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An Anniversary in Central Asia
One year after regime change, Turkmenistan remains an enigma
BY JESSE KAPLAN

It was a busy first year in office for Turkmen president Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. The dentist-turned-bureaucrat formally assumed the presidency in February 2007 and has since visited Beijing, Brussels, New York, and Mecca. He has also received numerous visiting dignitaries and opened the country’s first internet cafés, all while reversing some of the bizarre and repressive policies of his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov. Niyazov had abolished tenth grade education, forbidden mention of infectious diseases, and even renamed the month of January after himself.

Yet if Berdymukhammedov's Turkmenistan is a “little less the North Korea of Central Asia” than was Niyazov’s, as Olga Oliker, Senior International Policy Analyst at the RAND Corporation, told the HPR, the new regime has followed the same aggressive neutrality policy. Within the past year, Turkmenistan has negotiated deals with Russia and China while soliciting the attention of Western energy firms. For all of Berdymukhammedov’s rhetoric of opening the country, Turkmenistan has intentionally remained diplomatically nonaligned, leaving unclaimed the biggest prize in the race for influence in Central Asia.

Products of Paranoia
Few question Turkmenistan’s strategic importance. The country possesses some of the most abundant natural gas deposits in the world as well as substantial untapped oil reserves. So large are Turkmenistan’s hydrocarbon resources, and so little is consumed domestically, that the government distributes gas essentially free to its citizens. As for the geographic significance of Turkmenistan, the country borders Afghanistan and Iran and is a proverbial stone’s throw from China and Russia.

Under Niyazov, Turkmenistan proved to be the most hermetic nation in the world; his policies were products of his jealous grip on power. Fear that a well-educated populace threatened his rule led Niyazov to systematically dismantle elements of the Turkmen educational system. He reduced the length of compulsory schooling and replaced standard curricula with those based on the Rukhnama, a quasi-historical moral guide he penned in office. He also mostly forbade study abroad. “Niyazov had this idea that anybody with higher education would want to overthrow his government, which, when you think about it, is probably true,” Scott Horton, a lecturer at Columbia Law School who has worked extensively on foreign investments in Central Asia, told the HPR. As a result, an entire generation of Turkmen remains uneducated.

Niyazov’s paranoia did lead to some positive consequences for Turkmenistan internationally. Spurning outside influence, Niyazov used the country’s UN-recognized neutrality to balance the interests of competing geopolitical powers. For example, his preoccupation with maintaining his rule, which hindered new infrastructure development, pleased Russian leaders wary of competition against existing gas pipelines that ran through Russia. Yet to reduce reliance on Moscow, Niyazov allowed American use of Turkmen airspace and removed Turkmenistan from permanent membership in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Niyazov may have been “crazy,” Horton noted, but Western perceptions to the contrary, “He wasn’t stupid.”

Gazpromonopoly
Niyazov’s energy policy, whatever it did for his political fortunes, prevented Turkmenistan from realizing the potential wealth from its reserves. Russia purchases 1000 cubic meters of Turkmen gas for approximately $100; the market price in the European Union for this gas is $250. Turkmenistan exports between 90 and 95 percent of its gas through Russia, leaving the Kremlin free to dictate trade terms. When Niyazov briefly cut off exports to Russian oil company Gazprom over a pricing dispute in 1996, the Turkmen economy collapsed.

To correct this imbalance, Berdymukhammedov has voiced support for a trans-Caspian pipeline favored by Western nations that would link with lines in the Caucasus, bypassing Russia. Berdymukhammedov appears “willing to place Russia in a market rather than a patriarchal context,” said Erika Dailey, director of the Turkmenistan Project at the Open Society Institute, in an interview with the HPR. Yet he remains willing to make deals advantageous to Moscow: In May, he committed to a new gas line overland through Kazakhstan to Russia, the proposed capacity of which may put visions of the trans-Caspian line to rest.

Due to simple geographic reality, Russia will continue to play the most significant role in Turkmen energy politics. “It's very difficult to build pipelines in that part of the world that don’t involve Russia,” said Oliker. “Look at a map.”

Courting the West, and the Rest
Some experts remain wary of investment in Turkmenistan. Berdymukhammedov has done little to open Turkmen society; he accompanied his much-lauded establishment of cybercafés by banning private satellite dishes. Added to the concern is the difficulty of pinpointing the size of energy reserves in the country, as well as the uncertainty surrounding hydrocarbon extraction. “What’s in the ground has been regarded as a [Turkmen] state secret,” Michael Cohen, specialist on Newly Independent States at the Energy Information Administration, told the HPR.

Regardless, American courtship of Berdymukhammedov continues. Chevron and ConocoPhillips sponsored the 2007 Turkmenistan International Oil & Gas Conference, and in late January the U.S. Coordinator for Eurasian energy diplomacy, the commander of U.S. Central Command, and the CEO of Midland Oil and Gas all visited the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat.

Other nations have followed America’s lead. China began exploration drilling for gas in eastern Turkmenistan in July. Iran, which “sees itself as the natural ruler of Central Asia,” as the former U.S. ambassador to Turkmenistan, Michael Cotter, told the HPR, may seek to use its substantial Turkmen population as leverage to increase its influence in the region. In addition, the European Union, which hosted Berdymukhammedov in November, as well as India and Pakistan, who desire a trans-Afghan pipeline to support growing energy consumption, are jockeying for influence. It is unclear how Berdymukhammedov will orient himself. “His dance with the nations is meaningful,” Steve LeVine, author of The Oil and the Glory, an analysis of Caspian Sea energy politics, told the HPR. “He’s simply an uncertain dancer.”

Berdymukhammedov appears willing to stay on the dance floor for the foreseeable future. Central Asian relations are not a zero-sum game; discussions of spheres of influence ignore the viability of a nonaligned Turkmen foreign policy similar to that of neighboring Kazakhstan. Pipeline diversification and foreign investment are beneficial to Turkmenistan, but the continuing need for internal consolidation of his power will also prevent Berdymukhammedov from taking decisive steps internationally. As Johannes Linn, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the HPR: “All signs point in the direction of continued neutrality.”

This spring, Berdymukhammedov will receive a delegation from the Harriman Institute to facilitate educational exchange with the West. Turkmenistan is considering an invitation to join the Central Asian Regional Economic Cooperation Program. And the country will, for the first time, allow an independent audit of its gas resources. All of this presages another busy year for Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov during which his intentions will likely remain as inscrutable as ever.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 11:24AM

http://hprsite.squarespace.com/an-anniversary-in-cent-042008/