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| Turkmenistan | Introduction | Back to Top |
Turkmenistan, officially Republic of Turkmenistan, republic in Central Asia, bordered on the north by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, on the east by Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, on the south by Afghanistan and Iran, and on the west by the Caspian Sea. It was formerly the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Turkmenistan is the southernmost of the former Soviet republics. Its land area totals 448,100 sq km (188,460 sq mi). Ashgabat is its capital and largest city.
Official Name- Republic of Turkmenistan| Turkmenistan | Provinces | Back to Top |
5 welayatlar (singular - welayat): Ahal Welayaty (Ashgabat), Balkan Welayaty (Nebitdag), Dashhowuz Welayaty (formerly Tashauz), Lebap Welayaty (Charjew), Mary Welayaty note: administrative divisions have the same names as their administrative centers (exceptions have the administrative center name following in parentheses)
| Turkmenistan | People | Back to Top |
. With Turkmens constituting 77 percent of the population, Turkmenistan is the most ethnically homogeneous of the Central Asian republics. Russians constitute 7 percent of the population, and since 1993 they have held dual Turkmen-Russian citizenship. Uzbeks constitute about 9 percent of the population. Other ethnic groups include Kazakhs, Tatars, Ukrainians, Azerbaijanis, and Armenians. In contrast to most of the other former Soviet republics, Turkmenistan has not experienced a massive emigration of minorities since independence. This is primarily because there is no fervent nationalism among the Turkmen majority. Instead, Turkmens have retained centuries-old tribal allegiances that are stronger than their sense of nationhood, and tribal-based hostilities are far more pronounced than interethnic tensions. To date no tribal unrest has developed against the government, which has carefully avoided obvious favoritism toward any one tribe and generally worked to suppress tribal identification. The three largest Turkmen tribes are the Tekke in the central part of the country, the Ersary in the southeast, and the Yomud in the west.
The Turkmens are a Muslim people who speak a language belonging to the southwestern, or Oguz, branch of the Turkic linguistic group. Turkmens make up some three-fourths of the republic's population, up from about two-thirds in 1970, owing largely to a relatively high birth rate. There are smaller numbers of Russians, Uzbeks, Kazaks, and Tatars.
| Turkmenistan | History | Back to Top |
Throughout its history, the expansive, barren area between the Caspian Sea and the Amu Darya river—the area of present-day Turkmenistan—has been subject to conquests by foreign powers. It became part of the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great in the 500s bc and was conquered by Macedonian leader Alexander the Great in the 300s bc. Arabs invaded the area in the 7th and 8th centuries ad, introducing the local population to Islam. In the 11th century the Seljuk Turks appropriated Merv, an ancient city near Ashgabat, as the center of a dominion that stretched from Afghanistan to Egypt. Merv became one of the most important Muslim cities in the world. The land of present-day Turkmenistan was included in the vast empires of the Mongol Genghis Khan in the 13th century and the Turkic leader Tamerlane in the 14th century.
It is possible to follow the development of human habitats in southern Turkmenistan from Paleolithic times to the present. Some of the earliest traces of agriculture in Central Asia were discovered some 20 miles (32 kilometres) north of Ashgabat in the Neolithic Jeitun civilization, which may be dated to the 5th millennium BC. The Jeitun civilization was followed by a series of other Neolithic cultures, and a cultural unification of southern Turkmenistan occurred in the Early Bronze Age (2500–2000 BC). During the course of the following half millennium, some urban centres were created; the ruins of Namazga-Tepe cover approximately 145 acres (60 hectares). From about the mid-3rd century BC to the Sasanian conquest in the 4th century AD, Turkmenistan formed part of the Parthian empire.
