Turkmenistan Electronic Mass Media

TURKMENISTAN BACKGROUND Turkmenistan is a large country in Central Asia, mostly desert and sparsely populated, with about four million inhabitants. It is divided into five administrative districts formerly known as oblasts and now called veloiats. The capital, Ashgabat, is the largest city, with a population of about 400,000; the four other main cities, the veloiat capitals of Chardzhou, Krasnovodsk (Turkmenbashi), Mary, and Tashouz, each have a population of under 150,000, and all other population centers are much smaller.

Turkmenistan is about seventy percent Turkmens, twenty percent Uzbeks along the northern border, and about ten percent other (mostly Russians). While Russians do not for the most part report that they are made to feel unwelcome, they do report an ethnic discrimination policy (as in most other NIS republics) whereby all the top leadership of any enterprise or government organ must be Turkmens, regardless of skill. Many Russians have left, especially those with a higher level of education.

Of the fifteen former Soviet republics, Turkmenistan has made the least progress in moving toward a market-oriented economy, and its political system is the most repressive, offering little in the way of even token democracy. The president, Sapurmurad Niiazov, controls every aspect of the country, mostly through patronage; corruption is rampant and a high post can be lucrative. While the president has announced his intent to create a society where basic goods and services are free, the result so far has been a precipitous fall in living standards to the point where they are arguably the lowest in the NIS and still falling.

The national currency, the manat, was introduced in 1993 and valued at two to the dollar, but is now traded at about 4650 to the dollar and is still falling in value. Any economic activity quickly runs up against the difficulty of converting manats into a currency acceptable to a business partner abroad, whether in Moscow, Istanbul, Bagdad, or Dubai.

Water is also a key currency. Because of insufficient delivery infrasctructure, even cold water is in most places available only for an hour or two in the morning and the evening. The country's agricultural economy, such as it is, is based on cotton, which requires irrigation. As elsewhere in Central Asia, many years of a cotton monoculture enforced by Moscow has resulted in fields so salinated and water tables so high that much agricultural land is no longer usable.

Niiazov, who took control shortly after Turkmenistan's independence was declared upon the breakup of the USSR in 1991, has assumed the surrogate last name "Turkmenbashi", or "head of the Turkmens", and to a ludicrous extent has established his visage and name as the symbol of the country--on all money, on statutes everywhere,on many public buildings, in every office (public and private) in the country, as street names in every city and town, and indeed as the name of a number of cities and towns themselves.

The telephone system works about averagely poorly for the NIS. From most lines a telephone call beyond the borders of the city cannot be dialed directly, but many government orders placed with e.g. Siemens for modern intercity and in some cases city telephone switches are in various stages of installation. An exclusive 25-year contract for creation and operation of a national analog cell phone network has been provided to Barash Communications Technologies Inc., an American company created by a Russian emigre. In most cities the cell phones work but not perfectly; in one city they can't call locally, in another they can't call long-distance, etc. Their cost--$50/mo plus $0.50/min--prices them out of the reach of all but perhaps 1000 subscribers nationwide. One local puts it this way: our cities are so small that telephones aren't important enough to merit spending lots of money on a cell phone; if you can't get through, you just drive over with your question--it's only a couple minutes, and there's no hurry to do anything in Central Asia.

The Turkmen language is a member of the Turkic group, and shortly after independence the country began to move quickly toward using Latin instead of the Soviet-enforced Cyrillic alphabet. Most signs have already been changed, although all mass media is still in Cyrillic.

This report is the result of a one-week trip made in August 1996 by the author to the Turkmenistani capital and three of the veloiat capitals to investigate the commercial TV environment. The author wishes to thank the dozens of people who unfailingly graciously and helpfully made themselves available for interviews.

THE MEDIA ENVIRONMENT

In the early 1990s, independent media appeared and became popular as in other NIS republics, but during the period 1994-5 it was all effectively closed down, apparently by decision of the president. In 1991 the country's parliament passed a Law on Mass Media identical to the relatively liberal USSR one of that year. This law remains in effect. Modifications have been proposed by the State Print Committee but not yet passed, and we did not have time to examine them.

