Turkmenistan

[Jedburgh]

CSRC, 17 Oct 07: Turkmenistan: Slowly in the Right Direction

Key Points

* Considering Turkmenistan’s ample energy resources, President Niyazov left Turkmenistan in a very bad shape. We are yet to discover the full scale of this devastation and therefore appreciate the scope of the challenges facing his successors.

* The reforms in Turkmenistan will take time and some mistakes will inevitably be made.

* The Western partners of Turkmenistan have enough experience to help Turkmenistan avoid mistakes made in other Central Asian countries.

* The stability of Turkmenistan is in everyone’s interest.

* President Berdymuhamedov is developing relationships with the West and his neighbours.

A bunch of non-commital and safely generic "key points", but the actual paper is a bit better. For those who care about such things, an appendix provides an interesting chronology of Berdymuhamedov's attempts to develop relationships, as stated in the last bullet above.