BACKGROUND: Turkmenistan has made a reputation for its intolerance of dissent in any form since its independence. Many political dissidents have been imprisoned for their opposition to President Niyazov’s administration on charges such as “subversive activities” or “espionage”, while many have left the country to escape persecution. Thanks to years of suppression, the elimination of any significant political dissent has turned the Turkmen authorities’ attention to human rights activists and NGO workers, especially since Georgia’s Rose Revolution followed by Ukraine’s Orange Revolution and the March 2005 upheaval in Kyrgyzstan. The prevailing view among the Southern CIS countries assesses these colored revolutions as a well-orchestrated American plan to replace those countries’ elites with pro-American ones, using American-backed NGOs and human rights groups. The Andijan incident of May 2005 in which such entities allegedly played a major role has especially increased the Central Asian elites’ sensitivity about the latter. Against this background, the Turkmen authorities’ arrest between 16 and 18 June of four Turkmen human rights activists (Annakurban Amanklychev [Amanguilydjov], Elevan Ovezova, Ogulsapar Muradova and Sapardurdy Khajiev) did not surprise anyone. Reportedly, the arrestees were all associated with a human rights group based in Bulgaria, the Turkmenistan Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. In line with previous cases, the Turkmen authorities accused them of plotting against the Turkmen government. Moreover, at least one of them (Amanklychev) has so far been accused of receiving “training in Ukraine in intelligence gathering and sabotage in Turkmenistan” and also in the methods used in Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution”.

IMPLICATIONS: What makes the recent arrests distinct from the previous ones is the Turkmen authorities hinting at a European role in the alleged plot against the Turkmen regime. Accordingly, they have accused Henri Tomassini (a cultural adviser to the French embassy acting also as the charge d\'affaires at the French embassy) and Benjamin Moreau, a British citizen associated with the OSCE in Ashgabat, of engaging in “illegal activities” directed against Turkmenistan, including providing “espionage” equipment to some of the arrestees. According to Turkmen National Security Minister Geldimuhammet Asyrmuhammedov, Mr. Tomassini sent “secret video cameras” to Annakourban Amanklychev to “allow him secretly to film a simulated gathering of discontented people, places of detention and buildings belonging to the army and to the security forces.” The resulting video tape was allegedly intended for a Briton and a French due to visit Turkmenistan as tourists who had visited Ashgabat in March to allegedly give Amanklychev “lessons in how to use a special video camera hidden in glasses, in order to shoot pictures in secret”. The Turkmen minister also accused Amanklychev of receiving training in the required skills in Ukraine and Poland before being “used by foreign special services”. He also linked the arrestees to “exiled Turkmen opposition members” implicated in masterminding the attempted assassination of President Niyazov in 2002. The mentioned arrests reflected Ashgabat’s zero tolerance of dissent, but the incident and the accusations leveled against the EU nationals, including two working for European diplomatic entities, indicated more than a prevailing fear among the Turkmen elite about a foreign-orchestrated colored revolution. Hence, what makes this case different from the manifestation of such fear elsewhere in the region is that the Europeans, and not the Americans, are now accused of masterminding plots against Turkmenistan. The fact that the accusations and the arrests were made a few days before an official visit to Turkmenistan by an EU parliamentary delegation to determine whether the EU should sign an interim trade agreement with Turkmenistan is unlikely to be just a coincidence. President Niyazov’s statements during a meeting with Japanese business executives on June 16 support the latter. Accordingly, he expressed discontent that the EU had not consulted his government about plans for building the proposed gas pipeline between Turkmenistan and Pakistan/India. His given examples to that effect included the EU’s “setting up commissions and drawing up action plans”, but “no one ever made an effort to discuss these things with [the Turkmen]”. Stressing his country’s intention to determine its own economic partners, he announced Turkmenistan’s preference for Russia and China as partners in oil/gas projects. Being made notwithstanding of Ashgabat’s current disputes with Russia over the pricing of Turkmen gas exported via the Russian pipelines, such statements clearly indicated the president’s anger at the EU.

CONCLUSIONS: Turkmenistan has extended relations with the EU to balance its ties with other major powers, namely Russia and the United States. Ties with Russia have fluctuated mainly because of disagreements over pricing of Turkmen gas exports via Russia on which the Turkmen economy is largely based. Criticisms of human rights situation in Turkmenistan, though not translated into tangible punitive measures, have been a major source of tension in Turkmenistan’s ties with the EU and the United States both with stakes in the Turkmen fossil energy industry. Nevertheless, fear of an American-inspired coloured revolution has been a major, if not the major, concern of the Turkmen authorities and thus a main factor damaging their relations with Washington, while a reason for expanding their relations with Moscow and Beijing. Added to the activities of the mentioned Europeans in Ashgabat and Poland’s hosting training sessions seen as subversive in Ashgabat, but legitimate in Brussels, the EU’s ignoring the Turkmen government in pursuing a potential gas pipeline project seems to have damaged Ashgabat-Brussels relations. Although the continued armed conflict in Afghanistan through which the pipeline will have to pass makes the project mainly a pipe dream in the foreseeable future, the reported exclusion of the Turkmen government from the project-related activities could have been interpreted in Ashgabat as a sign of a potential EU-US design to stage a color revolution in Turkmenistan, hence justifying ignoring the President Niyazov administration’s role in that project. In the absence of reports as to which of the mentioned issues played a key role in the apparent tension in EU-Turkmenistan relations, evidence suggests a cooling period in such relations in the foreseeable future.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Dr. Hooman Peimani is an Associate Research Fellow at the Centre for International Cooperation and Security (CICS), Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, UK.