Turkmenistan

• 1. Introduction

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  Turkmenistan sits at the center of one of history's great crossroads. Bordered by Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and the Caspian Sea, this landlocked nation in Central Asia has served as a passage for empires for thousands of years. Merv, one of the oldest oasis-cities in the region, was once among the biggest cities in the world and a prized stop on the Silk Road. Today, Turkmenistan holds the world's fourth-largest reserves of natural gas, a resource that shapes nearly every aspect of national life. Yet more than three decades after independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the country remains one of the most closed societies on earth. A single ruling family now controls the presidency, press freedom ranks near the very bottom globally, and the official population count is contested by opposition media. How did a land this ancient and resource-rich end up under such a tight grip? And what does daily life look like inside a country that banned satellite dishes the same month it launched its first communications satellite?

• 2. Empires and the Oghuz

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  Turkmenistan's written history begins with the Achaemenid Empire of ancient Iran, which annexed the region and absorbed its Indo-Iranian inhabitants. Centuries passed before a different group reshaped the land permanently. In the 8th century AD, Turkic-speaking Oghuz tribes moved out of Mongolia into present-day Central Asia. Part of a powerful tribal confederation, these Oghuz people form the ethnic foundation of the modern Turkmen population. The name "Turkmen" itself was first applied in the 10th century to Oghuz groups that converted to Islam and began settling the territory.

  Those early settlers found themselves under the authority of the Seljuk Empire, which was composed largely of Oghuz groups across present-day Iran and Turkmenistan. When Oghuz soldiers in the empire's service migrated westward into Azerbaijan and eastern Turkey, they carried Turkic culture with them across a vast arc of the continent. The 12th century brought upheaval: Turkmen and other tribal groups overthrew the Seljuk Empire entirely. Then came the Mongols in the next century, pushing the Turkmens southward and scrambling the existing tribal groupings.

  By the 16th century, most Turkmen tribes were under the nominal control of two Uzbek khanates, Khiva and Bukhoro, and Turkmen soldiers served in their armies. Independence of spirit ran deep among the tribes regardless. In 1855, the Teke tribe led by Gowshut-Khan defeated the invading army of Muhammad Amin Khan of Khiva, and in 1861 they turned back the Persian army of Nasreddin-Shah. That martial reputation carried a darker side: according to historian Paul R. Spickard, the Turkmen were known and feared across Central Asia for their role in the slave trade prior to the Russian conquest.

• 3. Russian Conquest and Soviet Rule

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  Russian forces began pressing into Turkmen territory in the latter half of the 19th century, using their Caspian Sea base at Krasnovodsk as a staging point. Their first serious push into the Ahal area in 1879 ended in defeat at the hands of the Teke Turkmens. Two years later, in 1881, the last significant armed resistance was crushed at the Battle of Geok Tepe. Turkmenistan was absorbed into the Russian Empire shortly after.

  The next test came in 1916, when an anticonscription revolt swept through Russian Central Asia during World War I. The Russian Revolution of 1917 had little immediate impact on the territory, but in the 1920s Turkmen forces joined Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Uzbeks in the Basmachi rebellion against Soviet rule. The Soviet government reorganized and renamed the territory repeatedly: in 1921 it became Turkmen Oblast, and in 1924, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic. By the late 1930s, Soviet agricultural reorganization had dismantled what remained of the nomadic lifestyle.

  The single most catastrophic event of this era struck on a seismic fault line. The Ashgabat earthquake of 1948 killed over 110,000 people, amounting to roughly two-thirds of the city's population. The city and surrounding villages were largely destroyed. Reconstruction fell to Soviet authorities who rebuilt Ashgabat from near ruin, a reconstruction project that would be echoed decades later under very different circumstances. By the late 1980s, Turkmenistan had spent half a century as a designated economic unit within the USSR, largely outside major world events, while Moscow controlled political life. Even the liberalization wave that shook Russia in the late 1980s barely registered.

• 4. Niyazov and the Cult of Self

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  Saparmurat Niyazov began his hold on Turkmenistan in 1985, when he became head of the Communist Party of the Turkmen SSR. When the Soviet Union dissolved, he stayed in place and replaced communist ideology with something of his own design: a nationalism built around his own image. A 1994 referendum and legislation in 1999 abolished requirements for the president to stand for re-election. On the 28th of December 1999, the Mejlis, parliament, declared him President for Life. The parliamentary body that issued this declaration had itself taken office just a week earlier in elections where every candidate had been hand-picked by Niyazov.

  The personality cult that followed was unlike almost anything else in the post-Soviet world. Niyazov took the title Türkmenbaşy, meaning "Head of the Turkmens." He wrote a religious text called the Ruhnama, or "Book of the Soul," published in separate volumes in 2001 and 2004, and required it to be displayed in mosques beside the Quran. Knowledge of the Ruhnama was required even for obtaining a driver's license. Broadcasters opened each broadcast with a pledge that their tongue would shrivel if they slandered the country, its flag, or its president.

