Oil, Transition and Security in Central Asia

Sally Cummings

• Publisher: Routledge
• Edition: 1
• Year: 2004
• Topic: Economics
• Print ISBN:
  9780415600194
  9780415310901
• Subtopic: International Economics
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134387557
• Index: Economics

Approaching Central Asia from the perspective of geopolitics, transition, oil and stability, the authors provide a very broad and diverse analysis of the region, examining domestic and international developments since 1991. The book both provides an introduction to the region and presents advanced research on international pipeline projects, political risk and developments after September 11th. The authors draw on a variety of disciplines, including economics, politics, international relations, law and sociology.

Part 1
Country surveys

1 Independent Turkmenistan

From post-communism to sultanism

Annette Bohr^*

Although generally relegated to the residual category ‘authoritarian’, the highly personalistic regime constructed by independent Turkmenistan’s first president, Saparmurat Niyazov, more closely conforms to ‘sultanism’, a term first coined by Max Weber and revived by Juan J. Linz in the 1950s. Containing strong elements of personal rulership, despotism, constitutional subversion and reliance on a foreign power, Niyazov’s government is generally consistent with Linz’s conceptualisation of a sultanistic regime, which, inter alia, is distinguished by the leader’s freedom ‘to exercise his power without restraint, at his own discretion and above all unencumbered by rules or by any commitment to an ideology or value system’.¹ Loyalty to the ‘sultan’ is motivated by a mixture of fear and rewards, according to Linz’s model, and binding norms and procedures are continually overturned by his arbitrary personal decisions. Easily exploitable natural resources, such as oil or gas, whose production can be monopolised by a few enterprises, can provide the resources to sustain such a regime.²

A number of regimes in the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia and Africa have been described as sultanistic, for example the Batista regime in Cuba, the Mobutu regime in Zaire, the Pahlavi regime in Iran, the Somoza regime in Nicaragua and the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic, to name a few. An analysis of sultanistic regimes, and of the political trajectories they have followed, can provide insight into current events in Turkmenistan as well as offer a glimpse of some of the scenarios that are most likely to come to pass in that Central Asian state. However, it is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide a full and detailed examination of sultanism in Turkmenistan; consequently, discussion will focus on the ways in which recent developments in that country’s polity, society, economy and foreign relations are consistent with sultanistic regime theory.

Politics

Power in Turkmenistan is concentrated in the larger-than-life persona of President Niyazov, who works through the security agencies and his closest aides to make policy rather than through institutions. Since the advent of independence and even before, the vast majority of the president’s institutional reforms have been aimed at strengthening his control over government and transforming parliament into a presidential appendage. Two such reforms were the combining of the posts of president and prime minister, and the establishing of presidential decree as the usual mode of legislation.

The functions of the legislative and judicial branches, which lack even a fig leaf of independence from the executive, have been further obscured by the presence of a pseudo-representative organ called the Halq Maslakhaty, or People’s Council. Although the People’s Council is alleged to be neither an executive nor a legislative body, its decisions theoretically supersede those of the president and the parliament (in fact, the numerous proposals put forward by Niyazov at the Council’s sessions are always unanimously adopted by its delegates). Hence, the Halq Maslakhaty has de facto legislative powers and, as such, both weakens the ascribed functions of parliament and violates the Constitution’s provisions for only three branches of power (Article 4).

As time has moved on, Niyazov has increasingly disempowered or even abandoned formal political institutional mechanisms, relying more and more on direct linkages between himself and his subordinates. His subversion of the constitutional order and manipulation of democratic procedures reached its apogee in December 1999 when the two-term limit for the president was removed, which effectively resulted in the creation of a life presidency for Niyazov and made Turkmenistan the first CIS country formally to abandon presidential elections. In addition to holding the posts of president of the republic and prime minister, Niyazov is also the termless chairman of the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan and the national revival movement ‘Galkynysh’, chairman of the Halq Maslakhaty, the State Security Council and the Council for Religious Affairs, president of the Humanitarian Association of World Turkmen and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the National Armed Forces.

