Turkmenistan: Watched over by CCTVs of loving grace

After a long absence from the agenda, the phantomatic Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline has once more reared its head.

On July 21, the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, addressed the topic of the pipeline to place the ball firmly in Turkmenistan’s court, as he has done before. Since the route would be filled with Turkmen gas, it is Ashgabat that should initiate the investment, he implied.

“We can provide our existing infrastructure or some territory on which to build new infrastructure,” he was quoted as saying by Russia’s TASS news agency.

Aliyev continued by stating that Baku’s energies are being concentrated more on developing capacity on the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which is how Azerbaijan gets its gas to buyers in Greece and Italy.

This time, Turkmenistan’s Foreign Ministry elected to respond, and in something of a pedantic fashion at that. In a July 24 statement, it described the starting point to European-Turkmen dialogue on this whole initiative as the time when former President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov visited Brussels in November 2007.

In the years that followed, multiple agreements and loose commitments were devised.

In September 2011, the European Union went as far as to adopt a mandate authorising it to negotiate a legally binding treaty between itself, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to build the pipeline. This document was billed by Brussels at the time as the “first time that the European Union has proposed a treaty in support of an infrastructure project.”

“The Trans-Caspian Pipeline is a major project in the Southern Corridor to bring new sources of gas to Europe. We have the intention of achieving this as soon as possible,” EU Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger said at the time.

A multinational consortium dubbed the Caspian Development Corporation was intended as the European Commission’s magic bullet. By courting Turkmenistan as a united front – as opposed to having individual companies do the running – and dangling the prospect of using that consortium as a source of funds for infrastructure development, the Europeans hoped to expedite the agenda.  

That whole initiative fizzled into nothing. And almost 12 years later, the pipeline remains as illusory as ever.

The Turkmens feel they have done enough from their end by focusing on the political aspect of this problem. The Foreign Ministry cited the 2018 Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea to point to how it has achieved consent from fellow Caspian nations, which comprise Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Russia, to lay pipelines along the seabed, for instance. What Turkmenistan seems unwilling to do, though, while insisting the TCP is “justified from an economic perspective,” is committing its own money to the undertaking.

The bottom line from where Turkmenistan is standing appears to be that the Europeans must come forward with a project blueprint, cash, a readiness to sign on the dotted line on a long-term sales agreement and, presumably, a decorative ribbon to pin on it all.

The Turkmen Foreign Ministry naturally avoids referring to the elephant in the room, which was instead commented upon Damjan Krnjevic, a former senior adviser to the president of Serbia.

“Even assuming that the financing and demand and contracts could be ensured,” Krnjevic told Baku-based Trend news agency, “it would not be sufficient to allay Turkmen fears of Russian and Iranian negative reactions.”

Turkmenistan feels like it has more promising prospects of partnership in the Gulf nations.

On July 18, President Serdar Berdimuhamedov flew to Saudi Arabia to take part in the inaugural joint summit in Jeddah of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, or GCC, and the five states of Central Asia. (The president’s father and predecessor, Gurbanguly, was in Saudi Arabia as recently as last month to perform the hajj).

Among all the attending Central Asian presidents, perhaps none was as hopeful as Berdimuhamedov in outlining the promise of this cooperation format. In a speech to the summit on July 19, he proposed, inter alia, creating a Transportation Committee of Central Asia and the GCC and a joint working group on energy issues, “the function of which will be to analyse the potential for collective action in the energy sector.”

This was followed by a sales pitch for Gulf money.  

“Turkmenistan is always open to cooperation in the implementation of investment projects in priority sectors of the economy,” the president said. “We propose holding the first investment forum of Central Asian countries and the Gulf Cooperation Council in Turkmenistan in 2024.”

Lobbying for money to go in the other direction is coming from the east. On July 19, Seoul-based news agency Yonhap cited South Korea’s Trade, Industry and Energy Minister Lee Chang-yang as saying that his government is seeking Ashgabat’s support in securing major plant construction projects in Turkmenistan. The value of the two fertilizer plant building projects is estimated at $2.5bn, Yonhap reported.

Lee cited what he described as the successful precedent of the $3.4bn chemicals plant opened in the village of Kiyanly in 2018 and built jointly by Korea’s LG International Corp and Japan’s TOYO Engineering Corporation.

Turkmenistan is certainly happy to throw around the billions when it suits it. Consider the case of the country’s newest town, Arkadag.

But as Vienna-based Chronicles of Turkmenistan has reported, Arkadag is already starting to look worryingly like another costly white elephant. Three weeks after its opening, a correspondent for the outlet conveyed their account of an “eerily lifeless” town.

To begin with, cars were not being allowed in at all, but this rule has now been loosened, although only new and “clean” vehicles may gain admittance. Judgement on this point is passed by police guarding entry points to Arkadag.

The result is an urban centre entirely absent of pedestrians or vehicles. This emptiness is lovingly looked upon by what the Chronicles correspondent described as a bewildering number of CCTV cameras.

Part of the problem is that buying property in Arkadag already looks fraught with complications. It was initially reported that apartments could be transferred to the ownership of their residents after a decade had elapsed, but Chronicles said its sources have said that the talk is now of homes being sold with 30-year mortgages.

Because many government departments have yet to move to the town, there is not much employment to go around. And since there is no local economy to speak of as yet, the private sector offers scant prospects.

As things stand, living in Arkadag implies spending most of one’s working life slaving away in a government office, paying off a burdensome debt and being subjected to East German-level scrutiny by the security services. Not very appealing.

Akhal-Teke is a weekly Eurasianet column compiling news and analysis from Turkmenistan.

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.