Turkmenistan's Foreign Policy in 1992-2006: from neutrality to self-isolation

Turkmenistan's foreign policy was largely shaped by the country's strategic vulnerability and its significant natural gas reserves. From the point of view of national security, the country distinguished with the smallest population in the region, distributed throughout the large territory and concentrated in the border districts, an almost depopulated center and long borders had to face unfavorable initial conditions for building statehood. At the same time rich natural gas reserves, second only to Russia's in the entire post-Soviet space, promised the opportunities for organizing wide-scale exports, overcoming the economic crisis and stabilizing the ruling regime. Ashgabat found two main instruments which allowed for ensuring the country's security and creating the external conditions favorable for the ruling regime's consolidation. The first one was the "positive neutrality" concept envisaging the non-participation not only in military alliances but also in any inter-state groupings with collective responsibility for decision-making, the other - a military union with Russia with was doctrinally incompatible with neutrality but maintained in practice. The neutral status provided Turkmenistan with a considerable freedom of foreign-policy manoeuvre, allowing for the concentration of effort on organizing the transit and exports of gas. At the same time Turkmenistan's military forces were up to the beginning of 1994 under the joint Russian - Turkmen command while the country's borders with Iran and Afghanistan were defended by Russian guards up to the end of 1999. By the late 1990s Turkmenistan's foreign policy had undergone a kind of transformation. The consolidation of the ruling regime and the de facto recognition by the neighbor states and international community of Turkmenistan's specifics as a semi-isolated country with a limited range of foreign policy objectives and low permeability for foreign influence made it possible for Ashgabat to relinquish a military alliance with Russia. Besides, within the first decade of independence national military forces and a ramified repressive apparatus supporting the regime of Niyazov's autocracy were established. The neutral status recognized by the UN in 1995 continued to be the foundation of Turkmenistan's foreign policy. By the late 1990s Ashgabat began to interpret neutrality as self-isolation; foreign contacts of Turkmen leadership were minimized, the country introduced a visa regime with the rest of the CIS. By the late 1990s Ashgabat, exploiting the neutral status and gradually closing the country, had managed to reduce Russian influence considerably while remaining equidistant from Kazakhstan's and Uzbekistan's regional ambitions. Although trade and economic contacts with Turkey and Iran developed, Turkmenistan distanced itself from Ankara's and Tehran's political agendas. At the same time the conditions of the 1990s precluded Ashgabat from diversifying the markets and routes of gas exports. Achieving this objective had to be postponed until the next decade.

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