The ancestors of the Turkmens, believed to be Oghuz tribes from the foothills of the Altay Mountains to the northeast, migrated to the area in about the 10th century. The Turkmens, a nomadic Turkic-speaking people, were a distinct ethnic group by the 15th century. From the 15th century to the 17th century, the southern portion of present-day Turkmenistan was under Persian rule. Meanwhile, the northern portion fell under the suzerainty of Khiva and Bukhoro, which both became Uzbek-ruled states in the 16th century. The Persians ruled Khiva and Bukhoro from the early to the mid-1700s, when Uzbek dynasties regained control.
| Turkmenistan | Culture | Back to Top |
The widespread Turkmen traditional practice of composing poetry orally gave way, after printing became well established in Turkmen centres in the 1920s, to writing and to the dissemination of verse and prose in book form. Although written Turkmen literature dates at least to the 18th-century poet Mahtum Quli (Magtim Guli), it underwent a burst of growth when the literary publications of the new republic began to appear in the late 1920s and '30s. Outstanding graduates of Bukharan seminaries such as Abdulhekim Qulmuhammed-oghli (d. c. 1937) brought about a renewal of intellectual and cultural life in Soviet Turkmenistan. Qulmuhammed-oghli served in the anti-Soviet Basmachi resistance movement, later became a communist nationalist, and influenced younger intellectuals through his activities as a writer, editor, researcher, and cultural organizer. All such efforts came to an end in the 1930s when the purges instigated by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and carried out locally by Russian and Turkmen communists destroyed this small core of outstanding intellectual leaders, including Qulmuhammed-oghli. After that, Soviet-educated intellectuals dominated cultural life. Among these figures, Berdi Kerbabayev attained some renown for his novel Aygïtlï ädim (1940; The Decisive Step) and a later novel, Nebit-Dag (1957), as well as plays, poems, and translations.
The Turkmen-language literary publications that appeared in Soviet Turkmenistan in the late 1920s and '30s first used a modified Arabic script, then a modified Roman alphabet, and finally a modified Cyrillic alphabet. After independence Turkmen writers, religious leaders, and educators entered a debate over their alphabet; though many wished to return to the Arabic writing system, Turkmenistan adopted a modified Roman alphabet.
A studio in Ashgabat produces films, and television stations transmit from the capital and from Türkmenbashy. Until recently, most broadcasting and films employed the Russian language rather than Turkmen. Broadcasts in Turkmen are often translations of programs that originated in Russian and other languages.
| Turkmenistan | Life | Back to Top |
Turkmenistan is the least populated of the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia. In 2001 the country had an estimated population of about 4,603,244, giving it an average population density of 9 persons per sq km (24 per sq mi). Settlement is concentrated along rivers, canals, and other oases; the Garagum desert and the mountains are sparsely populated. Some 45 percent of Turkmenistan’s population lives in urban areas. Ashgabat, the capital, is located on the Garagum Canal in south central Turkmenistan. Other large cities are Chärjew, located on the Amu Darya in the east, and Dashowuz, located in the north.
| Turkmenistan | Land | Back to Top |
Deserts occupy nine-tenths of Turkmenistan's territory. The Karakum is one of the world's largest sand deserts, taking up the entire central part of Turkmenistan and extending northwest into Kazakstan. Topographically, four-fifths of Turkmenistan consists of the southern part of the Turan Plain. Mountains and foothills rise mainly in the southern part of the republic, the Kugitangtau and Kopet-Dag ranges being spurs of the Pamir-Alay mountain ranges. The Kopet-Dag is geologically young, its instability indicated by intermittent earthquakes of great destructive force.
| Turkmenistan | Plants and Animal | Back to Top |
Many animal species inhabit Thailand’s forests. Elephants, traditionally used as beasts of burden, are raised in captivity but also live in the wild. Other large animals native to Thailand include the rhinoceros, tiger, leopard, gaur (wild ox), water buffalo, and gibbon. Thailand has more than 50 species of snakes, including several poisonous varieties. Crocodiles are numerous, as are fish and birds. Other animals, such as the Schomburgk’s deer of the central plain, have already become extinct.
| Turkmenistan | Economy | Back to Top |
When Turkmenistan was part of the USSR, the Soviet regime developed the republic to supply the raw materials of natural gas, oil, and cotton. These materials remain the foundation of Turkmenistan’s economy. The focus on raw material extraction left other sectors of the economy underdeveloped, as most of the raw materials were shipped to industries located outside the republic. Turkmenistan was the poorest republic of the USSR, and little has changed since independence. The government retains tight control over many aspects of the economy. While various reforms have been announced, actual movement toward becoming a free-market economy has been limited.
