Turkmenistan's politics: a neutral republic and its People's Council

What permanent neutrality commits the state to

Article 2 of the constitution, adopted in 2008 and revised in 2016, states that Turkmenistan has the status of permanent neutrality recognised by the international community, and that this neutrality is the basis of its national and foreign policy. The article cites both General Assembly resolutions by date. A separate article commits the state to non-interference in the affairs of other countries, to refrain from the use of force and to stay out of military blocs and alliances.

In practice this has meant staying outside the security organisations its neighbours joined. Saparmurat Niyazov, who proclaimed the policy, said it barred membership of multinational defence organisations while still allowing military assistance, and the country does not contribute troops to United Nations monitoring forces. In the late 1990s it kept relations both with the Taliban government in Afghanistan and with its opponents in the Northern Alliance, stayed out of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and after the attacks of 11 September 2001 offered limited support to the campaign against the Taliban. In 2005 Turkmenistan downgraded its links with the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The government's own account of its foreign policy lists the principles of good-neighbourliness, equality and mutual benefit, the slogan "Dialogue is the guarantee of peace", and cooperation with 54 international and regional organisations, the UN, the OSCE, the CIS, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Non-Aligned Movement among them. It counts diplomatic relations with 155 countries; the Turkmenistan article on Wikipedia gives 139. The OSCE has kept a centre in Ashgabat since January 1999, set up by a decision of its Permanent Council of 23 July 1998. Turkmenistan is a founding member of TÜRKSOY, the organisation of Turkic culture, and holds observer status in the Organisation of Turkic States.

The same account lists higher gas and oil exports, and an even-handed dialogue with the countries that buy and carry them, among the aims of foreign policy. It names the "Central Asia plus one" dialogues with the European Union, Russia, the United States, China, India, Japan and South Korea as formats it works in. The economy article follows the pipelines.

How power is divided on paper

Article 1 of the constitution describes Turkmenistan as a democratic, legal and secular state with a presidential republic as its form of government, and Article 141 makes that form unamendable. Legislative, executive and judicial power are formally separate. The president is head of state and of the executive, heads the Cabinet of Ministers, acts as guarantor of independence and neutrality, and commands the armed forces.

The president is elected directly for seven years. A candidate must have been born in Turkmenistan, be at least 40 years old, speak the state language and have lived and worked in the country for the past fifteen years. The president signs laws and may return one to parliament with objections within two weeks; a two-thirds vote of the deputies overrides that veto. The president also appoints all judges, including the chairman of the Supreme Court, and the US State Department's human rights report for 2020 concluded that the judiciary, though independent in law, was controlled by the executive in practice.

The constitution may be amended by two-thirds of the deputies of the Mejlis or by more than half of the citizens voting in a national referendum. Voting age is 18, and a deputy must be at least 25 and have lived in the country for the previous ten years. The state language is Turkmen, the capital is Ashgabat, and capital punishment is prohibited.

Why the legislature keeps changing shape

No single arrangement of the legislature has lasted since 1991. The constitution of 1992 set up two bodies: a large People's Council, the Halk Maslahaty, of up to 2,500 delegates, some elected and some appointed, which met at least once a year; and a smaller Mejlis, at first of 50 seats and later of 125. A law of 2003 made the People's Council the supreme legislative organ, able to dissolve the Mejlis, with Niyazov as chairman for life of the one and head of the other.

The constitution of September 2008 turned the People's Council into a Council of Elders without legislative authority and gave legislative authority to a single Mejlis. In October 2017 a new People's Council was formed. A constitutional amendment of September 2020 made the parliament bicameral, with the People's Council as the upper chamber: of its 56 members, 48 were indirectly elected and eight appointed by the president. Together the two chambers were called the National Council, the Milli Geňeş, and elections to the upper chamber were held on 28 March 2021. The country's record still lists the National Council as its legislature.

That arrangement lasted under two years. On 21 January 2023 a joint session of both chambers adopted a proposal to take legislative power away from the People's Council and leave it with a single-chamber Mejlis. The People's Council became an independent representative body with authority to amend the constitution, and its chairman was given the title National Leader of the Turkmen People. State media described the council as the supreme organ of state authority, and outside observers quoted in the Politics of Turkmenistan article consider that the real executive authority moved to that office.

