I often visit an opposition website Turkmenistan Chronicles which I consider an interesting and rather credible source of information on Turkmenistan. I usually agree with its authors in their criticism of the Ashgabat regime. I must admit, though, that sometimes they exaggerate by blaming the authorities for all the problems.

To support my point I’ll quote one of their recent articles on the alleged demographic crisis in Turkmenistan. Among other statements Esen Aman writes:

15 years ago Turkmenistan could boast a relatively large number of families with many children. A family with four or five kids was nothing exceptional. However, things have changed. Large families, let alone families with eight or nine children, are nowadays very rare.

According to the author, the Turkmen authorities are to blame for the situation.

There is a number of reasons for depopulation of Turkmenistan. The key ones are as follows: the migration of the population (mostly the representatives of national minorities) to other countries – first of all, Russia and Kazakhstan; drug addictions widespread among the young generation; the decline of the health care system; poverty stemming from mass unemployment.

I checked the CIA Factbook to verify the data quoted. Apparently, the demographic crisis in Turkmenistan is a great exaggeration. In 2007 population growth rate in the country totaled 1.61%, whereas the birth rate was 46.21 births per 1,000 population. Thus, Turkmenistan comes third among the whole former USSR (after Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and beats such countries as Russia (population growth rate totals minus 0.4%), Ukraine (minus 0.6%) and even Iran (0.66%).

Let’s assume, though, that the American estimates are not correct and in fact the population growth rate in Turkmenistan is lower. In that case the reasons for this problem, quoted by the Turkmenistan Chronicles, seem rather doubtful. Should poverty, unemployment, emigration and poor health care be the reasons for declining growth rate, then why this rate totals as much as 2.6% in neighboring Afghanistan?

Seems to me that it’s not only the authorities and their poor social policy who are responsible for the decreasing number of children in the Turkmen families. It’s also the changing way of life and modernization processes in the society that occur despite the country’s isolation and a repressive political regime. In this respect Turkmenistan is gradually becoming similar to the Western societies.