Turkmenistan Media Sustainability Index (MSI)
April 7, 2013
About the MSI
IREX designed the MSI to measure the strength and viability of any country’s media sector. The MSI considers all the factors that contribute to a media system—the quality of journalism, effectiveness of management, the legal environment supporting freedom of the press, and more—to arrive at scores on a scale ranging between 0 and 4. These scores represent the strength of the media sector components and can be analyzed over time to chart progress (or regression) within a country. Additionally, countries or regions may be compared to one another. IREX currently conducts the MSI in 80 countries, and IREX currently conducts the MSI in 80 countries, and produced the first Europe & Eurasia MSI in 2001. The first Turkmenistan MSI was in 2008.
MSI Overview | Africa | Asia | Europe & Eurasia | Middle East & North Africa
Download the Complete Turkmenistan MSI Chapter (PDF): 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008
MSI Turkmenistan - 2013 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 0.44
Since the last MSI Eurasia report, the country has undertaken what amounts to, for Turkmenistan, an international charm offensive.
Turkmenistan formally ended its single-party system in 2012, by registering a second political party for the first time in more than 20 years of independence. It also completed population census, first time in 17 years. Turkmenistan also attempted to burnish its diplomatic credentials, hosting a summit of regional heads-of-state summit and getting itself elected to the UN General Assembly’s Economic and Social Counsel. Moreover, Turkmenistan formalized the ambitious, multi-billion dollar US-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline (TAPI) project in 2012. The project would allow Turkmenistan to theoretically export natural gas to South Asia in 2017, which would add to its current customers China, Russia, and Iran.
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov was reelected for a second five-year presidential term on February 12, 2012, in an election the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) considered so flawed that it would be pointless to send observers. During his campaign, he stated that he fully supports the democratization of Turkmenistan by developing the political system, strengthening the power of local authorities, public institutions& and establishing independent media. “We need parties that would unite and inspire people to creative work for the sake of further prosperity of our country,” he said, on the way to his 97.14 percent victory over seven friendly alternative candidates. His victory brought about a new moniker, “Arkadag” (Protector), and the announcement that his first term “Era of Great Revival” had given way to the “Era of Power and Happiness.” Despite gas-fueled growth, non-government sources still estimate high unemployment and poverty rates.
Turkmenistan is an absolute dictatorship, a sentiment shared by the participants and the international community. Reporters Without Borders consistently places Turkmenistan as one of the three worst countries for media freedom and one of the nine states with the worst civic freedoms record. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has described the lack of press freedom in Turkmenistan as “unprecedented” in the body’s history. It is one of the most corrupt nations on the planet, according to Transparency International.
Berdymukhammedov reversed some of the more bizzare and regressive reforms of his predecessor, Sapamurat “Turkmenbashy” Niyazov, though critics contend these changes have been cosmetic, limited, or ineffective. On the media, however, 2013 opened with the surprising enactment of the president’s promised media freedom law, which guarantees freedoms of expression, dissemination of information, bans censorship, and ends the president’s formal ownership of all the country’s newspapers. At first glance, the media law appears to be a cause for hope, though the law flies directly in the face of total media control that has lasted Turkmenistan’s entire history.
One of the few genuinely positive trends of increasing Internet access of the past few years is now being blunted by increasing filtering of social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This censorship was extended to Gmail in 2012, reports RSF, which lists Turkmenistan as an “Enemy of the Internet.”
