🇹🇲 Turkmenistan

Turkic-speaking Oghuz tribes moved out of Mongolia into present-day Central Asia in the 8th century AD. Part of a powerful tribal confederation, these Oghuz became the ethnic foundation of the modern Turkmen population.

In the 10th century the name "Turkmen" was first applied to those Oghuz groups that converted to Islam and began occupying present-day Turkmenistan. Muslim chroniclers linked the name to a mass conversion of two hundred thousand households in 971, fusing Turkic identity with Islamic faith.

In medieval times Merv, today known as Mary, was one of the great cities of the Islamic world and an important stop on the Silk Road.

Turkmen and other tribes brought down the Seljuk Empire, which had been composed of Oghuz groups in present-day Iran and Turkmenistan. Oghuz service to the empire had earlier spread Turkic culture westward into Azerbaijan and eastern Turkey.

In the century after the Seljuk collapse the Mongols took over the more northern lands where Turkmens had settled. The dispersal southward contributed to the formation of new tribal groupings that shaped later Turkmen society.

Tolui Khan's army killed most of the population after the Silk Road city, then possibly the world's largest with up to 500,000 residents, opened its gates. Medieval chroniclers recorded death tolls ranging from about 700,000 to more than 1.3 million, figures historians treat with caution.

By the 16th century most nomadic Turkmen tribes were nominally subject to the two sedentary Uzbek khanates. Turkmen soldiers became an important element of Uzbek militaries in this period.

The territory was annexed by the Russian Empire in the late 1800s after centuries at the crossroads of civilisations, having been ruled in antiquity by Persian empires and conquered by Alexander the Great, Muslim armies, the Mongols and Turkic warriors.

The Teke tribe, led by Gowshut-Khan, defeated the invading forces of Muhammad Amin Khan of Khiva in 1855. The victory confirmed Turkmen military independence in the face of khanate expansion.

In 1861 the Teke Turkmens repelled a Persian invasion led by Nasreddin-Shah. Together with the 1855 victory over Khiva, it established northern Turkmens as the main military and political power in the region before the Russian conquest.

In 1879 Russian forces attempting to take the Ahal area were defeated by the Teke Turkmens. The setback delayed but did not prevent the imperial conquest.

The first railway was built in 1880 from the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea to Mollagara, reaching Kyzyl-Arvat by October 1881 and Çärjew by 1886. A wooden bridge over the Amu Darya followed in 1887, with the line continuing to Samarkand in 1888 and Tashkent in 1898, integrating Turkmen territory into the imperial transport system.

The January 1881 assault on the Akhal Teke stronghold opened the way for Russia's annexation of the region that became Turkmenistan. Casualty accounts vary widely, with Turkmen losses estimated at up to 20,000; the defeat is still marked in Turkmenistan as a day of mourning.

Following the conquest of Merv in 1884, Turkmenistan began producing cotton in the Murghab Valley. Cotton became a defining export crop and remains one of the country's largest planted crops.

A road was constructed between Ashgabat and the Persian frontier at Gaudan Pass in 1887–1888, and Persian authorities extended it to Mashhad. The link eased commercial relations with Persia.

Commercial oil drilling began in the 1890s, building on surface extraction that Turkmen settlers had shipped to Astrakhan and Iran. The industry grew with the Branobel-worked Cheleken fields from 1909 and Balkanabat in the 1930s, laying the base of a hydrocarbon economy.

Turkmenistan's first electrical power station was built in 1909 and reached full operation in 1913; it was still working as of 2019. Until 1957, however, most power came from small diesel generators and diesel-electric locomotives.

The Russian Empire's participation in the First World War triggered an anticonscription revolt that swept most of Russian Central Asia, including Turkmenistan, in 1916. It marked the first mass anti-imperial mobilisation in the territory.

In the 1920s Turkmen fighters joined Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the Basmachi rebellion against the newly formed Soviet Union. Turkmenistan figured prominently in the anti-Bolshevik movement in Central Asia before Soviet control was consolidated.

The tsarist province of Transcaspia was renamed Turkmen Oblast in 1921. The change created the administrative unit from which a republic would be formed three years later.

The Turkmen SSR was carved out during the Soviet Union's national-delimitation of Central Asia, formally becoming a full constituent republic on 13 May 1925. Ethnic Turkmens made up about 80 per cent of the new republic's population.

Bus service began in Ashgabat in 1925 with five routes, followed by taxicab service with five vehicles in 1938. Before the 1917 revolution only three automobiles had existed in the whole territory.

