THE TRANSLUCENT STATE OF TURKMENISTAN

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 06 ASHGABAT 000151

SIPDIS

STATE FOR SCA/CEN

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/01/2020
TAGS: PREL PGOV PINR TX
SUBJECT: THE TRANSLUCENT STATE OF TURKMENISTAN

REF: A. ASHGABAT 14

B. 09 ASHGABAT 1633

C. ASHGABAT 117

Classified By: Charge Sylvia Reed Curran for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).


1. (C) SUMMARY: Turkmenistan is often described as opaque,
with a government with an inscrutable decisionmaking process.
While still very insular, with few external points of
reference, it is not opaque. The system has rules, although
this fact is not readily apparent to those with only a
passing knowledge of the Turkmen. Understanding these rules,
however, makes it easier for us to comprehend what is going
on. It also helps us understand how to work with them to
promote U.S. interests as well as understand the limitations.
END SUMMARY.


2. (C) Some describe Turkmenistan as opaque; its decision
making system is inscrutable and many of the policies it
implements make little sense. This is not true. It is not
opaque. While perhaps not rational or logical to many
outsiders, the system has its own rules, which it follows,
religiously. Rather than opaque, it is better to describe
Turkmenistan as translucent, like a bathroom window. You can
tell if the light is on or not. You know if someone is
inside. You can tell when the shadows move. With time,
given the light and shadow, you can deduce what is going on.
Yet, there is just enough hidden to serve its purpose.


3. (C) This cable is not meant as a criticism. The Turkmen
are who they are. However, it will be easier for us to deal
with them, if we know what that means.

NOT BACKSLIDING


4. (C) Following the death of former President Saparmurat
Niyazov, there was some optimism in the West that we could
"turn the page" and Turkmenistan could shed its negative
image and become more like other nations. Gone would be the
Ruhnama (or Niyazov's book of the soul),gold statues, and
bizarre pronouncements, such as renaming months after family
members. There was also hope that the country would move,
albeit gingerly, toward adopting political and economic
reforms. When President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov came to
power he did make a number of important changes. The tenth
year of education was restored as well as pension payments.
The government reinstated graduate education. Restrictions
on internal movement for citizens were lifted. The dual
exchange rate was unified, and the currency was
redenominated. The Ruhnama was de-emphasized and became a
smaller part of the official curriculum. All of these were
changes that most Turkmen would agree were necessary and
removed some of the excesses of Niyazov's later years.


5. (C) As time has gone on, obvious changes have become more
rare. Many of the political changes that have occurred have
been more cosmetic rather than part of an
institutionalization of reform (e.g., increasing the number
of members of parliament). Some Western observers fear the
Turkmen are backsliding. They aren't backsliding. They are
following a model they know and with which they are
comfortable. And somewhere between the euphoric optimism of
2007 and the disappointment that some observers feel today is
reality.

LEADER AS STATE


6. (C) When Berdimuhamedov came to power, he removed the many
photographs and some of the statues of his predecessor.
Niyazov was no longer an ever present icon in the corner of
the television screen. Slowly, but surely, officials swapped
their Niyazov pins for Turkmen flag pins. The reference to
Niyazov in the national anthem was removed and replaced by
one to the Turkmen people. Western observers cheered
Berdimuhamedov's dismantling of Niyazov's cult of
personality.


7. (C) At the same time, during his almost three years in

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power, Berdimuhamedov very carefully has replaced his
predecessor's cult of personality with one of his own (Ref
A). The reasons for this are simple. For Turkmen, the
leader is the embodiment of the state. To praise, honor, and
respect him is to do the same to the country. He is like a
monarch or, more appropriately, a medieval Khan. Everything
revolves around him - the news, events, major decisions. If
Berdimuhamedov were replaced by any other member of the elite
(for who else could rule),it would be exactly the same, with
only minor differences around the edges. For the time being,
we should expect nothing different.


