The next time anybody is at the John Deere company museum, they must be sure to check if Herbert J. Markley, head of the tractor firm’s agricultural division, was as good as his word when he promised Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov this week that a copy of the Rukhnama would occupy a prominent place on its grounds. As government newspaper Neutralnii Turkmenistan reported on Wednesday, John Deere has once again become the beneficiary of a multi-million dollar deal for the supply of agricultural machinery. After a meeting between Niyazov and Markley on Tuesday, a contract was signed extending a long-established business partnership between the parties and completing a deal to supply Turkmenistan with 150 wheat combine harvesters, worth $23 million, and spare parts to the value of $4 million.
During their encounter, Niyazov also took the opportunity to thank John Deere for its operations on the Turkmen market, which have been carrying on since 1993, while they both expressed mutual confidence that the collaboration would stand to continue for the foreseeable future.
In September 2003, President of John Deere Worldwide Agriculture, David Everett, visited Turkmenistan, at which time his company sealed a deal to supply 100 wheat combine harvesters and 50 cotton-combines, to the cost of $27 million. As NewsCentralAsia reported at the time:

“[The] John Deere-Turkmen partnership dates back to 1993 when Turkmenistan purchased harvester combines from John Deere. After extensive testing in local conditions, John Deere machinery was found [to be] suitable for Turkmenistan and on 24 April 1998, during the visit of President Niyazov to [United States], the government of Turkmenistan signed an agreement with John Deere for the supply, repair, maintenance and user/maintainer training of agricultural machinery.
[Over] 10 years of cooperation, Turkmenistan has purchased 694 tractors to a total value of $77.5 million, 258 wheat-combines worth $41.3 million, and 148 cotton-combines for a total sum of $27.7 million. In addition, John Deere has supplied thousands of smaller machines and equipment.
In all, John Deere has supplied more than 3,500 machinery units to Turkmenistan. The total value of these items exceeds $170 million.
John Deere maintains permanent repair and maintenance facilities in Turkmenistan.”

During Wednesday’s meeting, Markley also stated that he was ready to organise training session for Turkmen agricultural workers at John Deere’s own factories, but not before noting that they were already highly skilled.
Before concluding their encounter, Markley thanked Niyazov and congratulated him on the 15th anniversary of his country independence. He continued by remarking how impressed he was by Ashgabat and its architecture, noting that it clearly demonstrated the achievements of the era of independence. Finally, Markley impressed on Niyazov how he had heard wonderful things about the Rukhnama and wished to read it, and he also expressed a desire to visit the mosque in Kipchak and visit the graves of Niyazov’s parents.
Now, this kind of scene is familiar for anyone who has observed the ritual flattery that large-scale foreign investors must indulge in when meeting Niyazov, but the degree of unctuousness achieved here by Markley is remarkable. For all the discussions that took place on these pages some months back about the relative merits of opening up European trade to Turkmenistan, it is hard to imagine how many foreign companies will be prepared to gratify Niyazov’s ego and his dubious apparatus of power while risking their reputations just for the sake of a lucrative contract. All too many, it would appear.

As the Gundogar website recently reported, the official start was announced to this year’s cotton-gathering season earlier this week. The event was observed by President Saparmurat Niyazov, who took part in an symbolic ceremony at a cotton plantation in the Dashhoguz velyat.
Citing the importance of the cotton industry for Turkmenistan, Niyazov stressed that all the gathered cotton should be sold through government trading organizations and at strictly market prices. During his speech, Niyazov also reminded his Minister for Textile to ensure that industrial textile complexes are built in all those districts exceeding cotton output of 25,000-30,000 tonnes.
The minister in question will be eager to carry out his leader’s exhortations to the letter, especially as he is currently performing his duties in a six-month-long probationary role. His predecessor, Dortguly Aydogdiyev, was ritually dismissed in a televised broadcast in May, during which the Minister for National Security also claimed that two previous textile minister had misappropriated up to $80 million. In the course of the meeting, which was also attended by the heads of the four most important Turkish textile companies operating in Turkmenistan, Niyazov also promised to provide necessary funds for the creation of textile units in Ashgabat and Abadan. His stated aim for supplying this $85 million credit to Turkish textile firm Norsel was to create a new generation of competent management in this key sector. The length of time for which the current Minister of Textile, Kadyrberdy Orazov according to the most recently available information, manages to hold onto his position will give some basic indication of how satisfied with progress over the next few months.
Niyazov management over the cotton industry has not been limited to reshuffling management, however. As Deutsche Welle has reported, Niyazov takes direct executive interest in how and when cotton-gathering takes place. Below is a translation of a paragraph from Deutsche Welle’s report:

