Luca Anceschi

In December 1995, the United Nations General Assembly officially recognized Turkmenistan as a permanently neutral state. Just a few years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Turkmenistan had decided to frame its foreign policy using the language of neutrality, but the policy has never been clearly defined. Twenty years later very little has changed, politically or economically, in the country. Neutrality – although it lacks shape – is rhetorically evident in most of Turkmenistan’s interactions. It is curious that a country otherwise known for its isolation is nonetheless defined by its foreign policy.

The Diplomat recently talked to Luca Anceschi, a lecturer in Central Asian Studies at the University of Glasgow, about the origins of neutrality in Turkmenistan, its effects on the country’s foreign policy and economic endeavors, and what the future of Turkmen neutrality may look like.

Why did Turkmenistan decide to pursue a policy of neutrality in contrast to the balancing approach taken by its neighbors?

It’s really unclear, if you want to go back to the early 1990s, as to why Turkmenistan chose neutrality. Look at the foreign policy of the very early 90s – in 1992 particularly, they had a foreign minister Avdy Kuliev who used to be the foreign minister of Soviet Turkmenistan (because there were ministries back then even though they did nothing). But Kuliev never mentioned the word “neutrality” once in six months at the top of the ministry.

As soon as he got dismissed, we then saw a rise of the relevance or at least frequency of neutrality in statements of foreign policy. Obviously this suggests – and we might not be 100 percent sure, but pretty close – that the idea of neutrality was very much associated with [then-leader Saparmurat] Niyazov. Or in that sense, it was the kind of policy line that was imposed by the government on the ministry of foreign affairs, which was very tiny. The ministry of foreign affairs of Turkmenistan in 1992 had probably 10 to 15 people maximum. So Turkmen diplomacy was still emerging, and it was easier for a parallel institution to become dominant over this smaller institution. The origin of neutrality, you could say, is the president’s whim. But that whim got translated into a very substantive foreign policy drive in between 1992 and 1995, when in December it finally got approved by the UN General Assembly.

If you look at wider origins, the theoretical roots of Turkmen neutrality, you have a dual discourse here. If you listened to government propaganda, in this case if you read the Rukhnama, you will hear many references to history as a foreign policy determinant. In that sense, Turkmenistan is neutral because it has always been a peaceful population, in history. It is historically not true. The Rukhnama doesn’t have much of a solid base to stand on. But that’s what they say.

In terms of a more recent past, there was a fascination with neutrality in the post-Soviet world, in the 1990s, particularly in Belarus and Moldova. But that was just talked about – no one other than Turkmenistan proceeded with that kind of policy. Also, Turkmenistan propaganda, again, said that the country’s neutrality policy was unique because it is the only one that is endorsed by the UN. It seems very odd that you have a multilateral organization sanction your foreign policy, but that’s actually what happened. We can speculate as to why Niyazov – who was a master of international disengagement – chose to have his foreign policy approved by the United Nations, which is a place of engagement. Really it’s a very opaque policy and its origins are pretty obscure.

Turning to domestic politics for a moment, how have domestic politics been impacted by neutrality, which is usually understood with regard to foreign relations?

Once neutrality got approved, that shaped domestic politics. There was not much of a trace of neutrality in early foreign policy declarations. It started to become popular between 1992 and 1995, and in 1995 it got approved – and suddenly, the foreign policy for a very internationally passive state becomes a symbol of regime achievements. It becomes a nation-building symbol, which it actually was, but it is also a regime building symbol. The policy demonstrates to the people of Turkmenistan that the regime does something for them – or at least that’s what they’re told.

There are very outward symbols of neutrality: the major newspaper of the country in December of 1995, which had been called Туркменская искра (The Turkmen Spark) becomes Нейтральный Туркменистан (Neutral Turkmenistan); when Niyazov renamed the months, December comes to be known as Bitarap, which means neutral; central avenues in Ashgabat were also renamed, Bitaraplyk avenue and things like that. Then there is the arch of neutrality, which is the tripod upon which the very famous gold statue of Niyazov rotates to follow the sun – or the other way around if you listen to local jokes. But everything is linked with this foreign policy. Urban transformation, statues, papers – symbols associated with the daily lives of Turkmens were connected in a pretty evident way with the county’s foreign policy.

At the same time, a wide system of rhetorical narratives emerges to portray neutrality for what it is not. A lot of rhetorical attention is given to misrepresenting neutrality to the people in order to glorify the regime which approved the policy in the first place. The most famous narrative is one which I find very much tested at this moment, when the Afghanistan border is becoming troublesome, and that narrative says that Turkmenistan, being a neutral state, cannot be invaded. This is something which is played up often in terms of modifying the way in which the people of Turkmenistan, and those who support the regime, relate to what turned out to be a very false sense of security. But if we look at what actually happened in the last 20 years – you can see this has been a very successful narrative. There have been many studies that demonstrate that people believe this kind of narrative. People believed it in early 2000 and there is no reason that they don’t maintain this faith even now.