Turkmenistan specializes in cotton growing and in the extraction of oil and natural gas. Turkmenistan's underground resources in the western plain and those underwater along the Caspian Sea include extensive reserves of oil and natural gas, as well as deposits of mirabilite, iodine, bromine, sulfur, potassium, and salt. The mountains and foothills contain dolomites and marl, which are used for fertilizing calcium-deficient soil.
Turkmenistan is largely desert country with intensive agriculture in irrigated oases and huge gas (fifth largest reserves in the world) and oil resources. One-half of its irrigated land is planted in cotton, making it the world's tenth largest producer. Until the end of 1993, Turkmenistan had experienced less economic disruption than other former Soviet states because its economy received a boost from higher prices for oil and gas and a sharp increase in hard currency earnings. In 1994, Russia's refusal to export Turkmen gas to hard currency markets and mounting debts of its major customers in the former USSR for gas deliveries contributed to a sharp fall in industrial production and caused the budget to shift from a surplus to a slight deficit. With an authoritarian ex-communist regime in power and a tribally based social structure, Turkmenistan has taken a cautious approach to economic reform, hoping to use gas and cotton sales to sustain its inefficient economy. Privatization goals remain limited. In 1998-2000, Turkmenistan suffered from the continued lack of adequate export routes for natural gas and from obligations on extensive short-term external debt. At the same time, however, total exports rose sharply because of higher international oil and gas prices. Prospects in the near future are discouraging because of widespread internal poverty and the burden of foreign debt. IMF assistance would seem to be necessary, yet the government is not as yet ready to accept IMF requirements. Turkmenistan's 1999 deal to ship 20 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas through Russia's Gazprom pipeline helped alleviate the 2000 fiscal shortfall. Inadequate fiscal restraint and the tenuous nature of Turkmenistan's 2001 gas deals, combined with a lack of economic reform, will limit progress in the near term.
| Turkmenistan | Communications | Back to Top |
general assessment: poorly developed domestic: NA international: linked by cable and microwave radio relay to other CIS republics and to other countries by leased connections to the Moscow international gateway switch; a new telephone link from Ashgabat to Iran has been established; a new exchange in Ashgabat switches international traffic through Turkey via Intelsat; satellite earth stations - 1 Orbita and 1 Intelsat
| Turkmenistan | Languages | Back to Top |
The official language of Turkmenistan is Turkmen, a language belonging to the Southern Turkic (or Oghuz) branch of Turkic languages. Under decree by the Soviet government, the traditional Arabic script of the Turkmen language was replaced in 1929 by a modified Latin (Roman) script. The Latin script was in turn replaced in 1940 by a modified Cyrillic script (the script of the Russian language). Turkmen was made the official language of the Turkmen SSR in 1990. In the early 1990s the government of an independent Turkmenistan announced that the country would make a gradual return to the Latin script. Russian is also spoken in Turkmenistan, mainly by the Russian minority; only about 25 percent of the Turkmen population are fluent in Russian. Under Turkmenistan’s 1992 constitution, Russian lost its official status as the language of interethnic communication.