Air service began in 1927 with a route between Çärjew and Tashauz, using German Junkers 13 and Soviet K-4 aircraft carrying four passengers each. An aerodrome for passengers and freight was built in Ashgabat in 1932.

The Turkmen had not formed a coherent nation or ethnic group until Soviet nation-building under Stalin in the 1930s. By the late 1930s Soviet reorganisation of agriculture had destroyed what remained of the nomadic lifestyle, and Moscow controlled political life.

The magnitude-7.3 earthquake struck on 6 October 1948, destroying Ashgabat and surrounding villages. Soviet censorship suppressed reporting of the disaster and death estimates range from about 10,000 to more than 110,000 — the higher figure amounting to two-thirds of the city's population — with the numbers still disputed. Among the victims was the mother of future president Saparmurat Niyazov. It was the most destructive of a series of strong Kopet Dag quakes recorded in 1869, 1893, 1895, 1929, 1948 and 1994.

The discovery of Gumdag in 1948 and Goturdepe in 1959 sharply raised output, which grew from two million tons a year in 1940 to over four million by 1960 and more than 14 million by 1970. These fields, with Balkanabat and Cheleken, still hold an estimated 700 million tons of reserves.

The 1,375-kilometre canal, one of the world's largest, diverted water from the Amu Darya to irrigate cotton fields and supply Ashgabat. It later became a major contributor to the Aral Sea's shrinkage.

In 1957 Soviet authorities established a republic-level directorate for power generation, ending reliance on scattered diesel generators. From 1966 Turkmenistan began linking remote regions to the Central Asian electrical grid, and by 1979 all rural areas were connected.

Before 1958 gas production was limited to associated gas from western oil wells; in 1958 the first gas wells were drilled at Serhetabat and Derweze. Fields discovered in the Central Karakum between 1959 and 1965 and the opening of Ojak in 1966 launched the gas industry, output rising from 1.157 bcm in 1965 to 90 bcm by 1989.

From 1962 the port operated passenger ferries to Baku and rail ferries to other Caspian ports including Aktau. It gave landlocked Turkmenistan a maritime trade and transit outlet.

Construction of the Mary thermal power plant started in 1969, with the eighth and final generator block completed in 1987 to reach a design capacity of 1.686 gigawatts. It became the backbone of Turkmen electricity generation.

Drilling caused a gas-filled cavern to collapse; engineers are said to have set it alight, expecting the fire to burn out within weeks. Known as the Door to Hell, the Karakum Desert crater burned for decades, though flames have diminished sharply since 2025.

The number of Russians in Turkmenistan fell from 334,000 in 1989 to slightly over 100,000 by 2001, while the Turkmen population doubled from 2.5 to 4.9 million. Ethnic Russians had already declined from 18.6 per cent of the population in 1939 to 9.5 per cent in 1989.

Turkmenistan's vast natural gas reserves, which have yet to be fully exploited, began transforming the country after independence, and the government is moving to expand extraction and delivery projects.

In 1990 the republic's Supreme Soviet declared sovereignty as a nationalist reaction to Moscow's economic exploitation. It was the first formal step away from Soviet rule, despite little local impact from the liberalisation movements of the late 1980s.

After independence in 1991 Soviet-era collective and state farms were reorganised into daýhan birleşigi, or farmers associations. The structure preserved state control over the cotton and wheat sectors.

Fragmentation of the Soviet Union forced Saparmurat Niyazov, who had preferred to preserve the union, to call a national referendum in which the government said 94 per cent of voters backed independence; the Supreme Soviet declared independence on 27 October 1991. The Soviet Union ceased to exist on 26 December 1991, and Niyazov, the republic's Communist Party leader, continued as head of state, replacing communism with a nationalist cult of personality.

In 1992 Niyazov dominated the one presidential election he ran in, being the only permitted candidate. The 1992 Constitution also made Turkmen the official language.

The 1993 alphabet change was the first step in distancing Turkmenistan from the Russian language, seen as a tool of Russian soft power. Russian lost its status as the language of inter-ethnic communication in 1996.

From 1993 citizens received government-provided electricity, water and natural gas free of charge, a defining feature of the post-Soviet social contract. A 2003 People's Council decree extended subsidies on electricity, gas, water and salt until 2030, but all such subsidies were abolished on 1 January 2019.

A 1994 referendum and legislation in 1999 abolished the requirement for the president to stand for re-election, and on 28 December 1999 the Mejlis declared Niyazov President for Life. Niyazov purged officials frequently and abolished organisations he judged threatening.

