused net exports to plummet by over 30% since 2014. This has clearly taken a toll on the state’s budget, as Berdimuhamedov recently moved to dismantle the free utilities program and reduce other subsidies, and has apparently also laid off thousands of white-collar government workers. The government has also announced plans to privatize various state-owned sectors of the economy, including transport, agricultural holdings, and fisheries– a sign that it is desperate for cash.
The Turkmen government continues to unveil plans for ambitious new projects, most recently a cross-country highway, but these have been slow to materialize, and all evidence points to a major fiscal contraction resulting in widespread cutbacks. It has also struggled to pay back debt it owes to several foreign companies contracted for various projects such as German engineering firm Unionmatex and Russian mobile operator MTS, and is facing a number of international lawsuits. Weak export performance has also taken its toll on the foreign exchange rate. While the Turkmen manat has officially been pegged to the US dollar at the same rate since 2015, the country’s “real” exchange rate is measured on its black market, a key part of its economy given government bans, rationing, or steep taxes on the sale of all manner of consumer products. On that market, the manat has lost more than 85% of its value against the dollar over the last five years.
Turkmenistan’s most acute problem is not low gas revenues or weak foreign exchange rates, but falling agricultural output. Since the early 2000s, the government has invested heavily in a largely state-managed effort to move the country towards food self-sufficiency. Nearly half the employed population works in agriculture, an unusually high share for a (nominally) upper-middle income economy. But its scarce water supply and the competition food production faces for water with the cotton industry (a source of export revenue), as well as the effects of global warming and desertification on already-arid land appear to have caused this initiative to fall well short of expectations.
The UN Food and Agricultural organization reports a 2018 harvest some 30% below the country’s five-year average, while Turkmenistan is also importing less food from abroad than normal, presumably due to its poor foreign exchange position amidst low gas prices. Unsurprisingly, this has lead to shortages across the country’s state-run stores for over two years, and recent reports suggest that wheat in particular is now being tightly rationed. Private businesses have so far apparently been able to meet most of the excess demand with flour imported from Kazakhstan, but at far higher prices, straining the consumer economy. For its part, the government refuses to acknowledge the problem, insisting that production is soaring. This position, along with the country’s general refusal to allow international organizations to involve themselves in the country, has prevented Turkmenistan from asking for any external food aid despite what appears to have become a serious crisis.
Whether or not the shortage will work to foment significant political instability in Turkmenistan is yet to be seen. But given the total absence of civil societal institutions, opposition groups, or really any clear alternative to the status quo whatsoever for the people of Turkmenistan, food rationing and cutbacks to subsidies may work to strengthen the public’s sense of dependence on the current government rather than drive them to seek a replacement. But the government’s constant reiteration of Turkmenistan’s commitment to “permanent neutrality” may have created a unique obstacle to easing public sentiment, in that it has categorically eliminated the possibility of pinning the blame for any national crises on an external enemy. And unlike the more acute current food shortages in Yemen or North Korea, or the general economic isolation of countries like Russia and Iran, Turkmenistan’s situation is almost exclusively the product of the government’s pursuit of economic autarky as an end in itself, rather than the result of a conflict or international sanctions. The Turkmen public is left with few options other than to blame the government for their situation.
Turkmenistan’s isolation, corruption and dysfunctional political situation are all major impediments to the diversification of its economy, and the government has made it impossible for itself to even acknowledge any of them. But it may prove increasingly difficult for Berdimuhamedov to convince the public, let alone anyone in the outside world, that his country is thriving and continuing to grow at a rapid pace when the memory of better times has hardly faded. Turkmenistan’s leadership is faced with a dilemma: preserve the status quo and continue to pursue a self-contained, state-manicured economy in order to prop up the fiction of a vibrant, resource-rich country, or open Turkmenistan up to the vagaries of the global economy. The latter offers a chance at real prosperity but threatens to reveal more clearly the extent of the country’s backwardness, and the utter futility of the government’s high-profile investment projects. But though Turkmenistan’s cult of neutrality may no longer be tenable, even without it there is little indication as to where the country can, or should, go from here.
Zack Kramer is a graduate student in international relations at Charles University in Prague.