| Turkmenistan | Politics | Back to Top |
Democratic Party of Turkmenistan or DPT [Saparmurat NIYAZOV] note: formal opposition parties are outlawed; unofficial, small opposition movements exist underground or in foreign countries Political pressure groups and leaders: NA
| Turkmenistan | Government | Back to Top |
Turkmenistan promulgated its first constitution as an independent republic in May 1992, replacing the constitution of the Soviet period. The republic does not yet have a multiparty system in place, and most candidates have run unopposed in elections. All citizens aged 18 and older may vote. The president of Turkmenistan is head of state, head of government, and supreme commander of the armed forces. The office of president was established in Turkmenistan in 1990 shortly before the republic’s independence from the Soviet Union. The 1992 constitution increased the powers of the president and made the president head of the Council of Ministers with the option of appointing a prime minister at any time. The president appoints the members of the council, which administers the daily operations of government. Under the constitution, the president is directly elected to a five-year term and may be elected for no more than two consecutive terms. However, in 1994 the legislature voted to extend President Saparmurad Niyazov’s term of office until 2002, and voters endorsed the decision in a nationwide referendum.
| Turkmenistan | Legal | Back to Top |
Legal system: based on civil law system Suffrage: 18 years of age; universal Executive branch: chief of state: President and Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers Saparmurat NIYAZOV (since 27 October 1990, when the first direct presidential election occurred); note - the president is both the chief of state and head of government head of government: President and Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers Saparmurat NIYAZOV (since 27 October 1990, when the first direct presidential election occurred); note - the president is both the chief of state and head of government cabinet: Council of Ministers appointed by the president note: NIYAZOV's term in office was extended indefinitely on 28 December 1999 by the Assembly (Majlis) during a session of the People's Council (Halk Maslahaty) elections: president elected by popular vote for a five-year term; election last held 21 June 1992 (next scheduled to be held NA); note - President NIYAZOV was unanimously approved as president for life by the Assembly on 28 December 1999); deputy chairmen of the cabinet of ministers are appointed by the president election results: Saparmurat NIYAZOV elected president without opposition; percent of vote - Saparmurat NIYAZOV 99.5% Legislative branch: under the 1992 constitution, there are two parliamentary bodies, a unicameral People's Council or Halk Maslahaty (more than 100 seats, some of which are elected by popular vote and some of which are appointed; meets infrequently) and a unicameral Assembly or Majlis (50 seats; members are elected by popular vote to serve five-year terms) elections: People's Council - NA; Assembly - last held 12 December 1999 (next to be held NA 2004) election results: Assembly - percent of vote by party - NA%; seats by party - NA; note - all 50 elected officials preapproved by President NIYAZOV; most are from the DPT Judicial branch: Supreme Court (judges are appointed by the president)
| Turkmenistan | organization | Back to Top |
AsDB, CCC, CIS, EAPC, EBRD, ECE, ECO, ESCAP, FAO, IBRD, ICAO, ICRM, IDB, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, IMO, Intelsat (nonsignatory user), IOC, IOM (observer), ISO (correspondent), ITU, NAM, OIC, OPCW, OSCE, PFP, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UPU, WFTU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WToO, WTrO (observer)
| Turkmenistan | Education | Back to Top |
Turkmenistan has a literacy rate of 99.7 percent, a holdover from the Soviet period when the government implemented a system of universal and tuition-free education. Under the Soviets, education was the primary mode of Communist indoctrination. Reforms implemented since the late 1980s, and especially since independence, have provided for changes in curricula and teaching materials. Education is compulsory in Turkmenistan until the age of 14. Most students also complete secondary school, which lasts until the age of 17. Turkmen State University (founded in 1950), located in Ashgabat, is the country’s largest university. Turkmenistan also has a number of specialized institutes that train students for careers in agriculture.
| Turkmenistan | Defence | Back to Top |
Military branches: Ministry of Defense (Army, Air and Air Defense, Navy, Border Troops, and Internal Troops), National Guard
Military manpower - military age: 18 years of age
Military manpower - availability: males age 15-49: 1,173,500 (2001 est.)
Military manpower - fit for military service: males age 15-49: 952,218 (2001 est.)
Military manpower - reaching military age annually: males: 48,292 (2001 est.)
| Turkmenistan | International Disputes | Back to Top |
Caspian Sea boundaries are not yet determined among Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan
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