Turkmenistan's Permanent Neutrality
In December 1995 the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 50/80, recognising and supporting the status of permanent neutrality declared by Turkmenistan. No other state has received that recognition from the Assembly. Saparmurat Niyazov, first secretary of the republic's Communist Party before independence and president after it, made neutrality a constitutional principle: no military blocs, no foreign bases, no participation in the collective security arrangements the other post-Soviet republics joined. The doctrine had a defensible strategic logic. Turkmenistan holds among the world's largest natural gas reserves and borders Iran and Afghanistan; declared neutrality offered a small state a way to avoid becoming a theatre for others' competition, and it was invoked to justify staying out of the CIS collective security treaty and refusing basing rights during the Afghan war. It also served a domestic purpose. Neutrality provided the rationale for extreme closure: minimal foreign presence, tight control of movement and information, and the most severe restrictions on independent media anywhere. Niyazov built an extensive personality cult — renaming the months of the year, erecting a rotating gold statue of himself — until his death in 2006. Gas exports, overwhelmingly to China since the 2009 pipeline, funded the state without requiring taxation or the bargaining that accompanies it.
- Year: 1995 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
