International Conference

«Conflicts in the Caucasus: History, the Present and Prospects for Resolution»

Baku (Azerbaijan) 22-23 October, 2012 and Tbilisi (Georgia) 25-26 October, 2012

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POLITICS

Azhdar KURTOV

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Azhdar Kurtov, President, Moscow Public Law Research Center (Moscow, Russia)

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In his New Year Address to the Nation, Turkmenistan President Niyazov named a 20 percent increase in the country’s GDP and an increase in its population by 300,000 as the republic’s main goals for the year 2005.

The year was ushered in by a presidential decree which increased wages and salaries paid from the budget by 50 percent. The president criticized the state of affairs in agriculture and, according to the recently established tradition, found and punished the culprits. Two deputy premiers—Atamyradov responsible for agriculture and Redzhepdurdy Ataev accused of financial irregularities connected with housing construction carried out by foreign contractors—lost their jobs. The latter had allegedly overpriced the job to be done and overpaid $4.5m of budget money. This time again though, the president’s authoritarian methods of frequently replacing bureaucrats did nothing to uproot the negative phenomena in governance.

On 9 January, seven constituencies came to the polls once more to elect Mejlis (parliament) deputies: earlier, on 19 December, 2004, national election day, the authorities, for the first time during the years of independence, departed from the well-oiled voting mechanism. While in the 1990s, election campaigns were mostly organized according to the Soviet pattern with one (carefully selected) candidate running for one seat, on 19 December, 2004, competitive elections in seven constituencies failed to reveal the winners, which made new elections necessary. According to the Central Election Commission, 72.24 percent of the total population came to the polls nationwide; the results were announced the next day.

There were 131 candidates competing for 50 parliamentary seats, 23 of them were women. Since political pluralism and a multi-party system are practically unknown in the republic, while the parliament has no significant role to play, all election campaigns are mostly rituals borrowed from the Soviet past. Seventeen deputies of the previous Mejlis retained their seats in the newly elected Mejlis; and 8 women deputies comprised 16 percent of the total number of deputies.

The Mejlis of the third convocation opened its first session on 1 February and formed all five committees: on human rights and freedoms; on science, education, and culture; on economics and social policies; on international and inter-parliamentary ties; and on working with the gengeshes.¹ Ovezgeldy Ataev was elected speaker and a committee head. Speaking at the opening session, President Niyazov touched upon several sensitive issues. He rejected the idea of imparting controlling functions to the parliament because, said he: “There is no need to do so,” as well as the idea of electing the parliament on a party basis (at least until 2020) and creating party factions in it. Saparmurat Niyazov admitted that in the future (approximately in 2008-2010), the number of seats might be increased to 120. At its first session, the Mejlis passed a decision On Declaring 2005 the Year of the Holy Book Rukhnama² by the First and Eternal President of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Turkmenbashi.³ By another decision, the Museum of Fine Arts in Ashghabad received the name of Saparmurat Turkmenbashi. Having fulfilled these purely symbolic duties, the session closed the next day, 2 February.

Later, the capital witnessed a wide-scale and pompous ceremony to present a new collection of the president’s poetry, during which the audience joined forces in lauding the author’s varied and profound talents. Late in February, the president underwent an operation on his left eye performed by a group of German doctors “to restore eyesight that degenerated because of a disease of the left eye.”