“While flying above the northern regions of Turkmenistan, Niyazov noted bitterly that he saw completely green cotton fields and still unopened boxes. Speaking to workers in the region he noted that autumn was not far off and that hoping for dry and sunny weather was simply naïve. As the president observed, there are as yet only scraps in the gathering baskets, but he then reminded his listeners according to the state plan, two million tonnes of cotton need to be picked this year. The causes of the low productivity at harvest time, according to Niyazov, were the late sowing dates and the poor quality of early ripening buds. Niyazov urged labourers to work on every day there was good weather during the ripening period and to ensure every last bit of cotton was picked and that not one basket was left empty. He also warned of the consequences of a failed harvest, stating that it would impose severe demands on everyone all around.”

As has become standard, the current harvest is already making oppressive demands from the general population. According to a Deutsche Welle report, over half of this year’s batch of conscripts is being sent to work instead of performing military training duties. The vast majority of these will be charged with gathering cotton, often being put up in appalling conditions. From the Deutsche Welle report:

“As an officer in one the etraps of the Mary velyat told a Deutsche Welle correspondent, many conscripts are being sent to remote to remote districts and being housed in fields in basic huts made from clay and reeds. The soldiers are also not being provided with drinking water and are expected to look for their own food, as the army is effectively running on a loss-saving basis < …> Conscripts are thus being made to survive off what is provided by local residents or by stealing, when there is anything to steal.
The living conditions are also unsanitary. As a result of the lack of hygiene, soldiers are contracting infections on wounds over their hands and bodies.

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A Turkish driver who frequently crosses the Turkmen border has spoken of seeing border guards begging for food. Yet, according to an officer at a military division in the Mary velyat, border guards still live in better conditions than soldiers within the country as they are able to conduct transactions with smugglers and are thus able to sustain themselves.”

This situation has now begun to affect more people according to a recent article appearing on the IWPR website, which reported how the Turkmen army has expanded its scope for recruitment. The article also cites anecdotal incidents of physically disabled individuals being conscripted to carry out duties in the public service, including work in the health service, policing of the traffic, and gathering of cotton. The figures cited by IWPR give some idea of the scale in the increase in conscription in independent Turkmenistan:

“In a report earlier this year, the Turkmenistan Initiative for Human Rights, a group based abroad, said an estimated 75 per cent of men of conscription age were now being called up. This represents a huge increase on the 35 to 45 percent call-up rate in the Soviet Union.

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It is not clear exactly how big the armed forces of Turkmenistan are – the number was thought to stand at around 30,000 in the Nineties but is believed to have increased since then, by some estimates up to 100,000.
In 2002, the armed forces chief of staff promised to deploy up to 25,000 men in the public sector, a figure which may have increased considerably since the recent dismissals of hospital staff.”

Forced recruitment of cotton-gatherers is not only limited to the military however. Although children are no longer expected to pick cotton as much as was previously the case, students will nonetheless be affected by the requirement for teaching staff to take an active role in the harvesting season, according to a Eurasianet article (Word document) published in June:

“In previous years, teachers were sent to the cotton fields instead of teaching in schools. Many of them preferred to hire people to harvest the cotton instead of going themselves and to pay them from his/her own pocket. This situation was suitable for administrators from the education department since hired workers were picking cotton instead of teachers while the latter were working in schools, i.e. neither the academic process nor the cotton harvesting campaign was disrupted.”

The article also reported how a meeting of Dashoguz school principals was gathered to announce the interruption of the practice described above. Agricultural workers had apparently complained that they were being underpaid by teachers. There was also poor scrutiny over the labourers actually doing the work, with some incidents of fighting, drinking, theft and even prostitution among female workers.
All these reports invariably offer a partial portrait of the social and political disarray that every cotton-harvesting season appears to create. The general impression, however, is that systemic corruption engendered by unaccountable mismanagement overseen by the Niyazov’s erratic leadership is annually laying the ground for a catastrophic state of affairs. Observing official pronouncements of government targets and plans for the development of the textile industry on the one hand and, on the other, the dismal realities of the people on the ground thus remains a disturbing pastime.

