Turkmenistan Weekly News Analysis

Following a French delegation that came to the country last week, the Deputy Administrator of the UK Foreign Office Eastern Europe and Central Asia Group, Beth Dyson, visited Turkmenistan this week to discuss cooperation with Turkmenistan’s Foreign Ministry. Dyson and representatives of the Ministry discussed mutual willingness to widen dialogue between the countries, including consultations between Foreign Ministries and business forums to increase economic as well as cultural and humanitarian contacts. Her agenda included a meeting at Turkmenistan’s National Institute for Democracy and Human Rights to discuss legal reform in the country. 

Turkmenistan is expanding its presence in Europe, taking measures that seems to indicate warm overtures to European member states, such as opening an additional Consulate in Frankfurt, Germany, which the Turkmen media said was for “further strengthening relations” with Germany. Turkmenistan participated at the Berlin International Tourism Exhibition ITB Berlin 2013 to promote the Avaza tourist resort on the Caspian, a pet project of Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, which has been sucking millions of dollars of the country’s budget. 

The president has stepped up efforts to make Turkmenistan a tourist destination, with his reception in January of this year of the Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), increased participation in international tourism exhibitions and conferences, and the announcement of the “National Program for Development of Tourism Industry for 2012-2016,” which included the construction of new hotels, campgrounds, resorts, and development of the Avaza resort. 

However, the country will need to take many steps before Turkmenistan makes its place on international holidaymakers’ maps. Besides problems with infrastructure – Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights has documented the quality of the Avaza resort -- some of these steps will likely need to include serious reform on basic fundamental freedoms, like freedom of movement, as tourism in Turkmenistan is complicated by impediments for foreigners simply seeking to enter the country. Visitors must undergo a complex bureaucratic visa process requiring a letter of invitation, a travel pass/voucher, a migration card, additional permits for entering particular areas, and registration with the OVIR (the Office of Visas and Registration -- a legacy of the Soviet era), once in the country. Letters of invitation must be issued by a local tour operator and are then approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; they must include the precise route and travel dates from which there can be no deviation. Foreigners may only stay at hotels and are not allowed to leave the capital, Ashgabat, without a professional guide. This makes fully independent travel in Turkmenistan impossible. 

Thus, despite the successful efforts of Turkmenistan’s former dictator Saparmurat Niyazov to turn Ashgabat, once a dusty town on the southernmost rib of the Soviet Union, into a fairly-tale landscape of white-marble facades, and despite great sums invested by President Berdymukhamedov put towards the construction of hotels and amusement parks along the 16 kilometer Caspian coastline in Turkmenbashi, as long as the country retains policies that maintains its isolation, it will be impossible to develop its tourism sector. Turkmenistan does not even place on the Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index published by the World Economic Forum – when its poor landlocked neighbors, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, have ranked at 111 and 114, respectively on this index of 140 economies.