On 7 April, speaking at a Cabinet sitting, the president outlined his political plans for the next four years, while his variant of “society’s improvement” was introduced into the agenda of the 16th Session of Khalk Maslakhaty (the decree on its next convocation was signed on the same day). Niyazov pointed out that the nation “was prepared to make another step toward the spirit of the times accepted by the world as a fair world order that suits the interests, mentality, and tradition of the Turkmen nation.” This promising introduction boiled down, however, to mere relatively new rules for electing representatives of the power bodies. The head of state once more touched upon the continuity of presidential power. He suggested, in particular, that the elections to khalk maslakhaty of the etraps (districts) should be carried out in late 2006-early 2007. A year later, khalk maslakhaty of the velaiats (regions) would be elected, while khiakims (heads) of the etraps and velaiats would be chosen from among the corresponding deputies. In 2008, elections to the Mejlis are planned; in 2009, the republican Khalk Maslakhaty is expected to nominate 3 or 4 presidential candidates; the election will take place in the same year. This will complete the process of creating a new vertical of power resting, according to the president, “on a democratic basis.” In fact, the plan mainly changed the outward appearance of the system of power, and only in certain particulars, with nothing specific. It was a response to the criticism of the Turkmen regime heard from all sides and an attempt to convince the nation, completely in line with the Soviet tradition, that it is reaching “for new heights of progress and prosperity.”

On 18 April, the Law on Amending and Changing the Family Code was published. It tightened the rules for entering into matrimony with foreigners and stateless persons. Under the old law, non-citizens who wanted to marry a citizen of Turkmenistan had to pay a large sum of money—under the new law, they also have to spend at least 12 months in the country. These new laws directly contradict the international norms of human rights.

On the eve of the 60th Anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, President Niyazov, as the Supreme Commander and General of the Army, attended the “Kuvvatly Vatan” tactical exercises and field firing, in which MiG-29 fighters, Su-25 assault bombers, Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters, tanks and armored personnel carriers, Shilka antiaircraft self-propelled guns, and S-60 surface-to-air missile systems were used.

At the Cabinet sitting held on 20 May, the president returned once more to flagrant violations by the highest officials. He fired deputy premier Kurbanmuradov, who was his own deputy, and accused him of several crimes perpetrated when he supervised the Turkmengaz Concern and headed the Vneshekonombank of Turkmenistan (in particular, he was accused of grand larceny, embezzlement of public property, and other financial frauds). On the whole, he was sued for $60.5m and 7.1 billion manats.⁴ Simultaneously, Chairman of the Republican Bread Association Atdaev was fired, accused of stealing state property and of bribes, and sued for 2 billion manats and $100,000.

On 31 May, Chairman of the Board of Central Bank Mukhammedov was removed from his post for malfeasance; early in June, another high official khiakim (mayor) of Ashghabad, Redzhepov, lost his post; in August came the turn of the ministers responsible for the fuel and energy sector: Charyev, Chairman of the State Turkmenneftegaz Trade Corporation (accused of corruption in June) and Valiev, Chairman of the State Turkmenneft Concern. Auditing of the concern revealed gross violations: illegal profits, inflated figures of oil extraction, deficient oil deliveries to the Turkmenbashi Oil Refinery, etc. It turned out that Valiev (earlier awarded the title of Hero of Turkmenistan) openly practiced nepotism and bribe-taking (a foreign partner paid him $1,500 every month). The public prosecutor’s office confiscated over $9.5m and over 1 billion manats; 21 houses, 20 cars, and vast collections of gold coins and firearms. The overall damage to the state was estimated at $80m.

The above was probably related to the changes in the Law on Hydrocarbon Reserves enacted on 22 August. Its new version clearly indicated which structure has the right to participate in legal relations in the oil and gas sphere. This was the Ministry of the Oil and Gas Industry and Mineral Resources. Part 2 of Art 23 of the document envisaged that production sharing agreements on the Turkmen side should be signed by the ministry “on a decision of the Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers (Government) of Turkmenistan.” In other words, having lost confidence in his ministers, Saparmurat Niyazov decided to establish his personal control over this sphere and also instructed his subordinates to draft a program for restructuring the fuel and energy complex.

In August, the president issued a decree on Banning the Use of Phonograms at Song and Music Events and on TV in Turkmenistan, because the phonograms “negatively affect the development of song and musical culture of the independence era.”