8. (C) The Khan factor is clearly observed during the many
trips the President makes around the country to open various
government buildings or to observe the progress of the
harvest or construction. The entire government goes with
him. This includes the Speaker of the Mejlis (parliament),
the Cabinet of Ministers, all of the ministers (heads of
ministries and agencies) under them, members of parliament,
the equivalent of the joint chiefs of staff, the Council on
Religious Affairs, managing editors of official newspapers, a
contingent of elders, and the heads of diplomatic missions.
And these are just some of the contingent that accompanies
the President from Ashgabat. Add to them, the governor of
the province, his cabinet-equivalent, and hordes of local
leaders, performers, and townspeople. At every venue that
the President visits, this same group that accompanied him
from Ashgabat must stand in line to await his arrival. Then,
the group follows the President on a tour of the venue. When
the tour ends, the process is repeated at another venue.


9. (C) Since the leader is the embodiment of the state,
personal relationships and personal diplomacy, which are
valuable everywhere, are even more important for
Turkmenistan. Meetings with other heads of state or
government convey respect. This is something that
Berdimuhamedov's Russian and Chinese counterparts understand
well. And since they have strong interests regarding
Central Asian energy and geopolitics, they have been frequent
visitors.


10. (C) Self-preservation and control are paramount, and the
definition of success is that the President is pleased.
Berdimuhamedov has to be in charge. This is a role that
suits him. He has a vain and conservative personality. He
has to be the Khan. This is the model of a Turkmen ruler.
There is a joke making the rounds that says "if a flock of
sheep is led by a tiger, they will be aggressive and
confident. If a pack of tigers is led by a sheep, they will
shake with fear." The leader has to be the tiger to lead the
nation.


11. (C) A well-worn pattern, common in Central Asia, is
putting relatives in positions of power or allowing them to
partake of the spoils. And some relatives are in government
positions and others are involved in business. This is
acknowledged here and accepted, as long as there are no
excesses.

....AND EVERYONE ELSE IS JUST STAFF



12. (C) In most countries, ministers and Deputy Chairmen of
the Cabinet would be considered high-ranking, important
people. That is true in Turkmenistan as well. However, in
Turkmenistan, they also serve as the President's staff. When
there is a formal dinner or an opening of a government
building, ministers play their staff role. At formal
dinners, the Minister of Culture supervises the waiters and
ensures that they do their job well. At school openings, the
Deputy Chairman for Education, makes sure everything is ready
for the President and things are set up in the classrooms.
When children and dancers perform, the Deputy Chairman for
Culture will admonish the kids to stand up straight or sing
louder. In Cabinet meetings, the Deputy Chairmen all
dutifully take notes and stand when the President speaks to
them. This staff role is why the Minister of Health was sent
away for several months to supervise the building of a health

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spa.


13. (C) These government officials know their roles well and
dread being found guilty of "grave shortcomings." "Grave
shortcomings" rarely involve failure in policy
implementation. They can, however, mean that someone has
fallen down in their staff role or even that they are being
punished for things handled by underlings. (It also can mean
not exerting enough control over everything that falls under
their area of responsibility.) One previous Deputy Minister
of Education was criticized when the roof of a school
collapsed. The Minister of Communications was criticized
when the live feed during the opening of the pipeline to
China lacked audio from one location.

MORE ON THE KHAN


14. (C) The President is Turkmenistan's ultimate
decisionmaker. His word is final, and he makes many
decisions. He decides who wins tenders and whether
Turkmenistan will sign a particular foreign contract. He
also, apparently, approves the schedule for physicians (Ref
B). One could describe him as a micro-manager.


15. (C) Berdimuhamedov's orders have the force of law, but,
in some cases, it is possible to push back. The best example
was when the President ordered the removal of satellite
dishes from the outside of apartment buildings in Ashgabat.
He felt they looked like ugly mushrooms growing on the side
of buildings. The Turkmen love their satellite TV and
entertainment programs from Russia. The whole issue was a
matter of grave concern and much conversation among city
residents. As one local person said, his grandmother was
worried about losing her satellite TV. While the loss of
satellite TV was never in the cards, there was a question
about how many channels people would have access to and how
much people would have to pay. Up until that time, once
someone purchased the cable box and satellite dish,
transmission was free. Many Ashgabat residents were
resistant to paying anything. Several of the elite
apartments on the southern side of town held resident town
halls on the subject. There was quite a bit of push back and
complaints to district officials (local government offices).
Finally, it seemed a compromise was reached. Satellite
dishes were removed from the street sides of some buildings,
especially on the most traveled streets and main
thoroughfares. In other areas, satellite dishes were moved
to the back of buildings or not moved at all. And there has
been no more discussion of it since.