Given that fealty is a key prerequisite for career promotion in a sultanistic regime, a pronounced cult of personality is one of its basic features. Indeed, Niyazov’s ultra- Stalinist cult of personality is so developed that when he changed his hair colour from grey to black in 1999, a large workforce was reported to have spent weeks incorporating that change into the many thousands of portraits and posters of his image scattered throughout the country.³ A 70-metre arch commemorating the country’s neutrality was completed in that same year in the centre of the capital, topped by a gold-plated, winged 12-metre statue of President Niyazov, which revolves in conjunction with the sun’s movements. Study of his multi-volumed writings has been introduced as a mandatory subject in schools as well as in certain institutes of higher education. In August 2000 Niyazov launched the new television serial Epoch of Turkmenbashy, which devoted five hours a day to the president’s projects, policies and achievements.⁴ All three of the country’s television stations carry the golden logotype of the president’s profile in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. His personality cult has been extended to his deceased parents, both of whom have been posthumously awarded the highest state title ‘Hero of Turkmenistan’.

Sultanistic rulers are often conferred with honorary titles. In Turkmenistan, President Niyazov has been known since 1993 as Turkmenbashi (head of the Turkmen). Just as the Haitian town of Cabaret became Duvalierville and Santo Domingo was renamed Ciudad Trujillo, the Turkmen port city of Krasnovodsk is now known as Turkmenbashi. Niyazov’s name or his title of Turkmenbashi (or his nickname ‘Serdar’, meaning supreme chieftain) has been given to at least two cities, several districts and villages, the Kara-Kum Canal, the country’s main airport, the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, a military institute, a police academy, sanatoriums, a cologne, a brand of vodka and a multitude of schools, universities, stadiums, farms, mosques, avenues, streets and squares, totalling considerably more than 1000 objects. In May 2001 Niyazov’s official title was amended to ‘President Saparmurat Turkmenbashi the Great’.

Freedom of speech is severely restricted and official control of the mass media is complete. The Committee for the Preservation of State Secrets, created in February 1991, has the task to register and approve all national and regional newspapers in Turkmenistan, of which President Niyazov is the official founder (uchreditel’ ). In July 2002, Niyazov ordered the removal of satellite dishes from rooftops, which served as the main source of independent information for the urban population.⁵ The same month Turkmenistan’s Ministry of Communications halted the import of Russian newspapers and magazines, citing high airmail delivery rates.⁶

As regards political parties, in May 2001 Niyazov promised to lower the minimum number of members required for a party to legally register with the Ministry of Justice from 1000 to 500.⁷ However, other than Niyazov’s Democratic Party of Turkmenistan and the pro-government National Revival Movement, there are at present no parties or movements officially registered in the country (even the Peasants’ Justice Party, formed with the approval of the authorities in 1993 to serve as an agrarian faction in parliament, has not been permitted official registration).

Officials in sultanistic regimes enjoy little security and are dismissed or promoted at the whim of the ruler, given that their positions depend on their complete subservience to the ‘sultan’ rather than on distinctive qualifications. Moreover, frequent reshuffling diminishes the power bases of political elites and, consequently, their ability to become rivals to the leader. Dismissed officials also serve as visible scapegoats for the leader’s failed economic policies. Since 2000, Niyazov’s reshuffling of the upper echelons of his government, which has been a distinguishing feature of his regime since the early post-independence years, has greatly accelerated in both intensity and scope. Currently, none of the senior officials who set out to construct independent Turkmenistan together with him in the early 1990s remain in cabinet level positions. Amidst the atmosphere of distrust and continual personnel turnover, former foreign minister Boris Shikhmuradov was a notable survivor, having effectively established himself as the second-most influential person in the state. However, in July 2000 Niyazov removed Shikhmuradov from his post as the country’s leading diplomat, which the latter had held since 1993, reappointing him as presidential envoy for the Caspian Sea region and Afghanistan. His appointment in March 2001 as Turkmenistan’s ambassador to China marked the moment of his definitive excommunication from Niyazov’s inner circle of advisers.

On 1 November 2001, in a move that was to radically change the face of Turkmenistan’s oppositional politics, Shikhmuradov, having resettled in Moscow, declared his intention to fight Niyazov’s regime and to consolidate the Turkmenistani opposition. Turkmenistani authorities responded by filing criminal charges against Shikhmuradov for allegedly participating in illegal arms deals; they also sent an unsuccessful request to Russia’s Prosecutor-General for Shikhmuradov’s extradition to Turkmenistan.⁸ Shikhmuradov’s decision to join the opposition sparked off an unprecedented series of high-level defections, mainly to Russia, which included Turkmenistan’s ambassadors to Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, the former chairman of Turkmenistan’s Central Bank, the former deputy chairman of parliament and minister of water management, and the second-in-command at Turkmenistan’s Embassy in Washington, DC. In December 2001 Shikhmuradov announced the official founding of the People’s Democratic Movement of Turkmenistan and launched a website to serve as a general forum for the Turkmenistani opposition. Since his defection, Shikhmuradov has been touring foreign capitals, including Washington, DC, to drum up international support for Niyazov’s opposition.

