New Eastern Europe - November-December 2017

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we see in other countries with heavy censorship,” Nazar explains. “This is a govern-

ment trying to control people’s minds. And if that fails, then to stupefy and bore

them into submission with repetitive, totally uninteresting content that celebrates

a golden age of prosperity completely disconnected from real lives.”

Indeed, since the Media Sustainability Index’s start in 2008, out of 80 countries

Turkmenistan has never crawled out from the international survey’s lowest category

of “Unsustainable/Anti-Free Press”. Reporters Without Borders deem Turkmenistan

an “enemy of the Internet”. There are dark stories of the regime deploying invasive

surveillance technologies and freelance hackers to pursue anyone and everyone

within its borders who tries to gain access to information from the outside world.

Impending collapse

According to numerous independent news reports, despite impressive GDP

growth rates, at the grassroots level Turkmenistan’s economy is seriously slug-

gish. There is also trouble at the highest echelons of power. The problems began in

2015 when authorities suddenly devalued the Turkmenistani currency, the manat.

Since then exports have plummeted, the government has limited access to foreign

reserves and bank machines have been said to be dispensing less and less cash. At

the end of 2016, independent news agencies reported a temporary food shortage.

By 2017, according to RFE/RL, food prices have increased sharply (some by as

much as 50 per cent). One confirmed example of a significant price hike is cheese –

200 grams of cheese rose from eight manats to ten. By way of context, three and a

half manats is the equivalent of one US dollar, and the average monthly salary in

Turkmenistan is believed to be approximately 500 US dollars.

All of this has been triggered by a global decline in natural gas prices, a result

of a surplus in supply and a contraction in demand. Meanwhile, the president of

Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov, has launched an unusually high-

profile anti-corruption campaign. Several important members of the government

have been swept up in the dragnet. For a government as secretive and controlling

as Turkmenistan’s, such visibility on a socially and politically sensitive issue, ana-

lysts say, is a major warning sign.

According to Bakhtiyor Nishanov, deputy director of Eurasia at the Interna-

tional Republican Institute, the worst has yet to come. As Turkmenistan’s coffers

run dry, a vast welfare state of subsidies for fuel, electricity and food, which the

government has historically relied upon to placate its population, may be in dan-

ger of collapse. Indeed, the government is believed to have already implemented

extensive cutbacks.

Opinion & Analysis A looming humanitarian crisis in the land Orwell forgot, Christopher Schwartz