  Policy swings were frequent and often bewildering. In 2005, Niyazov closed all hospitals outside Ashgabat and shuttered all rural libraries. He banned operas and circuses as "insufficiently Turkmen." From 1993 to 2019, however, citizens received government-provided electricity, water, and natural gas free of charge. Each citizen was entitled to 35 kilowatt-hours of electricity and 50 cubic meters of natural gas per month. Niyazov died suddenly at the end of 2006, leaving a total vacuum: his cult of personality, comparable by observers to that of North Korea's Kim Il Sung, had made no provision for a successor.

• 5. A Dynasty Takes Shape

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  Deputy Prime Minister Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow stepped into the vacuum after Niyazov's death, becoming interim head of government. His appointment as acting president violated the constitution, but he won a non-democratic special presidential election held in early February 2007, after previously serving as minister of health and then vice-president. He won two additional non-democratic elections, collecting roughly 97% of the vote in both 2012 and 2017. Outside observers regarded these results as neither free nor fair.

  Berdimuhamedow reversed some of his predecessor's stranger decisions. He lifted the ban on operas and circuses and extended basic education from nine years back to ten, and higher education from four years to five. His government also pursued world records with unusual intensity: Ashgabat now holds the record for the most white marble-covered buildings of any city in the world, with over 543. The Alem Entertainment Center features what is designated the world's largest enclosed Ferris wheel.

  In 2022, Berdimuhamedow passed the presidency to his son Serdar, who won a snap election that international observers described as neither free nor fair. Serdar Berdimuhamedov was sworn in on the 19th of March 2022. The father did not step back entirely: he retained the role of chairman of the People's Council, designated the "National Leader" by state media, meaning the two men now share authority. Turkmenistan's independence referendum in 1991 promised a new constitutional order. Thirty years on, the country operates as a presidential republic where the president appoints all judges, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and may dismiss them with parliamentary consent.

• 6. Gas, Cotton, and a Closed Economy

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  The Galkynysh Gas Field, estimated to possess the second-largest volume of natural gas in the world after the South Pars field in the Persian Gulf, carries reserves estimated at 21.2 trillion cubic metres. Gas production is described by the government as the most dynamic sector of the national economy. In 1965, associated gas production in Turkmenistan was only 1.157 billion cubic meters per year. By 1989, that figure had reached 90 billion cubic meters. The story of how that gas reaches markets tells much about the country's geopolitical situation.

  After independence, Turkmenistan was effectively trapped within existing Soviet-era pipeline infrastructure under Russian control. On the 1st of January 2016, Russia's Gazprom halted natural gas purchases from Turkmenistan after years of reductions. China stepped in as a replacement market. In December 2009 the first line of the Trans-Asia pipeline to China opened, and by 2015 Turkmenistan was delivering up to 35 billion cubic meters per year to China. By 2019, China was purchasing over 30 billion cubic meters annually, making it Turkmenistan's main source of external revenue.

  Cotton is the second pillar. Turkmenistan is the world's tenth-largest cotton producer, and the Murghab Valley has grown cotton since the Russian conquest of Merv in 1884. Human rights organizations report that public sector workers, including teachers and doctors, are required by the government to pick cotton under threat of losing their jobs. The broader economic picture is strained. The black-market exchange rate for the Turkmen manat, officially set at 3.5 to the US dollar, was reportedly trading at 18.5 to the dollar as of November 2022. Transparency International's 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index tied Turkmenistan for 169th place globally, out of 180 countries surveyed, with a score of 19 out of 100.

• 7. A Sealed Information Landscape

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  In April 2015, Turkmenistan launched its first communications satellite, TurkmenSat 1. The same month, the government banned all satellite dishes in the country. All existing dishes were ordered removed or destroyed, despite having been legally installed since 1995. The stated target of this campaign was Radio Azatlyk, the Turkmen-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

  Internet access is provided solely by the government's company, Turkmentelekom. As of the 27th of January 2021, Turkmenistan counted roughly 1.265 million internet users, representing about 21% of the total population. The least developed internet infrastructure in Central Asia runs through a single state-controlled chokepoint. Blocked sites include opposition news, YouTube, Facebook, and encrypted communications applications. Use of virtual private networks is prohibited.

  Uncensored reporting on Turkmenistan is produced only from outside the country: by Azatlyk Radiosy, the Turkmen service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty based in Prague; Chronicles of Turkmenistan, operating from Vienna; Turkmen.news, based in the Netherlands; and Gündogar. According to Reporters Without Borders's 2014 World Press Freedom Index, Turkmenistan ranked 178th out of 180 countries, placing it just above North Korea and Eritrea. The country is listed among the ten most censored in the world. Nationally, eight state-run television channels broadcast via satellite. There are no commercial or private TV stations. The Darvaza gas crater, known informally as the "Gateway to Hell" and one of the country's most visited tourist sites, was ordered extinguished by President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow in January 2022, partly to increase gas exports. Canadian explorer George Kourounis examined the crater in 2013 and concluded that no one actually knows how the fire started.