Rumors of an official ban on cable TV, a ban on private transmitter ownership, and a ban on non- government broadcasting have proved impossible to confirm since no one, from the state broadcasting authority to the parliament to the state library, was willing or able to satisfy request for copies of legislation impacting television broadcasting. To the best of our knowledge, when State TV was converted into the National TV & Radio Company a secret decree gave it the power to regulate all broadcasting in the republic, and fearing competition (and ideological pollution) it does not allow any to occur.

Starting in the late 1980s cable TV appeared in all of Turkmenistan's cities. On 24 May 1990, a Law for Regulation of Video Salons, Video Bars, and Video Rentals was passed in Turkmenistan which gave the State Film Committee (Goskino) a monopoly over showing all video in the republic. The law did not mention cable TV, but Goskino has interpreted the law to mean that all video showing, including cable TV, can only be done by them: to open a cable TV or video salon enterprise, a private individual must first get written permission from the city government, and then Goskino will sanction the activity, essentially by authorizing the creation of a Goskino daughter enterprise run by the private individual. This model worked for a while but in 1994 most cable TV was closed down because of the general clampdown on independent activity. In some of the large cities (Chardzhou, Krasnovodsk, Mary) cable TV remains but is extremely weak (subscribers number in the hundreds) and shows no production of its own.

Frequency management is carried out by a subdivision of the Ministry of Communications called the State Commission on Radio Frequencies (SCRF, formerly known as GIE). Although newspaper articles have declared that VSATs (satellite dishes) must be registered with the SCRF, the latter's director says this is untrue; if asked to, the SCRF will provide registration papers for a nominal fee ($4) to mollify overzealous customs inspectors who think that the dishes might be communications equipment and thus regulated. Of course, the SCRF doesn't mind the modest additional income, and that is probably the reason the newspaper articles appeared in the first place. In the event, though, almost no one has registered their dish.

There are about 250 satellite dishes in each of the four regional cities and perhaps 1000 in the capital. For the most part they are used for reception of Russian TV programs: Channel 1, Channel 2, Moscow's Channel 6, and for the very few who have Ku-band equipment, NTV and St Petersburg's Channel 6. The initial interest in Astra and Asiasat flagged as the language barrier kicked in (few speak English).

ORT, Russia's Channel 1, is broadcast over the air everywhere in Turkmenistan. There are two national TV channels, TMT1 and TMT2 (the latter occupying the transmitters which were formerly used for Channel 2 from Moscow). Both are strictly managed by the government in the capital and distributed to the country by transmitters situated every 160 km along the microwave lines which run from Ashgabat to the east to the Caspian and to the west and then north to Uzbekistan.. There used to be state-run mini-channels in several of the viloiat centers, but they have been all closed down in the mid-1990s to ensure that the media is totally controlled by the center.

In the capital, the Turks pay for their pan-Central Asian satellite beam, Avrasye, to be transmitted over the air on a local transmitter. The Ministry of Communications has proposed to the government to do the same for Turkish radio, since there are a number (seven by one report) of unused high-power radio transmitters outside Ashgabat (including equipment used during the Soviet period to jam Western radio transmittions).

Turkmenistan is the only CIS country which refused to join the intergovernmental TV company "Mir", which has been allocated time on ORT (Russia's Channel 1). The official line is that Turkmenistan now holds to a policy of "positive neutrality", a designation the president says the country was awarded by the UN but which no one understands. In any case the reason is more likely to be that Mir requires money which Turkmenistan does not have. Also, insofar as we were able to determine, Turkmenistan lacks a satellite transmission unit which could send video. (There is said to be an 8-Mbps data transmitter run by an Italian company over an Intelsat bird.)

The State Film & Video Company licenses video rental stores. One of its licensees said that the Company also engages in distributing videocassettes around the country, but the Company denies this. In any case none of the videocassettes in the country are legal. Cassette rental costs about $0.13 for one day. Each rental store is likely to have from 100 to 500 cassettes, mostly Western action movies. …

When videos are shown in public (e.g. on TV), as in neighboring countries the parts with graphic exposure of sex or violence are cut or replaced by advertisements--or just faded out for a second or two! …

Local journalists report that the Turkmenistan government is still extremely sensitive about publication of any non-sanctioned information within the country, particularly in the Turkmen language. It seems to have loosened up considerably with respect to what gets sent abroad about Turkmenistan; for instance, correspondents for Russian publications are not subjected to the same degree of harassment as in Uzbekistan.

