‘Turkmenistan Wants to Be Part of “Turkish United States,’” Panfilova Says

Paul Goble

             Staunton, Nov. 10 – Turkmenistan wants to be part of “’the Turkish United States,’” as Turkish commentators are now describing the Organization of Turkic States, Viktoriya Panfilova, a desire that calls into question Ashgabat’s status as a neutral country and presents new challenges to the Russian Federation in Central Asia.

             Moscow has long backed Turkmenistan’s neutrality as a means to exclude the expansion of Turkish influence in Central Asia. After all, if Ashgabat doesn’t join Turkish projects, that will make it far more difficult for Ankara to build the Turkish World it seeks and easier for the Russian government to play its long-standing divide-and-rule approach to the region.

             But despite the fact that Turkmenistan agreed to become only an observer in the new Organization, its president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, attended the founding congress and expressed his support for the grouping’s goals, something Viktoriya Panfilova says represents a gradual movement away from neutrality.

             The political observer for Nezavisimaya gazeta says that the Turkmenistan leader clearly doesn’t want to be isolated from the Turkic world and thus sees more pluses than minuses in cooperating. That may not result in full membership soon, but it is clearly the way in which the situation is moving (ng.ru/cis/2021-11-11/1_8299_empire.html).

             Moscow will certainly keep talking about the importance of neutrality for Turkmenistan, she suggests; but the situation is clear. It won’t be that long before Ashgabat joins this geopolitical project, one that in the not terribly distant future is likely to have a security dimension as well, however much Russia opposes that possibility.