The government lists who sits in the People's Council: its chairman, the president, the speaker of the Mejlis, the ministers, the deputies of the Mejlis, the chairman of the Supreme Court, the prosecutor general, the human rights ombudsman, the governors of provinces, districts and cities, the leaders of the political parties and trade unions, and representatives of the public, elders among them.

Who has held the presidency

Niyazov led the Communist Party of the Turkmen SSR from December 1985, was elected president in October 1990 and was the only candidate in the presidential election of 1992. A plebiscite in 1994 extended his term to 2002, and on 28 December 1999 the Mejlis, itself elected a week earlier from candidates he had approved, declared him president for life. He died on 21 December 2006.

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, a deputy prime minister, became acting president although the constitution named another official as successor. He won the election of 11 February 2007 with 89% of the vote, the 2012 election with about 97% and the 2017 election with 97.69% by the official count. In March 2022 his son won an early presidential election that international observers described as neither free nor fair, and in January 2023 the People's Council was reorganised as above.

How parties and elections work

Until 2012 Turkmenistan had one legal party, the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, formed in December 1991 from the dissolved Communist Party. The Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs was founded in August 2012 and the Agrarian Party two years later, and the first parliamentary elections with more than one party were held in 2013. All three registered parties take part in political life, and the Politics of Turkmenistan article describes them as also working as public organisations aligned with state policy. Political gatherings without government approval are illegal.

Opposition has existed only outside the law. The movement Agzybirlik was banned in January 1990, the Party for Democratic Development that its members formed was banned in 1991, and the Republican Party of Turkmenistan operates in exile. The government also supports nationwide public organisations: the Magtymguly Youth Organisation, the National Centre of Trade Unions and the Women's Union.

International observers have not judged any national election free. The OSCE observer mission to the Mejlis elections of 25 March 2018 reported that they "lacked important prerequisites of a genuinely democratic electoral process" and that the political environment was "only nominally pluralist". In its 2025 report Freedom House gave no points on the questions of whether the head of government was elected freely and whether the electoral laws are fair.

What monitors report about rights

The government's position is set out in its constitution and in the general information it publishes: freedom of religion and belief is guaranteed, religious organisations are separate from the state, the citizens of Turkmenistan are guaranteed the protection of the state at home and abroad, and the people are the only source of state power.

Independent monitors describe a different practice. Freedom House rated Turkmenistan Not Free with a global score of 1 out of 100 in its 2025 report, down from 2, and described it as "a repressive authoritarian state where political rights and civil liberties are almost completely denied in practice". It reported during 2024 the enforcement of a restrictive abortion law, mandatory "virginity tests" for schoolgirls in Balkan Province, a family code that made divorce harder, the confiscation of passports from students, activists, journalists and some government employees, and an unofficial 9 p.m. curfew in Balkan Province.

Human Rights Watch reported for 2024 that more than 122,000 internet domains were blocked, that the government refused to renew passports through its consulates abroad, and that an estimated 96 people remained victims of enforced disappearance, at least 33 of them people whose prison terms had expired between 2017 and 2024. Reporters Without Borders describes all media as owned and financed by the government and the independent outlets, among them Turkmen.news and Chronicles of Turkmenistan, as based abroad. Amnesty International reported for 2025 that torture in detention remained widespread with no independent oversight.

Movement inside the country is also controlled. Every citizen must carry an internal passport recording a place of residence, a practice kept from the Soviet period, and opinion polling is restricted. The Turkmenistan article reports discrimination against minorities in practice: universities have been encouraged to turn away applicants with non-Turkmen surnames, especially Russian ones, and teaching the language and customs of the Baloch minority is forbidden.

Several of the restrictions are written into law or decree. Satellite dishes were banned in April 2015, the same month the country launched its first communications satellite. Use of virtual private networks is prohibited. Religious congregations must register, and a parish needs at least 500 members to do so. Sexual relations between men are a criminal offence carrying up to two years in prison. The death penalty, suspended in 1999, was abolished in 2008.

How the provinces are run

Turkmenistan is a unitary state with power concentrated in the national government. It is divided into five provinces, or welaýatlar: Ahal, Balkan, Daşoguz, Lebap and Mary. Ashgabat has the legal status of a province, and the city of Arkadag has a special legal status as a city of state significance. The provinces are divided into districts, or etraplar; the government counts 37 of them.

The constitution provides for local representative bodies, also called halk maslahaty, in provinces, districts and cities, whose members are elected by local residents and whose resolutions bind their territory. Villages elect councils of their own, the gengeş, of which the government counts 461.