In September, an exhibition center, the largest in Central Asia, was opened in Ashghabad. Built by Bouig, a French firm, it cost the country $55m in budget money. During the years of independence, Turkmenistan has built thousands of facilities, which is undoubtedly a positive feature of the country’s development. On the other hand, it is also a negative phenomenon, because Ashghabad concentrates on prestigious buildings and other structures designed to impress with their size and sumptuousness. An open discussion would have revealed that the public preferred to abandon most of the projects in favor of more urgent tasks requiring large investments.

On the day of commemoration of the victims of the 1948 earthquake, Niyazov signed several decrees which removed some executives from their posts, including the khiakims of two velaiats—Lepad and Mary—as well as the khiakims of the town of Mary and eleven etraps.

In mid-October, another book by President Niyazov was presented to the public; it contained his poetry and prose. The event started another wide-scale campaign of lauding the head of state.

On 24 October, the 16th session of Khalk Maslakhaty was opened in Ashghabad. This structure—a sort of a supra-parliament—is the country’s specific feature. There are no analogies in the world, probably because democratic states ruled by law do not need them. The Khalk Maslakhaty (People’s Council) is the highest representative legislature. Its legal status keeps it outside the division of power system. The body includes both elected and appointed members, including those from other branches of power. For that reason, the structure cannot be part of the checks-and-balances system. According to the constitutional law adopted in August 2003, its membership is 2,507, which is too large to make constructive discussion of laws possible. This is a purely decorative structure very much like the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., which passed all laws pre-prepared by the party and state mechanism unanimously and without much talk.

The members of the Khalk Maslakhaty include the president, all 50 Mejlis deputies, Chairman of the Supreme Court, Public Prosecutor-General, all the ministers, the administration heads of all the velaiats, the khiakim of Ashghabad, the khiakims of all the administrative regional and district centers, and the heads of the district administrations. Most of the members were appointed by the president; the public is represented by the leaders of the Democratic Party, youth organizations, trade unions, the women’s union, leaders of other public organizations, and the elders of Turkmenistan. The elected deputies, one from each district, represent the people.

This body normally meets once or twice every year for several days. Naturally enough, it cannot pass laws and govern the state, yet its powers are much broader than those of the Mejlis. For example, the Khalk Maslakhaty (by two-thirds of the total number), not the Mejlis, has the right to impeach the president. It had the right to disband the Mejlis and all the local representative bodies of power. A quorum requires two-thirds of the total; the decisions are passed by a show of hands.

The structure is headed by a chairman who is elected for five years from among the citizens, “born in Turkmenistan, not younger than 55, who knows the state tongue, and who has been permanently living in the country, working in the highest bodies of state power and administration, who has already earned prestige, and who is a Khalk Maslakhaty member elected by two-thirds of the number of its members by a show of hands.” Saparmurat Niyazov was the obvious choice.

Until the summer of 2003, when the Constitution was amended and the constitutional law on Khalk Maslakhaty was adopted, the importance of the Mejlis was determined by a very specific feature: if the head of state could no longer perform his duties, his powers were temporarily transferred, until the presidential election, to the Mejlis speaker. The constitutional amendments and the constitutional law changed this. The new structure became a permanent supra-parliament controlled by nobody but itself. If Niyazov decides to abandon the post of president, he will remain chairman of the Khalk Maslakhaty and thus will remain in control.

The 16th session of Khalk Maslakhaty discussed the following: several draft laws related to the country’s governing structures; discussion of the draft decisions on Perpetuating the Pillar of National Spirit—the Mosque of Spirituality of Turkmenbashi and Ensuring It Constant State Support, and discussion of a decree on pardon. The public discussion between the Chairman of the Central Election Commission and the president was obviously staged. The president’s opponent suggested that the draft law on Election of the President of Turkmenistan should be removed from the agenda. He argued that the role of the president as the eternal leader of the nation is too outstanding. Niyazov tried to object, but the members unanimously refused to discuss the very idea of an election.

