Karimov Takes a Step Towards Ashgabat

Uzbek president Islam Karimov’s readiness to visit Turkmenistan signals a new desire to improve the two countries’ troubled relationship. However, NBCentralAsia experts say Karimov is still wary of the apparently liberal policies adopted by his Turkmen counterpart Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov.



In a phone conversation between the two heads of state on March 6, President Karimov agreed to pay an official visit to Ashgabat in the near future. He did not attend Berdymuhammedov’s inauguration in February.



The late Turkmen president Saparmurat Niazov took a tough stance against Tashkent from the early Nineties onwards, and the relationship ground to a halt after an assassination attempt against Niazov in November 2002, when Ashgabat accused Uzbek officials of conspiring with Boris Shihmuradov, a Turkmen opposition figure charged with plotting against Niazov, and sent the Uzbek ambassador home.



A meeting between Niazov and Karimov in the Uzbek city of Bukhara in late 2004 was supposed to bring the conflict to a close, but tensions persisted on a range of issues: Turkmenistan’s continued discrimination against its ethnic Uzbek citizens, arguments about how to share the waters of the Amu Darya river, and how to divide oil fields that straddle the frontier.



Despite these problems, Central Asia expert Alisher Hamidov says the arrival of Berdymuhammedov as the new Turkmen leader offers both countries a chance to restore the relationship.



“There are political and economic reasons why they need to do so,” he said. “They are mutually dependent in areas such as freight transport and transit, the distribution and exploitation of natural resources, especially gas, water and electricity, and the demarcation of their frontier.”



A diplomatic source in Uzbekistan argued that Tashkent has many reasons for wanting to improve relations, but noted that Berdymuhammedov’s initial steps as Turkmen president have unsettled Karimov, who would be reluctant to see reforms happening next door.



“He will view Turkmenistan’s inevitable democratisation and liberalisation as a source of ‘revolutionary infection’. This will inform his policy on Turkmenistan as long as he is in power. And that means all sorts of problems might arise,” said the source.



Mars Sariev, an NBCentralAsia expert on Turkmenistan says the relationship will get better as long as Berdymuhammedov can show Karimov that he wants to maintain the current authoritarian system.



Sariev said that a stronger bilateral relationship would allow both countries to “fend off attempts by other countries to intervene in their internal affairs, via issues such as the opposition, human rights, ethnic minorities and democracy. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have common interests here.”



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)