As the Gundogar website reports, a convention on forced disappearances was launched at the UN General Assembly’s Human Rights Council by France and Argentina jointed in a meeting last Wednesday. This move is likely to irritate numerous global powers, the United States and Russia among them, but against the backdrop of the widely reported recent death of Radio Free Europe reporter Ogulsapar Muradova, it is not hard to see what implications this could hold for the Turkmen government.
Indeed, on the occasion of this latest human rights outrage perpetrated by the government of President Saparmurat Niyazov, the expected chorus of condemnation has been bolstered by calls for thorough investigations from both the French and U.S. governments. On September 15, a representative from the French Foreign Ministry gave assurances that the matter would raised in institutional exchanges at the European Union and the OSCE. The previous day, the U.S. State Department was raising similar objections while calling for a detailed autopsy. More recently, U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, who once authored Congressional legislation calling for closer ties between the United States and countries in former Soviet Central Asia, deplored the circumstances surrounding Muradova’s death according to a Radio Free Europe report:

“Clearly the Turkmen authorities need to allow the family to speak out and speak with the family. This is just a matter of human decency. Here’s a woman who has a family, who has died at a relatively young age and in highly questionable circumstances after a bogus trial. The Turkmen government needs, just as a matter of decency to the family, to allow the family to look into this, to allow the family to have some closure on this matter. We will be pushing the Turkmen government to allow the family these modest rights as a family of a person who has passed away.”

In spite of the objections of Senator Brownback, who is considered in some circles to be a possible Republican candidate for the 2008 presidential race, the Turkmen government seems determined to pursue its line of silencing all further reports on Muradova’s mysterious death. Again according to Radio Free Europe, the phone lines of Muradova’s family have been severed. The journalist’s immediate relatives were reportedly in contact with the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation after viewing Muradova’s body, although they were being subjected to threats by morgue employees even at that juncture. In a statement to Amnesty International, the head of the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation Tajigul Begmedova stated that relatives had testified that signs appearing on Muradova’s face and neck were consistent with beatings and strangulation.
It is also reported that Amnesty International have expressed further concern about the welfare of Turkmen Helsinki Foundation workers Annakurban Amanklychev and Sapardurdy Khajiev, who were also convicted in a recent trial and whose current whereabouts and state is also subject of speculation. Interestingly, one of the accusations levelled at Amanklychev was that of accepting financial assistance from individuals described as foreign operatives, BBC journalist Lucy Ash being among these. In the absence of reliable impartial information regarding the precise activities surrounding the nature of the crimes supposedly committed by these Turkmen reporters and human rights activist, it would be intriguing to hear how much insight the people’s foreign colleagues could offer.

Relatively soon after their arrest in June, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist, Ogulsapar Muradova, a worker for the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation, Sapardurdy Khadjiev, and another human rights activist, Annakurban Amanklychev, were sentenced to six to seven years in jail for illegal posession of weapons on August 25, according to an IRIN report. The conclusion of the trial, which was held under conditions of the strictest security and secrecy, has attracted a chorus of criticism from a range of rights organisations:

Tajigul Begmedova, head of the THF, said on Monday from the Bulgarian city of Varna, where the rights group is based, that everything related to the court process was ‘absurd’ and based on ‘trumped up charges’.
Alexander Narodetsky, director of the US-funded RFE/RL’s Turkmen service, said from Prague that he could not understand why the trio had been convicted or what for.
‘The charges and the verdicts are absolutely unclear for us. Where did they come from and how was it organised?’ Narodetsky asked.
‘Everything was happening behind the closed doors. There were no observers allowed and the whole thing was concluded very fast,’ he said.
Begmedova said the fact that the court hearings were held in secret again showed Turkmenistan’s government was not willing to ‘respect human rights or follow a democratic path.’

Nezavisimaya Gazeta carried an interview with Radio Liberty’s Turkmenistan office, which commented on the nature of the work being carried out by Muradova:

“Ogulsapar Muradova was our correspondent in Ashgabat. She covered non-political topics – education and culture. She was arrested on June 18, and her children were also arrested, though they were released after a week. But she was charged with espionage. The whole intrigue centered on a French television program being filmed in Turkmenistan. Khadzhiyev and Amynklychev were helping with the filming, while Muradova was only acquainted with them since her previous job with the Helsinki Group. Apparently, that’s why she was made to pay.

