Turkmenistan is a country that doesn’t often receive much international attention, beyond the occasional article about the eccentricities of its leaders past and present or the vast size of its gas reserves. Yet, as new research by the Foreign Policy Centre shows, when it is exposed to greater scrutiny it becomes clear that it is a country facing a sustained economic and human rights crisis.
The economy has seen over a significant decline over the last four years due to falling gas revenues and a lack of hard currency, but in the last two years this has also combined with failed harvests, leaving the population facing widespread food shortages – rationing of bread, flour and other essentials in the official state shops that were once subsidised – and spiralling prices in the black market.
This economic crisis has in turn led to the regime’s repression of its people becoming ever tighter and the personality cult of President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov becoming ever more grandiose, taking standard Central Asian authoritarian practices to the most extreme extent possible. Turkmenistan’s massive human rights abuses have seen it ranked as worst in the world by the Reporters without Borders World Press Freedom Index, at the bottom of the Freedom House rankings and placing 161st out of 180 in the Transparency International rankings.
