Behind Turkmenistan’s ban of the AUCA
Politics and Society, Turkmenistan2 Comments
A classroom of echoes. Image by Flickr user mamako7070 (CC-usage).
Editor’s note: As students around the world prepare for the academic year, those of Turkmenistan hoping to study abroad, particularly at the American University of Central Asia (AUCA), have suddenly found themselves enemies of the state. neweurasia’s Orazdurdy has been covering the story as it develops. In this post Annasoltan gives informed remarks about the situation. (Click on the image to read more about the travel ban.)
How can we make sense of what’s been happening to Turkmenistan’s students? Let’s review the available evidence.
Stratfor.com had an article back on 11 November 2008 saying,
The government of Turkmenistan is clamping down on student contacts with U.S. organizations, according to students in Ashgabat interviewed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Turkmen Service Nov. 11.
The report claims school officials warned students not to visit or interact with U.S. organizations operating in Turkmenistan, including the Public Affairs Office at the U.S. Embassy, the U.S.-funded American Center and the International Research and Exchanges Board.
Students were also reportedly discouraged from applying to a foreign exchange program run by the American Center known as FLEX. In addition, Turkmen university officials reportedly have denied students wishing to complete their postgraduate education in the United States school transcripts in English.
The Vienna-based NGO Turkmen Initiative of Human Rights wrote on 24 August of this year that FLEX participants have been among those singled out by the government.
I talked to a former Turkmen colleague of mine yesterday. She claimed that among the more formal potential reasons is that the military needs more young people for recruitment, and that almost all students sent abroad are male.
But I think for that reason alone the government would not have been ready to go as far as ordering to extract students en mass from airplanes and risk losing face. Instead, I think it much more likely that the government is trying to keep Western, and especially American, influence out by targeting the AUCA.
What is especially odd about this crackdown is that while it has been going on Mr. Berdimuhammedov himself has been silent. There hasn’t even been so much as an attempt to downplay what’s happening, leaving it to observers to simply guess.
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Update 1/9/2009: Read Transitions Online’s editorial about the AUCA ban (ENG).
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Just recently Tajik authorities closed down a U.S.-funded university in Dushanbe. After the web revolution, all Central Asian governments
fear the student revolution.
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Students must be given their rights in making a good start with their career. if there are problems between the school and the government, students should be excluded in that issue.
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