PRINT MASS MEDIA

There is one national daily four-page newspaper, Turkmenistan, published in Turkmen and, under the name Neitral'nyi Turkmenistan (formerly Turkmenskaia iskra), in Russian, with occasional versions in Kazakh and Uzbek. Each viloiat has a thrice-weekly broadsheet published in Turkmen and Russian.

There is one "independent" newspaper, Turkmenistan segodnia, which is printed in Moscow, but it comes out rarely (seven issues in three years) and is under tight Turkmenistan governmental control.

The official state news agency is TurkmenPress. A private company run by a former Turkmenpress chief, Murat Kuranov, has created an "information agency" which provides services to foreign correspondents and embassies, including a sort of clipping service where all information from all electronic and print sources in the country is typed into a computer-- resulting in a raw text database (in Russian) of about 15 megabytes of information as of this writing. We advised Murat to get e-mail, which he promptly did, but he does not use it much. He can be reached at .

ELECTRONIC MASS MEDIA

Because of the ban on non-governmental broadcasting, there is practically no broadcasting outside of the state-run TMT1, TMT2, and ORT.

State TV operates with an almost total lack of equipment. Though the central studio has some Betacam SP (nine cameras and six editing suites) equipment, most of its work is done on VHS (several dozen cameras and VTRs), and the four regional studios, each of which is supposed to provide about ten hours of programming per month to the central channel, each have only one or two VHS cameras and no editing equipment. State TV accepts advertising at rates of about $200 per spot, but during my entire stay I didn't see a single ad. No one watches State TV so it is unclear why anyone would pay for air time on it.

State TV is by all reports a dinosaur. For instance, the cultural section of the US embassy reports that when State TV borrows cassettes, they fail to return them and claim ignorance, and when the Americans sponsored a trip to the US for a shooting group from State TV to produce a program about the US, the shooting group a month after its return reported that it "couldn't find" any of the ten cassettes it shot in the US and nothing would be produced.

There is a rumor that the Turkmenistani government is preparing to sanction the opening of a commercial channel in the capital, but it would be owned by State TV. The limit of its independence would probably be its ability to show "pozdravleniia", pirated video clips dedicated to a wife or boyfriend and costing several dollars to order. State TV says, though, that this is unlikely to happen since it doesn't even have the resources to fill its own air, much less do any commercial work.

In 1993 there were commercial TV channels in several of the republic's cities--at a minimum, in Ashgabat, Krasnovodsk, and Dashkhovuz. However, in 1994 they were all closed down using the excuse of accusations revolving around illegal financial machinations. As far as could be determined, these accusations were groundless, and the closures had no legal basis--at any rate no one has actually seen official documents which would restrict private TV transmitter ownership or use. The largest station was Sakhra, first in Krasnovodsk and then in Ashgabat. Sakhra operated from October 1993 to November 1994, broadcasting on its own transmitter on channel 11. Part of the scandal around Sakhra was related to the fact that its employees and equipment were the same as those of State TV, so in effect the private channel was siphoning resources off of State TV. Sakhra's less-then-above-board operation created a suspicion toward any commercial TV ventures which lingers to this day among the country's leadership.

A strange exception to the unofficial ban on non-state TV is a small private station serving a village where the employees of Turkmenistan's largest power station live (the Mary GRES). A local businessman who has amassed a small fortune through an investment in a leather factory established Gonkhor, which broadcasts fifteen hours a day. Most of its air time is taken up by rebroadcasting from satellite either Russian TV (Channel 2) or one of the channels on Asiasat, which it receives on its three 2-m dishes, but it does produce perhaps ten minutes per day of its own programming on themes which can't offend the government: health, culture, music, computer and language lessons, etc. The station uses professional S-VHS equipment: one AG- 455 camera and a full editing suite based on the 7750 line of Panasonic equipment. Gonkhor broadcasts on a 100-w transmitter on channel eight, and it is hoping to expand the territory it covers by putting its antenna on one of the smokestacks at the power plant; the microwave relay for this is already installed. It is doubtful that it will be allowed to expand in order to reach an audience sufficiently large to be able to sell advertising and start moving toward financial viability.