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It’s practically impossible to keep track of what will happen to her now, or to find out exactly where she’ll serve her sentence: no information about prison inmates is given out in Turkmenistan.”

According to Muradova’s layer, Kakadzhan Kadyrov, the defendants were forbidden from consulting their legal counsel and were physically prevented from communicating with them by soldiers present in the courtroom. All roads leading to the Azatlyk courthouse in Ashgabat were blocked by policemen and personnel from the National Security Ministry (SNB). Judge Guncha Khadzhikuliyeva also denied the defendants to present their case, choosing instead to conclude the proceedings in a few minutes. A Turkmen Helsinki Foundation press release notes that the conditions of the trial were in “violations of the law and basic human rights as guaranteed by the Turkmen Constitution and adds furthermore that was in spite of “the fact that during a Cabinet meeting on June 19, President Saparmurat Niyazov demanded that law enforcement agencies conduct the case in a fair and an open fashion”.

Miklos Haraszti, OSCE’s representative on freedom of the media, also condemned the dubious transparency of the trial.

“Turkmenistan did not allow observers to monitor this case. The international community is right to worry that the defendants are in trouble because of their journalistic and human rights activities.”

This case comes in the wake of renewed appeal from the International Helsinki Foundation for the release of 70-year old Turkmen dissident, Kakabai Tejenov, who has been been detained in a psychiatric facility since January this year. IHF Executive Director, Aaron Rhodes, has addressed a letter to Karel De Gucht, OSCE Chairman-in-Office, seeking his support in applying pressure on Turkmen authorities. This message follows similar earlier appeals, which it is suggested IHF’s letter, have fallen on deaf ears:

“The response, in late February, from the Delegation of Turkmenistan to the OSCE was disappointing. In a brief statement distributed to OSCE participating States, the delegation denied that Tejenov had ever been detained or that he had ever been confined to a medical institution.”

The laying of the foundation stone for Saudi Arabia’s expansive new embassy complex in Ashgabat on Tuesday offers a glimpse into the current direction of Turkmenistan’s engagement with the international community. As NewsCentralAsia reported, the new grounds of the embassy will cover an area of 15,000 square metres and built in the centre of the city, suggesting that the mission will be a high-profile one. The ceremony was attended by a prominent Turkmen delegation and accompanied by the standard saluations that mark such events:

“Ovezgeldy Atayev, chairman of the Turkmen parliament, Reshit Meredov, foreign minister of Turkmenistan, and Orazmurat Esenov, governor of Ashgabat, participated in the ceremony, illustrating strong support of the Turkmen government for the project.
Senior diplomats from the foreign office of Saudi Arabia were also present on the occasion. They would make frequent trips to Turkmenistan to oversee the progress of the project.

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Reshit Meredov, foreign minister of Turkmenistan, said that President Niyazov had sent his personal good wishes for the successful implementation of the embassy complex project.
Meredov said that the embassy complex would be a permanent symbol of the eternal friendship of the people of both the countries. He also praised the efforts of Ambassador Abdul Aziz Al-Ghadeer in strengthening the relations between the two countries.”

Turkmenistan’s Islamic identity has invariably affected relations with the Gulf kingdom, although this relationship has been marked as much by diffidence as shared values. In this respect, dealings with Turkey have proved far more fruitful, and notably work on the Saudi embassy will be carried out by the Ankara-based Bozdemir Construction Company, which also has offices in Ashgabat.
To date, visible Saudi diplomacy has tended to take the form of aid and assistance, such as when a senior delegation from the the Saudi royal family visited in 2003 and donated $100,000 to a Turkmen charity, to reinforce “friendly relations” as it was then reported. More recently, in November 2005, Saudi Ambassador Abdul Aziz Ibrahim Al-Ghadeer invited President Saparmurat Niyazov to an extraordinary summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
If, to date, detecting the course of Turkmen economic diplomacy has depended largely on observing the country’s unpredictable negotiation over the export of gas and the signing of exploration deals with Western firms, the larger picture has not been so clear. Evidently, it has become clear that the sense of international legitimacy which Ashgabat craves will most likely be found in the community of Islamic states with which it has beejn enjoying deepened relations. As the OIC’s charter itself states, the purpose of the organisation is to “promote solidarity among all member states” and “safeguard their dignity, independence and national rights”. Such moderation between mutual solidarity and inherent respect for sovereignty suits the elite of the culturally Muslim state of Turkmenistan down to the ground at this stage of its national development. In this respect, the enthusiastically supported building of a Saudi embassy in Ashgabat signifies Turkmenistan’s bid

What follows is one part of a cross-blog initiative that commemorates the 1991 Moscow coup and evaluates the years in between.

