Activist urges EU not to “dance” with Turkmen dictatorship

An activist has urged the European Union not to seek energy or other business deals with the Turkmen government as it would “legitimize” a dictatorship.

“On behalf of the small Turkmen civil society, on behalf of the rightless Turkmen people, I call on you not to dance with the dictators!” Ruslan Myatiyev, exiled rights activist and editor of Turkmen.news website, told a conference in Brussels on Wednesday.

“Especially now, during the war [in Ukraine], which has affected Europe’s energy security. Do not legitimize them, do not fund them,” he said.

He was speaking at a conference dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Myatiyev described Turkmenistan as “one of the most closed and repressive countries in the world” — all the power is concentrated in the hands of the Berdimukhamedov family, while the citizens have neither civil, nor political, nor basic human rights.

Turkmen President Serdar Berdimukhamedov took over in 2022 from his father Gurbanguly, who had held the post for 16 years. Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov is now speaker of parliament.

As an example of the government’s totalitarian control over dissent, Myatiyev cited the case of journalist Nurgeldy Khalykov. The journalist had been sentenced to four years in 2020 simply for sharing a photo of a WHO delegation that came to Turkmenistan that year to inspect the country’s preparedness to deal with Covid 19.

The Turkmen government never admitted a single case of coronavirus in the country, while activists were reporting scores of deaths from the virus.

“The regime does not even recognise the citizens’ right to health,” Myatiyev said.

Myatiyev also said that in recent years the Turkmen government extended its hunt for its critics to foreign countries, particularly Russia, Belarus, the other Central Asian nations and Turkey.

Self-exiled Turkmen government critics often become illegal abroad because of not being able to renew their Turkmen passports, which they need to extend visas or residence permits. This makes them vulnerable to deportation back home.

In May, Turkey deported to Turkmenistan the blogger Farhad Durdyyed, who ran a YouTube blog in Turkey criticising the Berdimukhamedovs.

He was last seen handcuffed at Ashgabat airport, and is believed to have been sentenced to more than 20 years in jail following a closed trial.

The authorities keep all detained ‘political’ suspects incommunicado, often even after they have been sentenced and are serving jail terms.

Myatiyev also spoke about the government’s continued widespread use of forced labour for cotton picking. He said the product of that forced labour was consumed in the EU in the form of garments made in Turkey out of Turkmen cotton.

The activist also pointed out that the Turkmen government was doing nothing to reduce the catastrophic levels of methane emissions from the country’s natural gas fields.

According to Kayross, the environmental intelligence company, methane leaks from Turkmenistan’s two main natural gas fields caused more global heating in 2022 than the entire carbon emissions of the UK. In 2022 the two fields released emissions equivalent to 366m tonnes of CO₂.

“To hide the damage to the environment, the regime has ordered that methane burning should be stopped, and instead it is now being simply released into the air,” Myatiyev said.

“Instead of investing in green energy, or at least dealing with the emissions, the regime spends billions of dollars on useless new building projects.”

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