In the 2010s Turkmenistan’s principal trading partners included China, Turkey, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates. Turkmenistan’s primary sources of imports are Turkey, Russia, China, and the United Arab Emirates. Its main imports are machinery and equipment, vehicles, metals, and chemical products. Most of its exports go to China, and it mainly exports gas, though it also exports petroleum, cotton, and related products.

Transportation and telecommunications

The great dispersion of the towns in Turkmenistan requires extending rail lines to serve a scattered population efficiently, but the existing communications system falls far short of achieving that goal. A main trunk railway connects Türkmenbashy via Ashgabat and other towns with Tashkent in Uzbekistan, throwing off branch lines from Mary to Serhetabat and from Balkanabat to Vyshka. Another line extends from Türkmenabat along the Amu Darya as far north as Qŭnghirot (Kungrad) in Qoraqalpoghiston (Karakalpakstan). However, trucks now carry most of the country’s internal freight, and such traffic is developing more rapidly than rail transportation.

Water transport includes a merchant fleet and a ferry plying the Caspian Sea between Türkmenbashy and Baku in Azerbaijan. Air service from Ashgabat to Baku and Tashkent has been reduced since 1991.

Mobile telephone services are provided by the state-owned Türkmentelekom. Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), a Russian telecommunications company, also offered mobile service from 2005 to 2010 and again from 2012 to 2017. Telephone density for the country is about 170 subscriptions per 100 persons. Less than one-fifth of the population has access to the internet.

Constitutional framework

Turkmenistan adopted a new constitution in 1992, replacing the Soviet-era constitution that had been in effect since 1978. The new constitution established legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government, dominated by a strong executive. The president, the head of state, was to be elected for a maximum of two consecutive five-year terms, but Turkmenistan’s first president, Saparmurad Niyazov, extended his term to 10 years in a 1994 referendum. A People’s Council (Khalk Maslahaty)—made up of the president, members of the parliament, regional representatives, chairmen of the high courts, the cabinet, and other officials—had the authority to call national referenda, plan economic and social policy, and declare war. Despite having significant de jure powers, this council largely functioned as a rubber stamp for Niyazov’s decisions.

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After the death of Niyazov in 2006, his successor, Pres. Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, led efforts to reshape Turkmenistan’s government while retaining the overwhelming presidential powers wielded by his predecessor. In September 2008 the Khalk Maslahaty accepted a new constitution that established a multiparty system and saw to the council’s own dissolution. Under the 2008 constitution, the powers previously held by the council were nominally divided between the president and an expanded unicameral parliament (Mejlis), whose 125 members are elected by territorial districts to five-year terms. The president was elected by direct popular vote to a five-year term. This provision was amended in 2016 at Berdymukhammedov’s urging to extend the length of a term to seven years. The president is empowered to appoint governors and mayors and may dissolve the legislature only in the event that the Mejlis is unable to select a speaker.

The Khalk Maslahaty was reconstituted in 2021 as the upper legislative chamber in a bicameral parliament (Milli Genesh). It consists of 56 members—8 chosen by electors in each welayet, 8 chosen by electors in Ashgabat, and 8 directly appointed by the president—and has the power to approve legislation passed by the Mejlis, call referenda, and confirm presidential appointees to certain offices.

Local government

The country is divided into five welayats (provinces): Ahal, Balkan, Daşoguz, Lebap, and Mary. Ashgabat, the capital city, is administered independently of any welayat. The welayats are further subdivided into etraps (districts).

Health and welfare

Health services in Turkmenistan are free but scarce, and quality health care remains largely inaccessible. Medical facilities are underfunded, and therefore patients sometimes must offer payment in order to receive certain services and medication. By 2005 Niyazov had closed all hospitals outside the capital. Rural hospitals were reopened by his successor Berdymukhammedov, though they continued to lack essential equipment.

Education

Turkmens received their education from traditional Muslim schools in Bukhara and Khiva until the collapse of those khanates in 1920. There was also a scattering of New Method schools established by Muslim reformers (Jadids) early in the 20th century in such towns as Kerki and Chardzhou (now Türkmenabat). Only after 1928 did the Soviet school system begin to displace these Muslim educational institutions, with the result that literacy rates remained low for many years. By the 1960s and ’70s several higher educational institutions functioned in the republic—the Turkmen State University in Ashgabat, a teachers college, and medical, polytechnic, and agricultural institutes.

The Turkmen Academy of Sciences was founded in 1951 and directed from Moscow until the late 1980s. Education was provided tuition-free to students, and those selected for higher education received stipends from the republic’s budget. The academy was closed in 1998 and reopened in 2009, but the government announced in 2019 that it would phase out all state funding for the academy over the following three years.

Attempts to nationalize education have resulted in transformative policies. The promotion of Turkmen as the state’s official language necessitated reorientation in instruction, curricula, and teaching materials: first in the 1990s, when the language switched to a modified Latin alphabet, and then in the 2000s, when Russian-language instruction was suppressed. In the first decade of the 2000s a presidential decree invalidated all degrees earned abroad, one of the greatest effects of which was the decertification of a large number of teachers. An extensive certification process was put into place in 2013 which allowed citizens to seek certification for foreign diplomas.

Compulsory primary and secondary education is provided free for 12 years. Tertiary education is five years. The state runs 24 institutions of higher education. With a literacy rate exceeding 99 percent of the population, literacy is virtually universal.