Kazakhstan's foreign minister signed the treaty in Ashgabat on 1 July 2026, during a visit that followed a November 2025 summit between the two presidents. Bilateral trade rose 6.8 per cent in early 2026 to nearly $180 million.

The reported 9 July 2026 strike on a bridge in Iran's Golestan province was part of a wave of US strikes on Iran; Washington did not confirm it. Iran said repairs restored train services within a day on the line, a key corridor for Turkmen-Iranian trade.

The ministry called the 25 July 2026 attack, which Iran blamed on Ukraine, inadmissible and invoked Turkmenistan's UN-recognised permanent neutrality, describing the Caspian as a sea of peace, harmony and good-neighbourliness. Iran said the strike killed one sailor; Kyiv did not confirm the claim.

Turkmenistan's ambassador discussed the idea with Romania's Chamber of Commerce on 29 July 2026; it envisages shipping Turkmen gas via Azerbaijan and Georgia to a Black Sea terminal at Constanța. No agreement was reached, and the Trans-Caspian pipeline needed to carry the gas remains unbuilt.

The Central Asia Water Efficiency Cooperation Project covers Turkmenistan alongside Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and will fund technical studies for the Amu Darya and Syr Darya basins rather than construction. The bank estimates poor regional water and energy coordination costs over $4.5 billion a year.

The Malaysian state energy firm's deal, signed as prime minister Anwar Ibrahim visited Turkmenistan, deepens its offshore Caspian presence; exploration drilling was expected to begin by December 2026, faster than Petronas's usual timeline. Visitor numbers between the two countries have also grown.

On 1 January 2026 the president signed legislation regulating virtual assets and creating a licensing scheme for cryptocurrency exchanges under the national bank. It was a rare step into digital financial regulation by a highly closed state.

The law took effect on 1 January 2026, permitting regulated mining and exchange activity for the first time. It follows a 2025 law introducing electronic visas, part of a gradual loosening of some economic and administrative controls.

The 16 December 2025 proclamation reversed part of a partial travel restriction Trump had imposed on Turkmenistan in June 2025, which his administration linked to high visa overstay rates. The June measures had covered tourist, student and immigrant visas.

The 6 November 2025 meeting at the White House, a first for the format, produced a critical-minerals and connectivity agreement between the United States and the five Central Asian states. Kazakhstan's president called it the start of a new era in US-Central Asia relations.

The agreement, reported on 26 November 2025, would bring Kazakhstan into the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline for the first time. Turkmenistan completed its own section in 2024, and construction has since focused on extending the line through Afghanistan's Herat province.

In 2025 the majority of the world's biggest recorded leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, came from Turkmenistan. The finding underlined the environmental cost of the country's gas-dependent economy.

The Assembly (Mejlis) became the unicameral legislature again on 21 January 2023, having been the lower house of the National Council since March 2021. It has 125 members elected for five-year terms in single-seat constituencies.

The once-in-a-decade census was conducted from 17 to 27 December 2022 and its total was published in July 2023. Detailed results of every census since the last fully published one in 1995 have been kept secret, and opposition media had estimated the population at only 2.7–2.8 million in July 2021.

Serdar Berdimuhamedow won a 2022 snap presidential election, which international observers said was neither free nor fair and in which he took about 73 per cent of the vote, after his father Gurbanguly stood down; he was sworn in on 19 March 2022. Gurbanguly retained authority as chairman of the Halk Maslahaty, later styled the nation's National Leader, so power is shared in what amounts to a hereditary political dynasty.

In January 2022 Berdimuhamedow ordered that the burning Darvaza crater, informally the "Gateway to Hell" and a leading tourist attraction, be put out on environmental and health grounds and to free gas for export. Its origin is disputed, with a 1971 Soviet drilling accident one explanation.

On 21 January 2021 the two governments agreed to co-develop an oil field straddling their Caspian border. The deal eased a long-standing obstacle to westward energy cooperation.

On 1 January 2019 the free provision of electricity, gas, water and salt, in place since 1993 and promised until 2030, was ended and metered payment introduced. It marked the dismantling of the country's central welfare guarantee.

Before the October 2018 ban Turkmenistan exported raw cotton to Russia, Iran, South Korea, the United Kingdom, China and others. From 2019 the government shifted focus to exporting cotton yarn, textiles and garments.

The 1.574-gigawatt Mary-3 plant, built with GE turbines, was commissioned in 2018 specifically to support expanded electricity exports to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Further plants followed, including the 432-megawatt Zerger station commissioned in September 2021.