As was the case for his Central Asian neighbours, the General Secretary of the Republic of the Turkmen SSR, Saparmurat Niyazov, was put in an awkward position by the unfolding of the coup plot organised against Gorbachev in October 1991. It was no secret that he was unenthusiastic about the reforms of glasnost and perestroika, a signal distrust of modernisation and democratisation that he has steadfastly maintained to this day. His first election to the presidency, which took place two months before the coup, set an early standard for the level of political accountability and transparency that would henceforth prevail. Standing unopposed he won resoundingly with no less than 99 percent of the vote, a share that even Stalin would have envied. The question of what has truly changed in Turkmenistan over the last 15 years, other than some cosmetic features of its reclaimed national identity, is therefore a vexed one.

Like in so many other CIS states, the language adopted to recall the collapse of the Soviet Union cannot make appeals to collective gratitude over liberation from oppression as is the case in the Baltic States, because political repression has deepened if anything. Similarly, it would be futile to mine the theme of stifled development at the hands of exploitative Russian overlords as this is probably not a viewpoint too many people in the country would recognise as their own. Instead, two recurring motifs that crop up over and over again, excluding the obvious and omnipresent personality cult that has been subject of extensive laughing commentary, are stability and neutrality.

Stability is also complemented by the buzzword of sustainability, which is another way of saying that Turkmenistan will not buckle under the pressure of Western calls for pursuing a liberal agenda for political and economic reform. This is succinctly expressed in a recent formulation appearing in an article on the Turkmen State Information Agency website summing up the legacy of independence:

“The phenomenon of the Turkmen development model is in that the interests of the people whose wellbeing and happiness the efforts in economic, cultural and political spheres are aimed at underlie the strategy and tactics of national development.”

The founding strategy of Turkmen economic policy was enshrined in the vaunted “Ten Years of Stability”, a variation on a similar concept propounded by Uzbek policymakers; and sure enough this period of increased self-reliance did indeed see some notable successes. Consequently, all apparent economic successes achieved by the country, which are in large measure attributable to Turkmenistan’s enormous mineral deposits, are brandished as a vindication of this unwavering line. Yet, the evidence of ample anecdotal accounts points to the intense pauperisation of large swathes of the country that put lie to such grand boasts. One grim item that appeared recently on the Turkmenskaya Iskra opposition site reported that while real estate prices in Ashgabat have been rocketing sky-high in the past two years, prostitutes have become cheaper. Such news suggests an emergent stratification in Turkmen society that seriously threatens any pretence to stability and aspirations to an equitable society. Official sources invariably protest that such speculation is merely the product of malign foreign designs, but in the absence of independent observers in the country there are few grounds for swallowing Turkmen propaganda whole.

It hardly needs observing that democracy does not feature particularly prominently in the panorama of sustainable stability Turkmen-style. This year, however, local elections were held in the country, although it is questionable how such a faintly uncompetitive exercise could serve to instil a genuine feeling of civic empowerment. If anything, the process, which has been severely underreported it should be added, owes more to Soviet regional elections than to anything that one might recognise in an established liberal democracy.

Neutrality is another Turkmen post-Soviet theme that is voluminously and extensively trumpeted every time the anniversary of its declaration comes around. The status, which dates back to 1995, is a proudly affirmed badge of national distinctiveness, although it is hard to see what real permutation it has actually had. Wanting to be cynical, one might observe that neutrality is just the flip-side of the virtual hermit status that has resulted from Turkmenistan’s distinctly idiosyncratic foreign policy. However, ceaseless wrangling and double-dealing (by all parties concerned) in gas deals over the last few years has shown Turkmenistan to be no more aloof and virtuous than any other countries in the region when it comes to power politics and intrigue. The latest chapter of a complex saga has seen Ashgabat giving added impetus to its drift away from the Russian sphere of influence towards greater engagement with China.