16. (C) Often, officials implement not presidential orders,
but rather enforce their own directives, with what the
officials believe is in line with what the President would
want. In other words, the President has not actually ordered
something done, but has expressed a preference or dislike,
and the officials extrapolate. This appears to have been the
case with the Turkmen American Scholarship Program (TASP)
students who were on the travel blacklist, because they had
been enrolled or planned to enroll at the American University
in Central Asia (Ref C). Berdimuhamedov did not want Turkmen
students studying in Kyrgyzstan, and he criticized the
Education complex for not keeping better tabs on Turkmen
students studying abroad. This created the perfect situation
to allow the Deputy Chairman of Education, who never liked
the TASP program, to keep better tabs on those students and
keep them from going to Kyrgyzstan or anywhere by putting
them on the travel blacklist. As President Berdimuhamedov
repeatedly said, after the USG tried to switch the students
to Bulgaria, he did not care if the students studied in
Bulgaria. He also did not care enough to actively intervene.


CONTROL


17. (C) For the Turkmenistan government, few things are more
important than maintaining control. For the Turkmen
leadership, this ensures that society stays orderly and
limits non-Turkmen influences. This is why government

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officials or quasi-government officials (like the those from
the Union of Entrepreneurs) need permission to attend
functions or meet with foreigners. It is why every foreigner
who wishes to enter Turkmenistan is vetted not by consular
officers at a Turkmen embassy or consulate, but by a
committee in Ashgabat that grants or denies the Letter of
Invitation necessary to seek a visa to enter the country. It
also explains the requirement for a diplomatic note (now
filling out a form) for almost every meeting request or new
proposal. Such measures allow for all the necessary offices,
departments, and officials to sign off on anything before it
takes place. And such approvals generally must come from the
Cabinet of Ministers, if not the President himself.


19. (C) The insistence on maintaining control over society
and the individuals within it is one reason why the
leadership has little interest currently in political
pluralism or democratization. They don't see the need for
sweeping change. They would see moves toward real
democratization as leading to instability or as they would
define it, a lessening of control. Therefore, the pace of
progress on any political reforms will be glacial.

FEW EXTERNAL POINTS OF REFERENCE


20. (C) Turkmen attitudes toward democratization and even
human rights are a result of the lack of external points of
reference. All cultures view their own as the locus, and
some countries are more insular than others. However, in
Turkmenistan, it is at the extreme of the spectrum. Turkmen
officials certainly know that other countries have different
interests, but almost always ascribe their own motives to
others. During the efforts to get the TASP students off the
travel blacklist, this point came out over and over again.
We were repeatedly asked by Turkmen officials, including
those who had lived and worked abroad, "why do you even
care." Explanations that freedom of travel is a human right
or that the U.S. might feel a moral/political obligation to
students to whom it had promised an education were met by
blank stares. It was incomprehensible that anyone would want
to help a bunch of young people, who were neither family
members or even of their own nationality. The real reason
must be something nefarious.


21. (C) The Turkmen leadership, for the most part, does not
understand the West's emphasis on human rights. They think,
"Why would you care about an arrested person who is not a
relative?" While the Turkmen absolutely do not like being
criticized and believe that admitting to being wrong is
shameful, using "shame and blame" does not work with them.
It will not get them to change. They will just feel attacked
and shut down. And the Turkmen government will blame the
criticizer for poisoning the relationship. Turkmen officials
do not believe that intangibles, like human rights, are as
important as things that you can touch and see -- like marble
buildings, state of the art equipment, and visits by foreign
leaders. In the view of the Turkmen leadership, those things
translate into modernization, not improvements in human
rights.

