TURKMENISTAN ON THE EVE OF A/S BOUCHER'S VISIT -

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ASHGABAT 000180 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPT FOR SCA/CEN (PERRY) E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/16/2017 TAGS: PREL PGOV TX SUBJECT: TURKMENISTAN ON THE EVE OF A/S BOUCHER'S VISIT - MIRED IN BAD HABITS BUT TALKING ABOUT CHANGE ASHGABAT 00000180 001.2 OF 002 Classified By: Charge d'Affaires, a.i. Jennifer L. Brush for reasons 1. 4 (B) and (D). SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (C) A/S Boucher, the Government of Turkmenistan is delighted to host you again as is Team Ashgabat. Even though all of Washington may not be excited about the first-ever multi-candidate elections in Turkmenistan, the local population is over the top, soaking up every detail of the campaign. As the USG continues on its carefully calibrated approach: -- having you introduce the idea of turning the page in our bilateral relations; -- having DAS Feigenbaum explore ways to turn the page; and -- having the Adams team see for themselves the very real opportunities and willingness to turn the page; we wait for you to take the next step, discussing our future relationship with the new President of Turkmenistan. ¶2. (C) Turkmenistan remains enmeshed in an internal battle of emollients versus irritants. Government officials throughout the country are learning to say the right thing, but their actions continue to belie their words. We hope that your visit will start the process of increasing the emollients and decreasing the irritants. Enormous challenges remain. The wreck of a country Niyazov left behind, combined with 70 years of colonial Soviet rule, compounded by nomadic/tribal customs and lack of a nation-state, create the need for a new model. Neither was Turkmenistan North Korea, nor will it be Denmark. Rather the current state offers a rare opportunity to develop a new model; a model molded by, and representative of, the proud people of Turkmenistan. End Summary. The Elections -------------- ¶3. (C) We judge that this presidential "campaign" displayed genuine official striving, however feeble, to depart from Turkmenistan's old, worse electoral standards. Its elements of true democracy were embryonic at very best; the process overall was nowhere in sight of "free and fair"; "meetings with voters" all stayed wholly under official control; and everyone assumed from the start that Berdimuhammedov would win by landslide. Still, citizens' main daily-life concerns were incessantly aired at candidates' question-and-answer sessions and publicized in media (exception: official corruption),and our pre-election trips across the country encountered a tentative fresh atmosphere of hope if not yet expectancy. Berdimuhammedov -------------- ¶4. (C) Berdimuhammedov himself unmistakably embraced a post-Niyazov policy with his very first campaign comments on education, internet and pensions. Almost daily, there is some new straw in the wind to suggest that he and the apparatus he heads may have ascended to power already resolved to undo much of Niyazov's caprices: citizens, new freedom to buy airline tickets directly; an apparently tolerant answer to a question about multiple political parties in Turkmenistan; the rumored transfer and eventual release of prominent political prisoners; an MFA hint to us that old energy questions can be revisited. It looks more ASHGABAT 00000180 002.2 OF 002 and more thinkable that Berdimuhammedov will announce further concrete steps in short order following his inauguration, and we do not rule out that his inauguration address could include a surprise: e.g., wholesale post-Niyazov Cabinet appointments, or announcement of prisoners, pardon/release. Emollients -------------- ¶5. (C) At the very top, post-Niyazov policy plainly includes the goal of external rapprochement in particular with the U.S. MFA facilitation of the Adams delegation's meetings was extraordinary if not unprecedented. Ministers with whom we had not met for two years "got the MFA memo" and received us with beams. FM Meredov, who by all accounts has ascended in relative political weight within the post-Niyazov government, now correlates his personal standing with Turkmenistan,s increased international interaction, in the general assessment of Ashgabat's resident diplomats. Irritants -------------- ¶6. (C) And yet, despite the new emollience at the apex, old barriers and problems persist unchanged below -- not excluding in some cases the ministerial level. The Adams delegation found the Education Minister, the Central Bank and the Economy Ministry as unyielding or uninterested as ever in U.S. offers of technical assistance. Our regional trips reveal abundant local openness for programs, but make crystal-clear that, as before, no step can be contemplated without Ashgabat's go-ahead. Gumshoe harassment of USAID or PD contractors has not abated. Breaking Meredov's promise to the Charge last month, the MFA has refused visas to NY Times, AP and BBC reporters. ¶7. (C) Berdimuhammedov can enforce a quick stop to all these old bad habits, if he chooses. Our next question would be: how much scope for fruitful program work does Turkmenistan hold, and where? Local expertise and continuing policy myopia -) privatization of farmland, for example, is not a near-term option; budget transparency is out of sight -) will constrain possibilities, let alone results. Comment -------------- ¶8. (C) Turkmenistan's current bar is set the lowest of any nation where the U.S. might conceivably have hope for progress in the first place. Even assuming the hopeful auguries of Berdimuhammedov's behavior so far are borne out in his deeds to come, we cannot expect heightened U.S. engagement to achieve basic policy changes, or even successfully implement major programs, in anything like the near term. But if in the process of conferring over such initiatives and our broadening relations we and Turkmenistan's new regime gain the habit of unparanoid, mutually comfortable, normal dialogue, that result will be in itself an invaluable achievement, and the precondition for still better future ones. End Comment. BRUSH