This is not to argue that August 1991 was a blip on the radar as far as Turkmenistan was concerned. The country would obviously look vastly different had the events of that month turned out differently. Yet, for those that recall the hopes and dreams that the changes of that season appeared to augur, there must surely be only a residual feeling of betrayal and disappointment.

After the dramatic arrest of the General Prosecutor Gurbanbiby Atajanova in April, the time of reckoning has also come for another figure close to the Niyazov regime. President Saparmurat Niyazov had signed a decree in June ordering Kakamurad Balliyev’s dismissal from his position as editor as the Ministry of Defence’s official newspaper, Esger, for “serious shortcomings in the course of performing professional duties and committing a criminal offence”. It has now been reported that Balliyev has been handed a stiff prison sentence, as Arkady Dubnov explains in this partially translated article from Russian daily Vremya Novostei:

President Saparmurat Niyazov’s former press secretary Kakamurad Balliyev, it was announced recently, has been sentenced to a 17-year jail sentence. However, unlike the trial of other high-placed officials, nothing has yet been declared by the authorities about Balliyev’s closed trial. It is not even known exactly what charges were levelled against Balliyev.
Balliyev, 53, was arrested at the end of June this year, only a few days after the outbreak of the spy scandal. A few Western diplomats and journalists were then accused of involvement in opposition activities and filming in markets and the demolition of old houses.
Balliyev was a typical representative of the Niyazov elite, instrumental in forging the cult of personality and was believed to be devoted to his leader. The former General Prosecutor, Gurbanbiby Atajanova, who was recently sentenced to 20 years in jail for corruption, was also believed such a person. According to Vremya Novostei’s sources in Ashgabat, rumours had long been circulating about Atajanova and Balliyev’s propensity for greed and corruption some time before their arrest. And if, as unofficial sources have claimed, Balliyev’s charges were related to abuse of authority, it seems that the grounds for his arrest were substantial.

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Balliyev began his journalistic career in Soviet Turkmenistan, and in the mid-1980s he was disciplined by the party for appropriating other writers’ earnings. After that he worked as a radio editor. Balliyev’s career really took off in the mid-1990s. He worked his way up to deputy chairman of the Turkmen State Radio and Television Company, and was later appointed as Niyazov’s press secretary. In August 2002 he was dismissed from this job, but he remained in Niyazov’s circle and became the editor of the Esger (Warrior) newspaper.
As the author of a two-volume novel, The Righteous Path, based on the personal diaries of Niyazov in the 1980s, Balliyev made a name for himself through his other writings. In 2001, he published an article in Neutralniiy Turkmenistan entitled “Prophet Saparmurat”, which became the prototype for Turkmen agit-prop. As he wrote, “Saparmurat Niyazov is a national prophet, sent to the Turkmen people in the third millennium”. This definition raised a huge furore at the time among many Muslims, who found the statement blasphemous, inasmuch as it invited comparisons with a leader sent from God.
He was less successful in proposing that Turkmenistan be renamed Turkmenbashistan. This was mulled over in Niyazov’s circles for some time, but the risk was not taken. He did, however, manage to compel Turkmen journalists to refer to Niyazov as Turkmenbashi in all their articles. One journalist relates how he managed to avoid this diktat until Niyazov officially had this title put in his passport as his family name.
As the editor of the military newspaper, Warrior, Balliyev suggested that all government departments should have an official devoted to the instruction of Niyazov’s Rukhnama life guide. It is likely that it was after this the sitting of an exam on the Rukhnama became mandatory for anybody applying for a driving licence.
On one occasion, Niyazov declared during at a meeting in the Ruhaiyat Palace that “this person sometimes goes too far in eulogising my merits and I should sort him out; but what am I to do, he is a poet”. Balliyev replied that if the “beloved leader would kick me in the behind, I should take it as divine good fortune”. But could the architect have ever predicted that “good fortune” from the “prophet” would come in the form of a 17-year prison sentence?

The Turkmen State News Agency reports that the U.S. Ambassador to Turkmenistan Tracey Ann Jacobson (pictured left) has come to the end of her tenure. She will next be taking up an ambassadorship in Tajikistan. Characteristically, the main business of the final meeting between Jacobson and President Saparmurat Niyazov was mutual congratulation:

“Thanking the Turkmen leader for an opportunity of a personal meeting the diplomat expressed her sincere gratitude to the President, government and people of Turkmenistan for the support that she, as the head of the diplomatic mission, had met with during her stay in Turkmenistan that, according to her, served as an evidence of the fruitful and constructive dialogue established between the two countries.”