FORM OVER SUBSTANCE OR BEST FACE FORWARD, ALWAYS


22. (C) Cental Asia is part of Asia. Losing face is to be
avoided at all costs. Problems can often be resolved, if the
resolution contains a way for the Turkmen to climb down from
a position without admitting defeat or has an alternative
that does not result in a loss of face. There is a fear of
being looked down on or of showing that anything is less than
successful. For this reason, the Turkmen often will not
admit to problems (such as H1N1, HIV, poverty, drug abuse),
even when they are well aware such problems exist. One case
in point is from the visit of an OSCE official who was
looking at the issue of domestic violence. During meetings,
Turkmen officials denied there was any domestic violence in
Turkmenistan. After the OSCE official, who is from Finland,
started talking about the problem of domestic violence in her
home country, Turkmen officials admitted it is an issue here.
Once Turkmen officials have reached a level of comfort, they

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may be more frank, but it takes time.


23. (C) Along with this, the Turkmen emphasize form over
substance. Things should look good on the outside.
Buildings should look good and modern, and be stocked with
the latest appropriate equipment (scientific, educational,
medical, etc.). Furthermore, you should start with the
capital, which is the place most outsiders see. It is
totally irrelevant that the equipment might not work or no
one may know how to operate it, or even that the building
construction may be shoddy. It looks good.


24. (C) When Berdimuhamedov opened a model village in fall
2009, crowds of townsfolk welcomed him as he toured the new
kindergarten and secondary school, hospital, mayor's office,
market, and new apartment housing. Medical staff waved
balloons and flags outside the hospital. Inside, they
scurried around the halls and populated various offices.
Berdimuhamedov toured the apartment housing and visited with
a family living there in their new, well-appointed home. One
of the diplomats, who had accompanied the President on this
visit, stopped by the village the following day when all the
officials had left. She found a ghost town. The schools,
mayor's office, and most of the other buildings, including
the apartment building where the family that hosted the
President supposedly lived, were empty. The family was
nowhere to be seen and their furniture was gone. The
hospital director told the diplomat that his hospital was not
really open, because he had no staff. The people, whom the
diplomat had seen the day before, had come from other areas
to play the part of hospital workers.


25. (C) According to people who know him, President
Berdimuhamedov is a big fan of technology, not because he
believes in all that modern technology brings, but because
high-tech, interactive, and multi-media mean modern and
advanced. And Turkmen schools and hospitals possessing this
type of equipment means that they are modern and have reached
international standards. And so ministries are often
interested in cooperation that includes training in
technology, not because they always place value on it, but
because they know it would please the President.

PASSIVE AGGRESSION


26. (C) Passive aggressive behavior is defined as "passive,
sometimes obstructionist resistance to following through on
expectations." It manifests itself with "procrastination,
stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, or deliberate/repeated
failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is
responsible." It often includes "fear of competition, fear
of dependency, an inability to trust, obstructionism,
sulking, and a tendency to blame others for one's own
failures, rather than recognizing one's weaknesses." It is a
defense mechanism, and perhaps it developed to deal with a
society where one has little or no power.


27. (C) In any case, the default mechanism for the Turkmen
bureaucracy is passive aggression. Once offended, they will
shut down. One group from the Ministry of Internal Affairs
traveled to CENTCOM in Tampa several years ago. They
mentioned to their hosts several types of training they
wanted provided by the U.S. Government, including hostage
negotiation and fighting organized crime. None of the areas
were those for which the U.S. military offers training. When
they did not hear back on their requests, they limited their
contact with U.S. officials and bitterly complained to the
MFA that the U.S. was ignoring them.


28. (C) The "Turkmen no," the most comon response by the
government to requests or proposals, is a non-response.
Rather than tell you no, there is silence. The lack of
response is not becaus people fear offending by saying no;
it is because if they do not want it, it is not important
enough to respond. Anything that the Turkmen want, however,
must be done immediately. It is not uncommon to get one-hour
notice or less for meetings that were requested weeks before
("The minister can see you now!") Until recently, visiting

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delegations often did not know which meetings they would get
or the times, until the day of the meeting. Much of this is
due to the creaking and stultifying bureaucracy, which slows
many things to a crawl. Nevertheless, the fact that others
may be inconvenienced, simply does not register.

CONCLUSION


29. (C) Understanding the Turkmen and Turkmen bureaucracy
makes it easier for us to grasp why things happen or fail to
happen. It also helps us understand how to work with them to
promote U.S. interests as well as the limitations. The key
to assisting this country to change/reform is to encourage
greater links with the outside world and more external points
of reference. They need to be able to understand that
international standards include substance as well as form.
CURRAN