On June 12 2009, the President of Turkmenistan signed a decree establishing the National Academy of Science (NAS) of Turkmenistan, fully funded by the state budget. This refocusing of priorities toward re-establishing a national Research and Development (R&D) system has made a significant contribution to the systematic reorganization of the country’s research and education. This move has also intensified the debates within Turkmenistan and in the Central Asian region about the future directions in adopting new approaches to research and science: should the government support and fund the establishment of its own innovative research and development potentials or should the state abandon attempts to build its own research base and fully rely on the private sector or an international transfer of know-how?

BACKGROUND: Turkmenistan’s policy-makers follow in the footsteps of their colleagues in developing countries, where debates about the viability of creating an independent R&D base have continued for more than half a century. Many newly independent developing countries tried already in the 1950s and 1960s to establish their very own research base and to train their own scientific community. These countries poured billions of dollars into educating young talent, supporting their long endeavors in researching their PhDs and establishing national science and research facilities. Unfortunately the monetary returns from these investments were not high and had mixed outcomes. In some countries in Southeast Asia (notably in Singapore and to some degree in Indonesia) the established R&D system helped to launch a foundation for technological transfers from developed countries and contributed to the rise of the so-called South-East Asian “economic miracle.” In many other countries in Africa and the Middle East, however, the outcomes were not as clear and positive. Although many developing countries established and built their science and research base from scratch, it did not translate into developing competitive skill-intensive industries and into the expected high economic growth. Very often top-notch researchers from these countries ended up in the U.S., UK and other developed countries’ laboratories and universities. Thus, the argument arose that investing large amounts of taxpayers’ money, always scarce in developing countries, into research and sciences would be a waste of national resources and a form of subsidy of the “brain-drain.”

Since independence in 1991, Central Asian policy-makers, including those of Turkmenistan, have been debating the merits of developing science and an R&D base at the national level. One camp of policy-makers argued that the governments should fully fund the Academies of Sciences, which represented the backbone of a national R&D base, as it was the only way to develop advanced industries in their respective countries and to escape being mere exporters of raw materials. This group advocated the importance of governmental support and government funding for research studies, which during the Soviet era were traditionally concentrated in the national Academies of Sciences in these republics.

The other group, supported by some experts from the Bretton Wood institutions, disagreed. They believed that the newly independent states in Central Asia are so small and poor that it does not make sense for them to support the Soviet-era scale of development in science and to a fund a full range of research. From their point of view it would be better to concentrate the existing resources into reforming the national institutions and creating investment-friendly environments in order to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and, with them, advanced technologies. Thus, it would be fully up to the market institutions to decide if there was a need for indigenous science and R&D, and it would be up to private investors to decide which R&D to support or not to support. The wisdom was, why support the self-indulging 2,500-people-strong bureaucratic NAS monsters, which missed both the IT and Internet revolutions and who were resisting any innovations for years?

In the end, the states of Central Asia followed different policies. In some them, (Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) the former school of thought prevailed and the governments continued the state funding of the NAS and R&D in their respective countries, though at a smaller scale. In other countries (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) the governments decided to abolish the NAS in the existing form, to withdraw full funding from them and to make them a sort of intellectual club. It has become completely up to individual researchers to acquire funding for their research and scientific experiments. Turkmenistan’s government went even further. Not only did it close its Academy of Sciences in 1997 and abolished most of the research institutions, it also abolished the traditional research education programs such as PhDs (closing both kandidat nauk and doctor nauk programs). Even the national PhD Attestation Commission was closed down, thus no PhD candidates were trained in the country until 2007 (when the PhD programs were restored). Nearly all research programs in the country were closed, as in the past traditionally they were concentrated in the Academy of Sciences.

IMPLICATIONS: The first decade of transition in Turkmenistan, as in other Central Asian republics, was very painful. Many institutions had been struggling to survive and therefore few of them noticed the disappearance of the Academy of Sciences. However, as the national economy began experiencing accelerated growth between 2001 and 2008, many public sectors felt the impact of the absence of the national R&D and science base. First, Turkmenistan faced a shortage of highly qualified local experts who could provide expertise and assessments of new and increasingly complex projects in the energy sector, intensive agriculture, communication infrastructure and in new large-scale investment projects and deals. Many highly qualified Turkmenistani scientists retired, moved to work in other sectors (like retail and catering) or left the country for Russia or Western states. Second, the country began experiencing a shortage in qualified educators who could teach and train at national universities and prepare a younger generation to replace the previous cohort of managers, civil service officials and engineers. It became an especially pressing issue after 2007, as the new leadership came to power after the sudden death of President Saparmurat Nyazov (Turkmenbashi). This new generation of leaders envisioned accelerating investments and developments in all sectors of the national economy and in education. Third, the global energy market proved to be volatile and the national energy resources are not unlimited, as according to various estimates Turkmenistan’s gas reserves might run out within the next 50-60 years and its oil reserves might run out within the next 30-50 years at the current exploitation rate. The new leadership in the country were convinced that there was a need for diversifying the national economy by introducing new skill-intensive industries, like energy-saving and environmentally clean technologies, alternative energy (solar, wind and thermal), biotechnologies, and others, and it even floated an idea to invest up to US$ 4 billon in building a technopolis in Ashgabat (modeled after Education City in Qatar).

CONCLUSIONS: International experience, especially the experience of small states like Singapore, Taiwan and the Baltic states, indicate that there is a need for a national R&D base and for scientific studies, which would improve the competitiveness of the national economies, would help to diversify the nation away from excessive reliance on energy exports, and would help develop specialization and niches in the global economy. Therefore, Turkmenistan’s government should support the re-establishment of its R&D and science base by supporting innovative research activities at the Academy of Sciences, universities and various research institutions. It should also identify priorities and most-promising projects that Turkmenistan’s scientists will be able to accomplish successfully and utilizing local potentials, facilities and resources. The government should also learn from the mistakes of the Soviet science and research systems and work on creating a lean, un-bureaucratized and competitive R&D system in which the public and private sectors would cooperate in funding and commissioning the most promising research and experiments through transparent and competitive selection process. It should also avoid isolation from the rest of the world and work on developing regional and international cooperation integrating the national R&D and science system into the regional and global research and scientific networks.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Rafis Abazov, PhD, is an adjunct Assistant Professor at the Harriman Institute/SIPA at Columbia University (New York). He is author of the Historical Dictionary of Turkmenistan (2005) and The Culture and Customs of the Central Asian Republics (2007). In 2008 and 2009 he traveled to Central Asia to research education reforms and migration issues in the region.