Turkmenistan
Millions of Turkish Lira. Photograph by Flickr user cwirtanen (CC-usage).
Editor’s note: Foreign businesses are facing an unusual “investment” crisis in Turkmenistan: three major Turkish companies have lodged a legal inquiry with the ICSID, and according to an anonymous source, 22 more may soon follow, reports neweurasia’s Annasoltan. She interviews Turkish businessmen who know the country well and have nothing nice to say about its policies. “Most Turkish construction companies have already left the country,” says one.
Running a business in a closed country such as Turkmenistan can already be a difficult enterprise, but it can be twice as hard when political elites act irresponsibly by failing to fulfil contractual obligations. One Turkish businessmen who has worked in Turkmenistan for over a decade remarked to me, on the condition of anonymity,
“Unfortunately, the leadership that succeeded Niyazov is not taking international laws seriously and has begun to take actions that violate the agreements.”
His claims come as three major Turkish construction companies have recently filed a legal inquiry against the Turkmen authorities over lost profits ranging between 600,000 and 1 billion USD. The inquiry has been registered with the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an international arbitration body that deals with disputes around contracts and foreign investment. A Turkish source has informed me on the basis of anonymity that another 22 firms, who have also had problems with getting their projects complete, are also expected to submit their complaints soon.
All of this puts into question Turkmenistan’s reliability as a business partner, and with it, may dash the president’s plans of turning the capital into the “Eastern Dubai”.
Shaikh Mohammad Karachai, prominent representative of the Russian Muslim clergy and adviser to Mufti of Russia, made a statement that made me think about connection between religion and politics once again.
According to Islam.Ru, while critisizing Muammar Qaddafi and calling him dictator, tyrant and “enemy of Allah and His religion,” (which is, basically, takfeer, or the practice of declaring oneself an unbeliever or kafir, previously considered Muslim), Karachai said that “Qaddafi is an Uzbek Karimov, Turkmen Turkmenbashi and Ataturk (Kemal Ataturk, founder of a secular Turkey — author’s note) all together, multiplied by ten.” This is a obvious takfeer towards not only Qaddafi himself, the late Ataturk and Turkmenbashi, but also Karimov who is in a good health condition.
Moreover, religious figure clarified what consequences might come out of a takfeer: “A lot of Libyan scholars issued fatwās on allowing Qaddafi’s murder.”
What is interesting is that in November of 2008 Supreme Mufti of Russia Ravil Gaynutdin, to whom Karachai is an adviser, evaluated Qaddafi’s visit as “another bridge between Russian Federation and Arab-Muslim world,” RIAN reports.
How does one react on this kind of statements? Read the full story »
As most of our readers will no doubt already know, there’s an impressive Central Asian diaspora in Turkey — “diaspora” here being perhaps a relative, Soviet-era term, as both before and prior to communism there was and has been a much more fluid Turkic geographical continuity. Istanbul has been a loci of this diaspora, as Annasoltan has reported vis-à-vis the Turkmen, so I wasn’t surprised to discover that there’s a Central Asian textiles dealer just outside the Kapalıçarşı.
A free press provides a window through which all other abuses of fundamental rights can be revealed.
World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers
Today is World Press Freedom Day celebrated everywhere but in totalitarian countries. In Uzbekistan journalist community of those affiliated with official and foreign accredited mass-media enjoyed the national Oltin Qalam (Uzbek, Golden pen) award ceremony in Tashkent.
While the major award of the event went to a local media-tycoon Firdavs Abdukhalikov, whose affiliation with mass-media limits with owning tabloids and private TV channels and chairing at the National Association of Electronic Mass Media (NAESMI), and has nothing to do with journalism, Freedom House released its Freedom of the Press 2011 report that identifies the greatest threats to independent media in 196 countries and territories. Read the full story »
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom placed Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan on list of countries of particular concern (or CPC), emphasizing that since independence and limited reforms undertaken by regimes since 1991, governments have systematically and egregiously violated freedom of religion or belief.