Another predictable moment came when Jacobson expressed the hope that upcoming local elections would be genuinely democratic and transparent. The Turkmen State News Agency further reported that Jacobson further suggested that the institutions of representation could only truly flourish if polls were held on an “alternative basis”, although quite what this is taken to mean is not explained. A BBC Monitoring transcript of a Turkmen TV report also includes Jacobson’s stated hope that democratic standards could be transferred to “higher levels of self-governing body”. As Jacobson remarked after her meeting with Niyazov:

“This was my last meeting with the President and, therefore, I tried to touch upon bilateral relations in all areas. For instance, we discussed democratic reforms in Turkmenistan, and the President told me about plans to hold elections for every level of state management starting with elections scheduled on 23 July. He gave me his assurance that the elections would be genuinely democratic and transparent.”

The timing of Jacobson’s departure has necessarily made democracy a key issue in the final meeting, although security and energy have in fact usually been at the top of the bilateral agenda. However, this is not to say that democracy has not been raised before and repeatedly. In an article appearing in Times of Central Asia in April 2005, it is noted that:

“On April 18 Saparmurat Niyazov received the U.S. Ambassador to Ashgabat, Tracey Ann Jacobson to exchange views on a whole range of issues of mutual interest and on the current state and prospects of Turkmen-American cooperation. The [two parties] discussed the most efficient directions of this cooperation, focusing in particular on the need to continue partnership in such fields as culture and education in which good contacts had been already established. In fact, the American side is implementing several projects on restoration of historic and archaeological monuments in Turkmenistan. Apart from that, over 140 Turkmen citizens travel annually to the United States under the auspices of social and educational exchange programmes.

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In an interview after the meeting, Ambassador Jacobson noted the readiness of the United States to improve relations with Turkmenistan in all areas of cooperation. Stressing the significance of bringing closer views on the problems of democracy, the Ambassador underlined the importance of holding democratic elections that, according to her, would engage people with different points of view in the election process and give them an opportunity to exchange their views.”

From a security point of view, the United States has enjoyed an ambivalent relationship with Turkmenistan over the period of Jacobson’s tenure. In an October 2005 visit to Turkmenistan, the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph expressed his satisfaction with some key areas of cooperation in security:

“We have had a very good discussion about … the proliferation security initiative and the endorsement of that initiative by [President Niyazov and his government]. Our two presidents share the objective of stopping the trade in WMD and missile-related equipment. And in that context we talked about the need to prevent the over-flight of your country by those states that would use that airspace to ship weapons of mass destruction related materials.”

About a month after Joseph’s visit, the U.S. government donated nine jeeps, three water trucks, and 31 sets of communication equipment, ostensibly in a bid to assist the Turkmen government in securing border security. Although one might conclude this was part of an international campaign against arms smuggling, it is more likely that drugs transported from Afghanistan were a more likely target of this initiative.
As all these snippets of news indicate, U.S. diplomatic presence has had an inevitably nominal significance. Dialogue has a preponderantly symbolic value, stressing the importance of shared interests, but doing little about them. As the United States increasingly adopts a more vigorous and robust line towards Russia, one has to wonder if this will be reflected in diplomatic appointments across Moscow’s strategic near abroad. On one hand, this appears unlikely as the United States increasingly disengages from the political sphere of Central Asia. Yet, as U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney’s visit to Kazakhstan after his severe criticism of Russia’s backsliding on democracy shows, politics, democracy and energy are grey and ambiguous areas for international diplomacy. The United States new representative in Ashgabat could potentially serve as an aggravator of the changeable relations between Turkmenistan and Russia, which, as events in Ukraine have shown, have wider implications. Furthermore, Turkmenistan geographical location, bordering Afghanistan and Iran, suggest that U.S. interest is never more a moment’s thought away. The task that remains for information starved foreign observers, therefore, is to decode the U.S. Embassy’s reactions to the conduct and outcome of July’s elections.