In fact, the Khalk Maslakhaty did not discuss the new laws in any detail: during the two days of its session, the members demonstrated their unanimous support of Turkmenbashi’s initiatives. With mock modesty, the president merely pointed out that his new initiatives were designed to improve governance. He formulated the task of creating local khalk maslakhaty at the velaiat and etrap level. The number of the Mejlis deputies increased from 50 to 65, less than promised. Amendments to the Taxation Code were also on the agenda. The president’s suggestions were reasonable: five different taxes, some of them as high as 15 percent, were substituted by a single tax of 2 percent for individual commodity producers; the rate of medical insurance and pension contribution was also lowered to 2 percent. The Taxation Code, a large legal act of 222 articles, was adopted in the originally suggested version. The delegates also approved the president’s suggestion that 8,145 prisoners should be pardoned. Another decision was related to the mosque in the president’s native village of Kipchak. It received the status of a national object to be funded exclusively by the state. A decision was adopted designed to support those international organizations that opposed the spread of the weapons of mass destruction. The session also adopted an address to the nation.

The final decision on Approving the Domestic and Foreign Policy of the President of the Neutral Turkmenian State, Chairman of the Khalk Maslakhaty of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Turkmenbashi was hailed enthusiastically; the president’s line was approved and supported. The Khalk Maslakhaty unanimously approved the impressive list of newly adopted laws: on Gengeshes, on Elections to the Gengeshes, on the Etrap and City Khalk Maslakhaty, on Elections of Members of Etrap and City Khalk Maslakhaty, on the Velaiat Khalk Maslakhaty, on Elections to Velaiat Khalk Maslakhaty, a constitutional law on changing and amending the Constitutional Law on the Khalk Maslakhaty of Turkmenistan, laws on the Mejlis of Turkmenistan, on Elections to the Mejlis of Turkmenistan, the Constitutional Law on Changing and Amending the Constitution of Turkmenistan, the Taxation Code, and the Law on Protecting Health of the Citizens.

President Niyazov then informed the session that $120m of budget money would be allocated for a new Khalk Maslakhaty building in Ashghabad. In conclusion, all the delegates received $500 each on behalf of the president.

The scope of this article does not allow me to give a detailed analysis of these documents, yet I can say that from the formal point of view they are a certain step forward in the country’s legal system. Norms which contradicted world practice were removed from some of the laws; for example, the ethnic qualification obligatory for presidential candidates was removed from the Constitution. From the formal point of view, the introduction of representative bodies at the local level is also a positive feature, yet assessed from the political-legal viewpoint, it can be said that the new laws have not changed the nature of power in Turkmenistan: it has not become more democratic and has remained oriented toward the personal omnipotence of President Niyazov. In other words, the new acts did nothing but varnish the façade, leaving the skeleton of the political regime intact.⁵ The regime has no place for the division of power and a competitive democratic model of administration; it rejects freethinking, since the president is always supposed to be right.

Several days after the session, on 31 October, President Niyazov fired several more top officials. While Minister of Education Saparlyev and Minister of Construction and Construction Materials Berdiev were merely removed from their posts, Minister of the Oil and Gas Industry and Mineral Resources, Deputy Premier Tachnazarov, not only lost his post, he was brought to court for criminal offences. On 2 November, another minister, head of the Turkmengaz Concern Ovezov, was also fired. At a special meeting of the heads of the oil and gas concerns, the Mejlis, and Central Bank, the president said: “By secretly selling gas they inflicted damage on the country in the amount of $300m… None of the heads employed in the oil and gas industry left their posts of their own free will. All of them were either imprisoned or fled the country. All of them profited from the loopholes in governance to commit grand larceny.” He went on to say that former chairman of the State Turkmenneft Concern Valiev “had embezzled $27m,” that “each contract had brought the company 10 percent in bribes. For example, Tachnazarov received $5m, and Ovezov $1m.”

