Turkmenistan Weekly Roundup

While the golden statue of Saparmurat Niyazov was dismantled last week, the huge monument to his cult book Ruhnama remains. Photo by Nathan Groth, May 2010.

Determined to go forward on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov spoke with Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari this week, following his conversation with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai last week and the signing of an agreement between Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to construct TAPI. Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov was also in Islamabad for talks last week. The four countries will hold a ministerial meeting in September and convene heads of state in December to finalize the agreement.

Turkmenistan also hosted a delegation led by Josef Mayor, Austria's deputy minister of economic affairs and labor for the Turkmen-Austrian joint economic commission this week to discuss export and import issues. The commission discussed prospects for opening up a Turkmen trade representative office in Vienna and training Turkmen medical students in Austria. The state media made no mention, however of the fact that Austria's OMV is spearheading the Nabucco International Pipeline Consortium. President Berdymukhamedov visited Vienna in 2008 to meet with Austrian officials and Wolfgang Ruttensdorter, head of OMV, but has not indicated publicly any further commitment to Nabucco.

Russia's Regnum news agency has pointed out that while Nabucco's partners continue to indicate their expectations that both Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan will supply gas for their project, meanwhile Baku and Ashgabat are selling gas to Iran. Azerbaijan has begun delivery to Iran of 5 million cubic meters a day, and Turkmenistan built a new pipeline to Dovletabad last year and plans to supply more gas. EU energy commissioner Günter Ettinger said recently that plans for the start of the estimated $7.9 billion project had to be revised from a forecast for 2014 to 2018. This fall, the EU has to make a decision about investment in the project and try to break out of the vicious cycle of waiting for more information and assurances from Ashgabat, which in turn is waiting for a confirmation of European investment.

Brent Woolfork, a staff member of the U.S. Congress House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs visited Turkmenistan this week to discuss further cooperation between Turkmenistan's rubber-stamp parliament, the Mejlis, and the U.S. Congress. He also held talks at the ministries of foreign affairs, oil and gas and mineral resources and visited the Internet Center at the Academy of Sciences. The Turkmen state media mistakenly described Woolfork as a "congressman" and "member" of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, but he is a professional staff member working on issues of energy and the environment. Woolfork previously worked for a number of years for Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), an army veteran with a special interest in Central Asia who has traveled to the region repeatedly. Senator Nelson recently voted for more funds for U.S. military operations including for the training of Central Asian security forces and efforts to stop drug-trafficking.

For some years now, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bi-partisan governmental commission, has recommended that the U.S. Secretary of State declare Turkmenistan a "country of particular concern" (CPC) because of its severe lack of human rights protections and religious liberty. And each year, the U.S. Secretary of State has declined to follow the recommendation and kept Turkmenistan off the CPC list. This year is likely to be no different, as U.S. officials have been eager to see progress in Turkmenistan that will make the prospect of further economic cooperation more palatable.

In a trip to Turkmenistan in June, Robert Blake, Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asian Affairs, praised Ashgabat for registering a small Catholic parish with less than a 100 members. When Turkmenistan said in 2008 it planned to pass a new religion law and law on non-governmental organizations and also appeared to ease up on the state-sponsored cult of Ruhnama inherited from past dictator Saparmurat Niyazov, it gained good will without having to follow through on its intentions. To be sure, the government has retired some of the obvious intrusions of the cult book, yet it persists; this week provided fresh evidence that state officials were still requiring knowledge of the Ruhnama for all those taking university entrance exams.

Meanwhile, despite avoiding the official U.S. condemnation as a CPC, Turkmenistan shows creeping signs of becoming more like its neighbor, Uzbekistan, in cracking down on any religious activity outside of state control. As in Uzbekistan, the government claims that religious figures have been involved in criminal activities such as narcotics smuggling. Without any independent media or human rights groups permitted to operate in Turkmenistan, it is hard to know what the true story is. A Muslim imam and his four sons were all imprisoned on charges related to an attack on a water plant in Ashgabat, and last month the imam, Geldimuradov, died in prison. Two mullahs were stopped in their cars in June and claimed by police to possess weapons and ammunition, so they were sentenced to prison, reportedly after suffering torture. Police in the provinces are demanding that all young people shave their beards and forcibly shaving those who refuse. Pentecostal pastor Ilmurad Nurliev was arrested August 27 in Mary and now faces five years of imprisonment on charges that he extorted money from two church members. But his family says that the church members were coerced by the authorities to give testimony against him.

Turkmen security agents apprehended criminal gangs involved in transporting and selling large amounts of drugs in Balkan and Lebap velayats, state media reported. Opium, heroin, foreign and local currency, as well as cars and trucks were seized by authorities although details about the suspects were not provided. Chary Hojamyradov is back again as Prosecutor General of Turkmenistan. Reprimanded in March by the president for unspecified faults when the city prosecutor was dismissed, the 48-year-old Hojamyradov was then relieved of his duties in June reportedly for illness. He made a rapid recovery by August and has now resumed the post making him one of the most powerful officials in Turkmenistan, as he keeps the files on other officials with compromising materials.

While the statue of a giant Ruhnama book still stands, workmen finally took down the gold-plated statue of Niyazov, known as "Turkmenbashi" or "head of all Turkmen." President Berdymukhamedov had announced in March that the statue would be removed to a suburb, but it took some months before the 230-foot rotating monument was dismantled. The official state media did not comment on the development, which made world headlines. Some observers are concerned that President Berdymukhamedov is replacing the past cult of personality with a new one involving constant mention of his many published books and honorific titles. The Turkmen leader, a dentist by training and former health minister, was made an honorary member of the German Society for Implantology last week for his "a huge personal contribution" to health and medicine in Turkmenistan.