Russian daily Noviye Izvestiya has speculated that President Saparmurat Niyazov may be succeeded by his son, Murad Saparmurat, in an article published in Tuesday’s issue. It cited Murad Saparmurat’s visit to Dubai last Saturday during which he acted as the head official representative for the Turkmen government as evidence for this claim. The brief tour covered issues of trade and economic cooperation between the United Arab Emirates and Turkmenistan, including the possibility of regular scheduled flights being established between Ashgabat and Dubai. As Noviye Izvestiya reports:

“During talks with Murad Niyazov, the Director General of the UAE Chamber of Commerce and Industry Abdul Rahman Ghanim Al Mutaiwee suggested to his Turkmen visitor that the two nations, united by their ‘Muslim culture and social attitudes’, should strengthen relations. These ties will be formalised by the setting up of regular Emirates flights to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan’s regular participation in trade exhibitions in Dubai, and the opening of Turkmen Consulate in the capital of the UAE. We [Noviye Izvestiya] would also note that until now such matters have been dealt with personally by Saparmurat Niyazov himself.”

In spite of an obvious lack of candidates to succeed Niyazov, the issue is one that he has raised on earlier occasions. During a Khalk Maslahty session in October 2005, Niyazov remarked that 2009 would mark the year in which elections would be held to find a new president.

“In 2009, we will hold the elections for another president. By that time, in four or five years, we will raise a worthy successor. There is nothing eternal. One cannot be eternal.”

In truth, however, such promises have become a regular occurrence and are routinely greeted with unanimous pleading from the Khalk Maslahty that Niyazov remain in power. The Khalk Maslahty, which remains Turkmenistan’s closest analogue to a representative institution, first decreed Niyazov president for life in 1999. He has since offered numerous timeframes for a subsequent presidential election, but a date has yet to be carved in stone.
As suggested earlier, the most immediate difficulty surrounding succession is that paucity of likely candidates. Murad Niyazov is intermittently mentioned in connection with this eventuality, but Kazakh political analyst Konstantin Syroyezhkin is sceptical about this scenario. As he notes in comments to Noviye Izvestiya:

“Niyazov is a political loner and has no developed system of family connections, therefore, he can have no heir.”

However, Heydar Aliev set a precedent in the region by performing a similar operation in handing over power to his son, Ilham. Although Geydar Aliev died in 2003, a personality cult in his honour still persists, an outcome that could easily be replicated in Turkmenistan. Indeed, as with Heydar Aliev, the issue of Niyazov’s succession may be forced by ill-health. Niyazov’s health is subject of much speculation and some suggest that he may not have many more years to live.
Inevitably, rumours about Saparmurat Niyazov’s succession are often speculative and fanciful in view of the scarce information that observers have to go on. Yet it is not hard to feel that Murad Niyazov’s suitability for his father’s position is severely questionable. To begin with, as Noviye Izvestiya’s article notes, he has little political capital upon which to base his putative authority, and his job hitherto in energy (and possibly arms) trading in Vienna does not position him ideally to amend this problematic situation. In an exchange on this site some months back, Turkmen blogger Karakum also observed that “while Heydar [Aliev] was always more of an asset for Ilham, Murad’s father is and will be his strongest political liability”. Karakum also suggested that Murad Niyazov was not an “indecent person”, yet there is no shortage of gossip about embarrassing indiscretions. The most notable example of these is the rumour that he once spent $12 million in the course of one night’s gambling in a Spanish casino.
Such background information thus makes the potential for Murad Niyazov to rule his country highly unlikely. Were he to want to take over the reins, however, one aspect that plays in his favour is time. The implacable rate of cadre turnover is emptying the Turkmen halls of power of most presidential hopefuls. In the event that no viable candidates were to emerge and that Saparmurat Niyazov’s health was indeed to worsen as rapidly as some hypothesise, the playing field would be wide open and Murad could feasibly stand to benefit.

Gas talks between Turkmenistan and Russia took another twist on Thursday as Ashgabat announced that it would cut off gas deliveries from September after negotiations to reach a new price deal collapsed, Reuters reported. The failure of these talks bodes ill for Europe, whose gas supplies rely to a great deal upon the Turkmen gas, which affords Russia the ability to spare capacity for export. As Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller remarked after talks with Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov:

“No agreement was reached on the price and the talks have been suspended.”

Turkmenistan planned to force Gazprom to increase payments for gas from the $65 per 1,000 cubic metres to $100 from next month. To date, Gazprom has been able to dictate price negotitations as it has control over the most important pipelines out of Turkmenistan. As the Reuters article notes “European Union politicians want Russia to ratify a treaty which would allow buyers to negotiate gas prices directly with Central Asian states, but Russia has so far refused”.