After stating that the country needs a new structure of the oil and gas complex, the head of state pointed out: “We should organize the industry so as to avoid stealing.” In May, President Niyazov began an anti-corruption war in the oil-and-gas sphere when Vice Premier Elly Kurbanmuradov, with eight years in the oil and gas industry behind him, was arrested at a Cabinet meeting. Accused of embezzling nearly $100m of budget money, he shared the fate of Charyev and Valiev: the maximum penalty, 25 years in prison.

The meeting which gathered at the president’s office on 30 November was the first practical step toward reforms in the oil and gas complex. It was decided to improve some of the structures: the Competent Structure for Developing Hydrocarbon Resources made up of all heads of the substructures belonging to the fuel and energy complex was removed from the government’s responsibility and transferred directly to the head of state. The Fund for the Development of the Oil-and-Gas Sector was to function according to the principles “of strict conformity and accountability,” while geological prospecting was also centralized. Two related facilities—the Turkmenbashi and Seydi oil refineries—received a common management structure.

At its meeting on 6-7 December, the Mejlis unanimously (as always) passed the Law on the State Budget of Turkmenistan for 2006, which expected the budget to become non-deficit. Its incomes and spending will be balanced out at 81.3 trillion manats ($15.63 billion according to the official exchange rate). It is expected that the higher economic growth rates, higher prices for some types of export products, and investment activity will increase the country’s income. The oil-and-gas and energy and chemical sectors are expected to demonstrate the highest growth rates. For the first time, the budget envisages a reserve fund of 800 billion manats to be used for carrying out the decisions of the president and the government. The Mejlis also adopted a new version of the Law on Hydrocarbon Resources, and several other acts.

In December, new people were appointed to administer the fuel and energy complex. The president removed Berdyev from his post of deputy chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers and minister of the oil and gas industry and mineral resources to appoint him as minister of economics and finance. Gurbanmurat Ataev, first deputy minister of oil and gas industry and temporary head of the State Turkmengaz Concern, was promoted to minister to replace Berdyev. Abilov, first deputy chairman of Central Bank, was made executive director of the State Fund for the Development of the Oil and Gas Industry and Mineral Resources and member of the Competent Structure.

Later Niyazov abolished the State Turkmenneftegaz Corporation engaged in selling and buying oil, natural gas and gas products. The State Turkmengaz Concern inherited its gas export functions, while the Turkmenbashi complex of oil refineries obtained the right to export oil products and liquefied gas. Domestic consumption of oil products and control over their use inside the country was entrusted to the Main Turkmennefteprodukty Administration attached to the Ministry of the Oil and Gas Industry and Mineral Resources as its structural part.

In mid-December, the country celebrated the 10th anniversary of the country’s neutrality, while on 21 December the nation marked with great pomp the 20th anniversary of Saparmurat Niyazov’s rule (twenty years ago he replaced Gapurov as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Turkmenistan).

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¹ Gengeshes are the grass-roots representative self-administration structures in Turkmenistan. _{Back to text}
² Rukhnama—a book allegedly written by S. Niyazov that contains his ideas about the history of Turkmens, the republic’s sociopolitical order and the ideology of Turkmen society. Today it consists of two independent volumes. The book was officially proclaimed holy to be studied at all educational establishments of Turkmenistan. The authorities actively encourage its translation and publication all over the world. The book has become a cultic object to a much greater extent than works by Marx and Lenin under Soviet power. _{Back to text}
³ In December 1999 Khalk Maslakhaty (the highest representative structure of Turkmenistan) passed a resolution On Powers of the First President of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Turkmenbashi under which, according to Point 1 of the enacting part, S. Niyazov acquired “exclusive right to perform the duties of the head of state without limiting their term.” _{Back to text}
⁴ The Deutsche Welle radio reported that houses of Kurbanmuradov’s relatives in Ashghabad were razed to the ground in December. _{Back to text}
⁵ Significantly, the Constitution received references to the acts of Saparmurat Turkmenbashi and more details related to the country’s neutrality. _{Back to text}