Gonkhor survives because its owner promised the government he would encode his signal. Thus, only the 200 families in the village who pay the $2/mo for a decoder can see the station's broadcasts. Also, Gonkhor will sometimes sell its programs to State TV in Ashgabat.

Several almost-stations exist in Turkmenistan; however, until the official ban is lifted, they cannot be counted as non-governmental TV stations since they do not feel able to release onto the air any of their own production.

In the north in Tashouz, the local natural gas processing plant has refurbished a 5-kw transmitter, receives Moscow's Channel 2 by microwave from Nukus in Uzbekistan (where a dish pulls it down from satellite), and rebroadcasts it without modification. However, probably because the satellite dish lacks tracking equipment, the signal is clear in the morning but by mid- afternoon fades out completely.

In Chardzhou a private station was formed several years ago with the political and financial backing of local businessmen but in spite of support from the local government and pulling many strings in the capital, Ashgabat never allowed it to open. The transmitter and equipment are still there, ready for operation, should the opportunity arise.

In Mary, a local businessmen says he has received permission to install a private transmitter for rebroadcast of Moscow's Channel 1, which although it is already rebroadcast locally cannot be clearly seen because Iran installed a powerful transmitter on the same channel several years ago, and the Iranian signal interferes with the local one. However, since the Turkmenistani manat is not convertible, the businessman found his considerable financial resources to be useless when it came down to paying the $15,000 to a Russian factory for a 100- W VHF transmitter.

Finally, in little villages around the country there are very low-power transmitters used to rebroadcast Russian-language programming from satellite. Most of these are not even registered by the SCRF. Most are not likely to produce any programming of their own.

Several organizations have at various times acquired time on State TV. The first was Orient- TVM, which had an hour per week, but found this arrangement unprofitable. Next in line was a privately-produced thrice-per-week English-language news program created by former TurkmenPress chief Murat Karanov, which has since been transferred to State TV because it too was unprofitable. Finally, Gairat, a shady local business conglomerate, acquired some time and continues to produce its own programming and tries to find advertising to support the costs, but it occupies its spot sporadically at best.

TACIS, the EU's aid organization, spent over $100,000 to create Nazar Media, a company in posession of an A/B-roll Betacam SP shooting and editing suite and two Mac 7100s for graphics and titling. The equipment was meant to be used for production of agriculture training videos, but when funding for the project ends (according to schedule, in October 1996), the chances are that some government organization (probably the office of the President) will take control of the equipment and use it for PR.

There is a report that UNESCO has signed a memo of understanding with the Turkmenistan government to aid production of Russian-language entertainment programs with support from the French government for equipment and training, but we were unable to confirm the details.

INTERNET

There is a local e-mail service created by the Ashgabat Ecological Club, providing store-and- forward e-mail via periodic UUPC connections with Moscow to about fifty users; use is free for NGOs and for commercial users the cost is $20/mo plus $0.04/kb. A Relcom node was also recently created. Very few are aware of these servers and almost no one has even heard of a modem, let alone e-mail. The computer density in Turkemnistan is extremely low.

Because many areas of the country do not have long-distance direct dial, the AEC node can poll remote users at night.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The Turkmenistan media, such as it is, is so totally under the control of the government that there is little Westerners can do to support it. However, should any of the independent television groups mentioned above manage to acquire permission to go on the air, they should be encouraged as much as possible with standard types of support: donation of small-format TV equipment, training in journalism and management, provision of legal TV programs in Russian. It is our policy to work only with TV organizations which are already on the air. But we plan to keep in touch with those in the TV field who showed interest and optimism with respect to the private TV situation (we provided them with copies of our handbooks on private TV in Russian), and should the opportunity arise we will not hesitate to extend a helping hand.

END.