Given the relative deterioration in northern Afghanistan over the summer and into the fall, how has the security situation to the south impacted Turkmenistan’s neutrality?

Here we distinguish between what the regime says is neutrality and what we acknowledge neutrality as being. They are two very different things – although ultimately they are the same because the regime articulated neutrality as a policy umbrella for virtually everything. So it has been a very flexible foreign policy and, as it was never clearly defined, you can use it to pretty much to justify everything. It can justify the occasional active foreign policy or the more regular passive and isolationist foreign policy. You can use it to justify the decision not to be part of a military bloc; at the same time you can use it to justify an occasional commitment with the UN to create, for example, a human rights center in Turkmenistan – which is a contradiction.

So, in that sense, the regime has been very able to manipulate neutrality. I argue that neutrality will never change because we don’t know what it is. Because it is a very opaque, obscure, poorly articulated policy, they can make it become whatever they want at any given time. It is an umbrella policy. It does not constrain you. The segments that are more articulated are marginal. The policy core is never defined. The policy core is never addressed. You have a long list of vague pronouncements and declarations about it but ultimately they never really say “we have to do this because we are neutral.”

In reference to the Afghan border, whatever response Ashgabat will feign vis-à-vis the crisis, rest assured, it will always be formulated within the neutrality umbrella. I don’t see a change in neutrality – I can see the occasional change in short-term strategies but ultimately this foreign policy will remain very much opaque. It is an instrument of the regime to garner support and also increase legitimacy of the state internally.

Economically, Turkmenistan is propped up by gas exports almost exclusively to China and over the last few years has experienced a bit of a break with Russia. Is this sustainable, both economically and politically?

If you have a look at official declarations of neutrality, energy is always marginal. Neutrality is mostly framed in political terms – the policy seems to be concerned with the management of political cooperation. But of course, one thing is a declaratory policy and one thing is what they do, the operational policy. It’s hard not to believe that there is a segment of neutrality, or foreign policy in general, that is aimed at maximizing gas revenues. But they never say; it’s never clearly expressed. There is a very concerted effort in hiding the more economic aspects of neutrality. The economy of Turkmenistan in 2015 is pretty much the same as it was in 1995. There hasn’t really been any progress toward diversification. Dependency on energy revenues and primary export sources is as big now as it was 20 years ago. So in that sense, Turkmenistan is a rentier state.

What was really surprising to me is that at the very same moment their efforts toward diversifying export routes culminated with the success of 2009, the opening of the China pipeline, that they then fell into a pattern of dependency on China. This shows to me that the short-term interest, in terms of getting money in quickly, was more important than the long-term crystallization of diversification. In brief then, no, there isn’t a clear impact of neutrality on economic policy. At one stage they talked about this “open door” policy – which is opening Turkmenistan to the outside world – but it was never really implemented in any substantive way. There doesn’t seem to be such a thing as economic neutrality, but there is a very strongly externally-linked foreign policy because of the nature of the production structure.

What does the future of Turkmen neutrality look like?

More of the same. It’s very difficult to predict. But to give an example, I was still a student then or I’d just finished my student years when Niyazov died. What I had heard, when I was studying, from experts globally was the question as to what kind of instability would befall the country when Niyazov eventually died. And then we observed the transition. It was orderly, in a very Soviet way. It was a leadership change but not really a regime change. There was no significant change in terms of governance quality, economic strategy, or foreign policy. Pretty much everything stayed the same.

I would be surprised if Berdimuhamedov introduces any changes during his tenure. We can talk about him in terms of 5, 10, 15 years but we don’t know how long he’s going to be there. Of course, most likely he’s going to die in office and he’s much younger than other regional leaders, and apparently healthier. But no, I don’t see change. I think what we’ll see is a crystallization of a very specific form of regime that maintains obsessive control of the population. It is on the other hand obsessed with insulation and that’s where neutrality kicks in quite significantly in making sure that external pressures are never very important. And the regime is also concerned with maximizing its energy potential insofar as the solidification of long term and fruitful energy relationships are concerned.

I don’t see the governance changing in the short term, but I heard there are problems internally when it comes to the legitimacy of the president because people do not see him in the same kind of light that they used to see Niyazov in. That’s going to be problematic. While prediction is difficult, we can look at the data – and the data says that Turkmenistan is getting less money for the same amount of gas because prices are going down. They are exporting to China about the same amount they had been exporting to Russia four or five years ago. And that’s a problem. Whether an energy crisis is an instigator of change, we will see, but that is something to watch.