Paul Goble
Staunton, Mar. 28 – Of all the Caspian littoral states, Turkmenistan has attracted the least attention for efforts to build a fleet to protect its ports, coastal waters, and offshore oil and gas wells. But with the Israeli attack on the Iranian port last week, that is certainly going to change; and Ashgabat has taken a noteworthy step.
Turkmenistan’s Şanly mekan company, which has produced yachts and small fishing vessels in the past, has announced that it will be building patrol boats almost certainly for use by the government to defend Ashgabat’s interests on the Caspian (httpscasp-geo.ru/turkmenskaya-kompaniya-planiruet-proizvodstvo-patrulnyh-katerov/).
After a slow start reflecting its self-isolating policy of neutrality, Turkmenistan in 2020-2021 began to build up its shipping capacity on the Caspian, which included only some 20 merchant ships and 16 naval vessels, many inherited from Soviet times (turkic.world/en/articles/turkmenistan/283953 and jamestown.org/program/russias-caspian-flotilla-no-longer-only-force-that-matters-there/).
Last year, Ashgabat contracted with a Dutch company to modernize its Caspian port of Turkmenbashi; and it has asked South Korean yards to build more ships for its fleet (casp-geo.ru/kompaniya-van-oord-gotova-k-modernizatsii-porta-turkmenbashi/ and casp-geo.ru/turkmeniya-i-koreya-rasshiryayut-sotrudnichestvo-v-sudostroenii/).
Now that Turkmenistan is going to build at least some ships on its own, that will make Ashgabat a more credible force on the Caspian and at the very least mean that Turkmenistan’s navy and merchant marine should no longer be ignored in any discussion of the balance of forces on that body of water.
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