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20 Years Later: Turkmenistan

By Bruce Pannier Posted Apr 13 2010

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Turkmenistan is a difficult place for journalists. In January this year, Reporters Without Borders described Turkmenistan as “one of the most repressive countries in the world.” For those people who try to do reporting outside of state-owned media outlets it can be dangerous.

Turkmenistan is located in the heart of the Eurasian continent, ruled by a government that prefers to keep the country a reclusive state and implements policies some analysts and visitors have described as rivaling Stalin’s Soviet Union. There was never much the international community could do to force change on Turkmenistan, a country with the fourth largest natural gas reserves in the world. Current international security concerns about the country’s neighbor —Afghanistan – enhance Turkmenistan’s value to many Western countries and help to mute international criticism of Turkmenistan’s government.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has included Turkmenistan on its lists of “enemies of the press,” “10 worst censored countries” and more recently “10 worst countries to be a blogger.” The CPJ, the Paris-based media freedom group Reporters Without Borders and international rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have reported on abuses against the few independent journalists in the country who have attempted to report for foreign media.

Sazak Durdymuradov was a contributing reporter for the Turkmen Service of the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Turkmen security forces abducted him in June 2008 and, according to the CPJ, Durdymuradov was “forcibly taken to a local psychiatric clinic, then shuttled to an MNB (National Security Agency) station where he was severely beaten, tortured with electroshock, and pressured to sign a letter that said he agreed to stop reporting for RFE/RL.”

Ogulsapar Muradova was also a contributor for RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service. The 58-year-old was detained in June 2006 on charges that were unclear. In late August, at a closed-door trial that the CPJ said “lasted only minutes,” Muradova was found guilty of possessing ammunition. She was refused legal council for her court appearance. Two weeks later her family was summoned to a prison to collect her body. Prison guards had beaten Muradova to death.

RFE/RL is one of the few outside media sources people in Turkmenistan can still access. RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service can never count on more than a handful of local people willing to work as correspondents in Turkmenistan and none have been able to do so for more than a few years, owing to pressure from the authorities.

Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov became Turkmenistan’s president in early 2007 a few weeks after the death of his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov. By the time Niyazov died he had created a country some compared to North Korea and branded “isolationist.” Berdymukhammedov promised at the start of his presidency to make the Internet accessible to Turkmenistan’s people but the sole provider of Internet services in Turkmenistan is the state communications agency.

Accounts from people in Turkmenistan indicate at the few Internet cafes that have opened since then, most in the capital Ashgabat, the cost is prohibitively high. Also visitors to Internet cafes need to show their identification documents and officials at the cafes note the websites users visit. The CPJ reported about “the widespread practice of (officials) opening and inspecting instant messages and e-mails.” Such restrictions prevent independent journalists from sending any reports not checked, or censored, by state officials.

Attempting to learn more about Turkmenistan through state media is rarely helpful. Print and broadcast media focus on the daily routines of the president, a tradition started under President Niyazov. In the best Soviet tradition, Turkmenistan’s media also regularly covers the country’s economic, agricultural and technological successes, highlighting, and some might say inflating, Turkmenistan’s importance regionally and internationally. 
Under the new president there have been some hopeful, albeit cosmetic changes. In President Niyazov’s time state television channels had a constant golden portrait of Niyazov in the lower corner of the screen. Newscasters started each broadcast by pledging their tongues would shrivel if their reports ever slander the country, the flag, or the president. The portrait and the pledge are gone but not the state’s fight to maintain a monopoly on information.