Sold Out?

Now those fears have taken concrete form. On 22 April, Niyazov announced that Turkmenistan will withdraw from its decade-old dual-citizenship treaty with Russia and that within two months, people with both Turkmen and Russian passports who have permanent residence in Turkmenistan will have to give up one of their passports.

The government appears determined to take what would be the unprecedented step of stripping a vast number of people of citizenship. The authorities have not waited to tighten the vise. They have already cut back on the number of air tickets sold. Only those who already have exit visas are being allowed out, and getting a visa is practically impossible. Moreover, only one-way air tickets are being sold, and only to those who present a document from local authorities showing that they do not intend to come back.

In school, according to a man who did not want to be named, "the children have already had to bring their birth certificates to show that they have Russian citizenship and the stamp that shows that on the document. And," he continued, "they were asked to bring evidence showing where their parents work."

This seems to fall within a broader pattern of tightening control over Turkmenistan's Russian-speaking population. Under Niyazov's decree, all Turkmens with Russian citizenship who fail to state their choice within two months will automatically be considered Turkmens. It might therefore seem irrelevant to know who currently has a Russian passport: If they don't leave now, ethnic Russians and Turkmens with Russian passports will be forced to stay here. But that is not enough for the authorities. At a cabinet meeting on 24 April, Niyazov announced that "it is now essential to get a full list of Russian citizens kept in consular records at the Russian Embassy." Earlier efforts, he noted with regret, had "not been a success."

And according to an unofficial source within the secret police, the service has been given explicit orders to gather information about people with dual citizenship.

The Russian consulate's records currently show that there are roughly 90,000 ethnic Russians in Turkmenistan. The actual number is of course higher, as not everyone has gone to the effort of registering. Unofficial estimates suggest over 100,000 people in Turkmenistan have both Russian and Turkmen passports.

The authorities' increasing invasiveness would be bad enough, of course. But the stripping of dual citizenship stands to leave ethnic Russians with huge problems. Within weeks, Turkmen Russians will have to decide whether to uproot entirely or to give up the right to freedom of movement and to be reunited with family in Russia (and buy flats there) and instead face the same uncertain future as other Turkmens.

And Turkmenistan, always authoritarian, is becoming increasingly isolated. It is the only former Soviet republic that requires visas for visitors from all Commonwealth of Independent States member countries and exit visas for its own citizens. Since the assassination attempt in November, Niyazov has clamped down on the opposition while continuing to purge his administration. Turkmenistan was possibly the only country in the world to give not one sentence of coverage to the war in Iraq. Turkmens may be one of the largest ethnic minorities in Iraq, but a Turkmen without outside sources of information would not even have known that there had been a war. And in April, Niyazov took extra steps to ensure that there would be even fewer sources of information by closing down all Internet cafes and almost all unofficial Turkmen websites. (Russian speakers had already been driven online, as Niyazov banned all imports of Russian publications last summer.)

The fear now is that the secret service will force people to sign away their Russian citizenship under duress.

In these circumstances, 100,000 sets of eyes have turned to Russia for help and guidance. So far there has been little of either. The Russian authorities have expressed "serious concern" about the situation, but in April, during a visit by Niyazov to Moscow, President Vladimir Putin signed an accord under which Russia agreed to stop granting citizenship to new applicants. The Turkmen administration interpreted that in its own fashion, calling it an agreement "to halt the agreement about dual citizenship."

At Turkmens' critical point of contact with the Russian authorities, the Russian consulate in Ashgabat, it is impossible to get more or less comprehensible statements on the situation. A thousand people tried to attend one press conference. The door was closed on them. And, once within the consulate, it is practically impossible to get a response with all the noise and tension around.

"Why has Russia handed us over?" is a common question. Outside the gates of the embassy, now picketed by fearful Russian speakers, a banner provides some people's answer: "They've exchanged us for gas."