The State Department released its annual International Religious Freedom Report on September 13, writing of "troubling government practices" in Turkmenistan regarding the treatment of religious groups, yet failing to designate Turkmenistan as a "country of particular concern" (CPC).
By contrast, neighboring Uzbekistan did get the CPC designation for its arrest and torture of thousands of pious Muslims and other religious believers operating outside of the confines of state-authorized religious groups.
Turkmenistan follows the same practices as Uzbekistan in ruthlessly suppressing any form of religious devotion or activism outside of strict state control, and has also failed to reform its religious law or register religious groups that comply with existing law. Yet the CPC designation, recommended by the bi-partisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), is not something the US government wants to confer on Turkmenistan, believing it to be counterproductive even in human rights terms, and of course hoping to gain further cooperation on the Northern Distribution Network and development of Turkmenistan’s considerable oil and gas reserves.
Usually the problem with US government human rights policy is that while its reports, based on its own solid research and that of credible non-governmental organizations, are accurate, its own approach with certain countries is to downplay the explicit criticism of its own reports. Yet this year, the report on Turkmenistan itself also seems somewhat to minimize or omit certain aspects of oppression in Turkmenistan.
For one, the diminished yet still persistent role of Ruhnama, the state cult book developed under past dictator Saparmurat Niyazov, is not mentioned at all in the report. The giant statue of the Ruhnama book remains in the public square, and there is still a Ruhnama University. While no longer a compulsory part of the high school curriculum, it is still taught in primary and secondary schools, and state university entrance exam notices this year still indicate a requirement of knowledge of the spiritual book. Recently, the Turkmen government decided to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the book’s founding on September 12– although with Niyazov dead now for nearly six years, and other trappings of his personality cult removed, there was no need for this. As News Briefing Central Asia (NBCA) reported, Ruhnama events and exhibitions were held at schools, universities, libraries and museums throughout Turkmenistan. As one observer in the capital Ashgabat told NBCA, "Everything was the same as ever."
Another element missing from the report is coverage of how the Turkmen leadership exploits religious sentiment in promotion of the state and its goals. Last year, when the government refused to allow the faithful to travel to Mecca at all, ostensibly due to flu virus, a domestic pilgrimage was substituted around sites that the state maintains partly out of deference to centuries of religious worship but also to glorify the state’s cultural preservation program.
This year at the end of Ramadan, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov appeared on television to urge citizens “to pray to Allah for the prosperity of the Fatherland.” While superficially, such a ritual is little different than an American president saying or singing “God Bless America” on television, there isn’t a diversity of religions – or secularism – tolerated on such national holidays in Turkmenistan, and the amalgamation of state propaganda and religious sentiment is present in many more instances. For example, once again as in past years, the Turkmen leader used the Muslim holiday of the Night of Omnipotence which fell on August 26-27 this year, to release prisoners (none of whom were from the lengthy list of political or religious prisoners of conscience), and once again, the government is limiting the number of Turkmens who can travel to Mecca this year to 188 – as many as can fit on one plane.
The report notes that there is sparse attendance at some mosques – yet travelers anecdotally report more attendance on certain holidays, and there is a sense that the heavy state surveillance and control of the imams could be contributing to the reluctance of Muslims to come and be exposed to possible harassment.
The report mentions that there were only four mosques operating during the Soviet era, but 398 mosques today, according to the Turkmen Council on Religious Affairs. The report highlights the building or refurbishing of large monumental mosques in Ashgabat, Gokdepe, Gypjak, and Mary – this is all part of a larger state reconstruction program that is constantly displayed in the state media as proof of supposed reform. Yet this state activity needs a context: mosques were destroyed in 2004 and 2005, and according to some sources, this was because the imams refused to read the Ruhnama, which the state tried to impose as an addition to the Koran, the Oslo-based Forum 18 News Service reported. And as the State Department’s report notes, most of the small mosques in rural areas are not supported and the clerics there are elderly volunteers.
While some of these developments could presumably find their way into next year’s State Department report, there’s a basic reason for the lack of robust coverage of Turkmenistan: as far as is known, no international non-governmental or foreign governmental body has been permitted to investigate unimpeded conditions for religious freedom in Turkmenistan in some years. Local people who try to report on harassment of religious believers themselves face punishment, and officials are mum, as Forum 18 repeatedly notes. The UN special rapporteur on religious freedom was able to make a carefully state-controlled visit to Turkmenistan in September 2008, where she found some improvements since the Niyazov era but basic restrictions on the registration and activities of religious communities still in place
In fact, despite President Berdymukhamedov’s personal invitation to USCIRF in 2007 to make a return visit (US CIRF visited Turkmenistan that year), the Turkmen government has refused to meet with USCIRF three times in the past two years, each time just prior to the delegation‘s departure to Ashgabat for such a visit, as the CIRF notes in its 2011 report. This occurred most recently in December 2010; in a February 2011 response to a USCIRF request for follow-up, the Turkmen Ambassador to the United States said “we can guarantee that Turkmenistan is open to you or members of the Commission to visit whenever is convenient for you so we can discuss the issues of religious freedom in Turkmenistan.” Yet to date, the visit has not yet been scheduled.
An alleged US Embassy cable dated December 28, 2009 recently published by WikiLeaks illustrates how the US was struggling to negotiate the USCIRF visit -- twice denied at that point -- even as it faced an unexpected halt to previously-negotiated permission to make landings in Turkmenistan on humanitarian flights destined for Afghanistan. Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov told the American chargé that the landings could be addressed as a “technical issue” but the dialogue about the “sensitive” issue of religion had to be “constructive.” This stalling and evasion regarding the visit by the US CIRF – which itself had recommended that Turkmenistan be put on the CPC list – should have been mentioned in the State Department’s annual report on religious freedom -- which only noted that "visiting U.S. Department of State officials raised religious freedom concerns."
The lack of religious freedom also has to be seen in a context of overall suppression of human rights such as freedom of media and assembly. This year at the annual review meeting of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Warsaw, Turkmen émigré leaders are raising the lack of media and association rights. American poets read the work of Turkmen writers among others persecuted for their work in demonstrations staged in front of embassies worldwide. Turkmen poet Saparmurat Ovezberdi, a former RFE/RL correspondent and the winner of a David Burke Distinguished Journalism Award in 2004 who died in 2009, was included.
Catherine A. Fitzpatrick compiles the Turkmenistan weekly roundup for EurasiaNet. She is also editor of EurasiaNet's Sifting the Karakum blog. To subscribe to the weekly email with a digest of international and regional press, write [email protected]
Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.