After years of step-by-step reductions Russia stopped buying Turkmen gas on 1 January 2016, and Iran's imports ended a year later. Gazprom announced resumption in April 2019 but volumes stayed low, leaving China as the dominant customer.

Finished in December 2015, the line was designed to bring up to 30 bcm of gas to the Caspian shore for eventual export via a yet-to-be-built Trans-Caspian pipeline to Azerbaijan. It positioned Turkmenistan for a westward export route independent of Russia.

The country's first communications satellite was launched in April 2015, but in the same month the government banned all satellite dishes and ordered existing antennas, legal since 1995, removed or destroyed. The measure cut the population off from hundreds of independent international media outlets.

The 2014 price collapse severely cut export revenues, pushing Turkmenistan into trade deficits from 2015 to 2017. The manat, officially pegged at 3.5 to the dollar, was reportedly trading at 18.5 on the black market by November 2022.

The Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs was established in August 2012 and an agrarian party appeared two years later, ending the one-party state that had existed since 1991. The first multi-party parliamentary elections followed in 2013, though they were widely seen as rigged.

Berdimuhamedow won a second term in an election that the OSCE said lacked the freedoms necessary to create a competitive environment.

Line A of the Trans-Asia gas pipeline to China opened in December 2009, and a line carrying Turkmen gas to northern Iran began operating in 2010, effectively ending the Russian monopoly on Turkmen gas exports as the government worked to diversify routes beyond the Russian network. Deliveries to China reached up to 35 bcm a year by 2015 and over 30 bcm in 2019, making China Turkmenistan's main external source of revenue, with a stated quota of 40 bcm by 2023.

From 2009 Ashgabat deliberately sought alternatives to Russian-controlled pipelines for its raw materials. The strategy underpinned the eastward and westward pipeline projects of the following decade.

In September 2008 the People's Council unanimously passed a new Constitution, which abolished the council itself and substantially enlarged Parliament in December 2008. It formally allowed the creation of political parties beyond the ruling one.

Leaked results of a 2018 survey indicated 1,879,413 citizens emigrated permanently between 2008 and 2018 from an estimated base population of 5.4 million. In 2019 alone at least 102,346 left, 78 per cent of them to Turkey, for net migration of 77,014.

Niyazov's sudden death in December 2006 left a power vacuum because his cult of personality had precluded naming a successor. Deputy Prime Minister Berdimuhamedow was made interim head of government in breach of the constitution and won the February 2007 election, later taking roughly 97 per cent of the vote in 2012 and 2017.

Ten-year schooling was reinstated from the 2007–2008 school year, reversing a Niyazov-era contraction. From 2013 general education was extended to a three-stage, 12-year system.

Niyazov, who had ruled since the Soviet era and built an extensive personality cult around himself, died on 21 December 2006. Deputy prime minister Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow emerged as acting president within days and was elected to the post in February 2007.

In 2005 Niyazov used his personal authority to shut every hospital outside the capital and all rural libraries. The decision gutted provincial health and education provision.

An alleged attempt on Niyazov's life in 2002 triggered a wave of security restrictions, dismissals of officials and curbs on the media, with exiled former foreign minister Boris Shikhmuradov accused of planning it. Niyazov's suggestion that Uzbekistan was involved soured relations with Tashkent until bilateral treaties restored friendly ties in 2004.

Niyazov issued the Ruhnama, or "Book of the Soul", in separate volumes in 2001 and 2004. The text became a compulsory pillar of the state ideology and personality cult.

Use of capital punishment was suspended in 1999 and formally abolished in 2008. It was one of the few liberalising legal measures in an otherwise repressive system.

In 1998 Turkmenenergo brought online its first gas-turbine plant, using General Electric turbines. It began a sustained expansion that by 2010 gave the country eight major gas-fired plants and, by 2018, output above 21 billion kilowatt-hours.

Between 1998 and 2002 the country suffered from inadequate export routes for its natural gas and heavy short-term external debt obligations. The episode drove the later strategy of pipeline diversification.

The 140-kilometre Korpeje-Gurtguy line, completed in 1997, was the first gas pipeline to a foreign customer built after independence, breaking dependence on Russian-controlled routes. Exports to Iran, estimated at 12 bcm a year, ended on 1 January 2017 when Turkmengaz cut deliveries over payment arrears.

The UN General Assembly resolution adopted on 12 December 1995 recognised Turkmenistan's declaration of permanent neutrality, endorsing a status unique among UN member states that was later written into the constitution; the date is now marked annually as the Day of Neutrality. Neutrality became the organising principle of foreign policy, with Ashgabat taking neutral positions on almost all international questions and shunning bodies such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.