Given the potentially subversive role of the armed forces, some sultanistic rulers, such as Haiti’s Francois Duvalier, have sought to curtail the military’s ability to act autonomously by regularly purging the officer corps and/or by creating a loyal paramilitary force to infiltrate the regular army.⁹ From the late 1990s President Niyazov steadily strengthened the role of the Committee for National Security, or KNB (in September 2002 renamed the Ministry for National Security, or MNB), essentially refashioning it as his personal paramilitary force as well as a counterweight to the armed forces (Niyazov also has his own personal security service, reportedly consisting of some 2000 ‘bodyguards’, which is not subordinated to any security agency but has close links with the MNB).¹⁰ While the number of personnel in the KNB was increased by over 60 per cent in 2001,¹¹ in the same year the Interior and the Defence ministries were ordered to make significant cuts in personnel.¹² KNB employees were placed in leading positions in all of Turkmenistan’s ‘power agencies’, including the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Prosecutor-General’s office.¹³ The Ministry of Internal Affairs, in particular, was restructured into a virtual KNB appendage.

In March 2002, claiming that the organisation had spun out of control and ‘was no longer accountable to anyone’,¹⁴ Niyazov embarked on a full-scale public purge of the KNB, while also sacking certain high-ranking officials in Turkmenistan’s other security agencies. More than sixty KNB employees, including thirty-six members of senior staff, were dismissed, demoted or handed down prison sentences for a multitude of crimes, including abuse of power, bribe-taking, drug-trafficking, torture and premeditated murder. Most prominent among those given jail terms was Mohammad Nazarov, Niyazov’s former KNB chairman and ‘grey cardinal’, who had concurrently held the posts of the president’s adviser on legal issues as well as the secretary of the State Security Council. In the aftermath of the purge, certain functions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were downgraded, while the Defence Ministry received a quasi-upgrade: a total of 9000 staff members of the Interior Ministry were dismissed in May 2002 in connection with the transfer of several of its key departments, including the traffic police, the fire department and the interdepartmental guard service, to the jurisdiction of the Defence Ministry.

Niyazov had several likely motives in initiating the extensive overhaul of his security apparatus: first, to prevent high-level security agents from making disclosures implicating the president in various crimes and misdeeds; second, to pose as an anticorruption champion; third, to carry out a pre-emptive strike against possible plans by security officials to oust the president from power; and fourth, to distance himself from accusations levelled by the opposition that the KNB ran an international narcotics smuggling operation from Afghanistan in cooperation with the Taliban that was personally overseen by Niyazov.¹⁵

Society

Unlike totalitarian regimes, sultanistic regimes lack a genuine ideology that guides policy formulation. Consequently, many sultanistic leaders have felt compelled to create pseudo-ideologies, which invariably fail to appeal to the population or to mobilise them. Niyazov’s attempt to invent a pseudo-ideology is evident in the creation of the Ruhnama, or national code of spiritual conduct, a final version of which was published in October 2001 to coincide with the country’s tenth anniversary of independence. The Ruhnama, which translates as ‘soul book’, is alleged, inter alia, to depict the fundamental traits and traditions of the Turkmen nation as well as to provide guidance to the population on ‘how to live today and in the future’.¹⁶

The Ruhnama can be viewed as the central component of a broader nation-building campaign that has been underway since the early post-independence years. Since mid-2000 President Niyazov has imparted renewed vigour to his nation-building or ‘Turkmenisation’ efforts, particularly in the spheres of education, culture and mass media. To cite just a few examples, in October 2000 he ordered the destruction of thousands of new history textbooks for ‘perverting our glorious past’, purportedly by failing to stress sufficiently the indigenousness of the Turkmen to the region and by including descriptions of positive advancements made under Russian and Soviet rule.¹⁷ In the realm of culture, Niyazov announced the closure of Turkmenistan’s only opera and ballet theatre in April 2001 on the grounds that its repertoire was not ‘in conformity ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1: Country Surveys
• Part 2: Politics and Society
• Part 3: The Caspian: Oil, Pipelines and the Environment
• Part 4: Security and Geopolitics