Turkmen crackdown hinders US efforts for better ties

Recent attempts by the United States to improve relations with Turkmenistan have been hampered by the secretive former Soviet country’s clamp down on students seeking to study at the American University of Central Asia, or AUCA, located in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Some students have been barred from traveling abroad to the school and others have been subject to surveillance and harassment when they come home, reported the Christian Science Monitor on its Web site. The U.S. State Department has recently taken up these students’ cases, but is coming up against a wall of post-Soviet intransigence.

Turkmenistan is home to rich oil and gas deposits and straddles a strategically vital central Asian location, sharing borders with both Iran and Afghanistan. Turkmenistan's major hydrocarbon reserves and its agreement to assist with NATO's Afghan northern supply route have helped mute U.S. criticism of the regime, though American officials say they will continue to raise human rights concerns.

“What do you study, how do they teach you, and why do you study it?” are some of the routine questions that one student from Turkmenistan, who asked not to be identified to protect herself, is peppered with by Turkmen secret service officers every time she returns home from the AUCA in neighboring Kyrgyzstan.

She has been fortunate enough to make it back to campus. More than 100 of her Turkmen peers enrolled at the Bishkek-based institution are still trapped in their home country, denied permission to travel abroad.

Quiet diplomacy

Problems for hundreds of Turkmen students who were studying at private universities abroad began in July. Many were ordered off their flights, by government officials, and ordered to obtain new documents. Today, only AUCA students remain banned from travel.

After weeks of quiet diplomacy by the U.S. Embassy in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat, which helps to coordinate student scholarship programs, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised the issue in talks with Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow in New York in September.

According to embassy officials, Berdimuhamedow agreed to allow AUCA students to transfer to the American University in Bulgaria. But on Oct. 2 a group attempting to fly to Sofia was stopped at the airport.

“We are dismayed by the government of Turkmenistan's continued denial of freedom of movement,” the Christian Science Monitor quoted the U.S. Embassy’s statement as saying. Travel restrictions have also been working in the other direction. Recently, a contingent of 47 Peace Corps volunteers was prevented from entering Turkmenistan. U.S. officials say privately that this incident is related to American efforts to assist the students. The Turkmen government did not respond to requests for comment.

After independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Turkmenistan became an authoritarian republic under the autocratic leadership of President Saparmurat Niyazow. When Berdimuhamedow came to power in 2007, he promised to embark on reforms, including improvements to the education system.

Yet Turkmen higher education still suffers from acute corruption and limited size. Some 75,000 high school graduates each year are left fighting, sometimes with bribes, for one of fewer than 5,000 domestic university spots.

Young Turkmens have traditionally been free to study abroad, including at nearby AUCA. Though it has been substantially funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, and George Soros' Open Society Institute, the university is independently governed. In a region of academic mediocrity, it offers quality liberal arts degrees. But observers say that the Ashgabat regime has become wary of U.S. educational outreach, seeing it as an effort to slip U.S.-style democracy through the back door as politically engaged students return home.

In Bishkek, a number of students who were already abroad when the Turkmen authorities imposed the travel ban fear their families could become targets. Punitive steps have already been taken. Some parents have lost their government jobs while AUCA alumni say they have been denied employment opportunities.

In a Bishkek coffee house, one student spoke of his ambitions for the future. “I want to go back and change things, but not in the revolutionary sense. I just want to start my own business. But anyone with an original idea faces either corruption or imprisonment.”