Turkmen Passport Give-Away Not All it Seems

As Turkmenistan gears up to host a conference on refugees next year, its claims to be a welcoming environment for the displaced are under scrutiny.

The authorities have said they will use the United Nations conference to discuss their own experience of admitting refugees and dealing with stateless persons.

On paper, a decision to issue nearly 2,000 people with Turkmen passports in late October appears to indicate a generous open-door policy.

Prior to the government’s move, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR estimated that there were over 20,000 stateless people in Turkmenistan.

However, local observers say that – in the absence of details from the authorities – the bulk of those granted citizenship appear to be long-term residents of Turkmenistan whose applications took years to process.

"One shouldn’t conclude that this isolated state is a good place to be a refugee," one public relations in Ashgabat says. "The majority of those granted passports are Turkmen who fled from Tajikistan during the [1992-97] civil war there, and settled here.”

The list may also include others such as Armenians who have been in a similar position of long-term residence, and people from Turkmenistan who have failed to replace their Soviet passports with new ones until now.

As a commentator in the eastern Lebap region noted, many other residents continue to be denied full citizenship rights. People with dual Turkmen-Russian citizenship find they are refused new-issue passports, while ethnic Uzbeks in the east of the country are left effectively stateless when they are denied Turkmenistan nationality.

"Our state always remembers about refugees and stateless persons prior to some event," he said.

This article was produced as part of IWPR's News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.

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