14 countries of that made the CPC list of the 2011 Annual Report include: Burma, the Democratic People‘s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, the People‘s Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
Tajikistan is in the watch list, while Kazakhstan is in the list of additional countries closely monitored. Te situation with religious freedom in Kyrgyzstan is not mentioned at all, probably as there is no visible violation on a state level as in other neighboring countries.
We will start with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, two worst dictatorship regimes in the region. Read the full story »
Russian law-makers came up with an idea of recommending Central Asian countries not to wait until the situation goes under the control like in the Middle Eastern countries and be more open to democratic changes, various information agencies reported after a meeting closed to the public on April 13, 2011.
Russian Federation’s Duma’s (Parliament) committee on CIS affairs and compatriot relations has held the parliamentary hearing dedicated to the Central Asian region: strategic partnership and security problems. As reported by RBC, the participants have urged the countries in the region to enact democratic reforms and prevent the “North African syndrome,” Ferghana information agency reports.
At the same time “Parlamentskaya gazeta” informed that even though the whole hearing has been closed to the public, at least the first three statements have been made in presence of media.
“Russians are not indifferent as to the destiny of the people in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the light of historic development and co-existence with the people of Russia, which has to be the key factor in the country’s strategy in respect to these states.”
Deputy chair of Duma Nadezhda Gerasimova
Image by neweurasia's Schwartz (CC-usage).
Editor’s note: As Turkmenistan’s authorities quietly move to shut down the system of Turkish secondary schools, neweurasia’s Annasoltan communicates with an alum of one of these schools to get an insider’s view. “I want to clear away one untruth about these schools right from the start,” he says, “I have witnessed with my own eyes that the schools are not directed to control or colonialize the country.”
In my previous post on the current situation of Turkmen-Turkish secondary schools, I reported on their rather secretive, gradual mass closure by my nation’s authorities. Only five are allowed to remain open, but their status is being changed.
I recently met a graduate of one of these schools who was willing to provide me his impressions as an insider, but strictly on the condition of anonymity:
U.S. State Department has released its 2010 Country Reports on Human Practices. As expected, Central Asian states did not make a significant progress in human rights practices. Vice versa, majority of our region’s countries turned their backs to what we call respect to human rights.
This report provides encyclopedic detail on human rights conditions in over 190 countries for 2010.
We will start with Uzbekistan because the situation with human rights and political freedoms in this coutnry was “granted” a huge paragraph in the Introduction to the Report. Along with Afghanistan and Pakistan, this Central Asian country, motherland for more than 28 million people, represented a South and Central Asia chapter. Read the full story »
Photograph by RFE/RL.
Editor’s note: Amangelen Shapudakov, an 80-year-old activist, has been forcibly confined to a pyschiatric hospital by Turkmen authorities after he accused a local official of corruption during an interview with RFE/RL. This is the latest event in an ongoing crackdown. neweurasia’s Schwartz asks whether we’re witnessing a Stalinistic purge, or actually something much worse: “sheer ritualistic self-destructiveness”.
We here at neweurasia are appalled to learn that Amangelen Shapudakov, an 80-year-old activist, has been confined to a psychiatric hospital after accusing a local government official of corruption in an interview for Radio Azatlyq, the Turkmen-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).
Turkmenistan’s psychiatric hospitals are notorious for being used as veritable gulags to confine and torture government critics and opponents. neweurasia‘s Annasoltan has previously blogged about this horrendous practice:
Punitive psychiatry seems almost designed to drive insane its mentally healthy victims. Survivors describe appalling conditions, including neglect and abuse. [...] What’s even more disturbing are reports of victims being forcibly injected with mind altering drugs. Such actions are a direct attack on the very solidity of the human person: when propaganda fails, the Turkmen government hopes chemicals will succeed in bending the mind and soul to its will.
Good news for my fellow Turkemenetizens: Teswirler is back! Operations have been restored fully, their website reporting, “There were server problems because many people accessed the site, so a lot of RAM and CPU was needed.”
Frankly, this is the best news I’ve heard in a long time. That’s not only because it means our country’s youth haven’t lost a very important social outlet, but also because perhaps my worst fears were wrong — for once.
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