Window Dressing

Turkmenistan's president has the opportunity to create a modern educational system. The indications are that he won’t seize it. by Naz Nazar 7 January 2010

When Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov came to power after Saparmurat Niyazov’s sudden death in December 2006, he promised to improve Turkmenistan’s foreign relations and to open the country to investment. He has made reforming areas like health care and social security his top priority and has lifted some of the bans on foreign and domestic travel. But it is Berdymukhammedov’s educational reforms that could most help the country leap over years of retrenchment. Instead, the president seems content with cosmetic changes.

 

By decree, Berdymukhammedov extended obligatory education from nine to 10 years and prolonged the period of higher education from two to five years, beginning in September 2007. That effectively removed the artificial hurdles imposed by his predecessor that had made it difficult for Turkmen students to continue their education past secondary school and to study at universities abroad. The Turkmen Academy of Sciences has also been re-opened. A presidential council on science and technology has been created, and foreign degrees have begun to be recognized again.

 

In the last 12 months teachers’ salaries have gone up, class size has gone down, and teachers’ working hours have been cut. New schools and new university departments have opened and new textbooks have been distributed. Even the subject of physical education – deemed unnecessary under Niyazov – has been reintroduced.

 

THE LEGACY OF A CULT OF PERSONALITY

 

Despite the changes, the results have been modest. The policies of the Turkmen government remain inscrutable to the outside world, but experts say Turkmen authorities seem to lack a clear vision about how to create a modern educational system and what role ideology should play. Some of the more retrograde policies of the Niyazov era have been rolled back while others have simply been dressed up differently, says Artem Ulunyan, a history professor at the Russian Academy of Sciences who follows developments in Turkmenistan closely.

 

At times the reforms have been inconsistent and incoherent: new study abroad possibilities engendered by the reforms have been foiled by travel restrictions imposed on students of U.S.-affiliated universities in Kyrgyzstan and Bulgaria. Overall, it appears that few, if any, competent foreign specialists were involved in drawing up the map of reform, critics say. “I’m not sure that many [experts] will be invited from abroad because the educational system in Turkmenistan remains a part of the country’s ideological system,” Ulunyan said. “The authorities may be afraid of foreign influence and feel threatened if people from abroad participate in the country’s educational system.”

 

Under Niyazov – known as “Turkmenbashi,” the father of all Turkmen – a bizarre personality cult left its mark on the educational system. At the beginning of classes, elementary school children were required to recite from memory an oath of loyalty to the fatherland and to Niyazov, as well as sing a national anthem that included Niyazov’s name. The former president’s self-proclaimed Book of Spirit, the Ruhnama, acquired the status of a holy book and became the main subject in schools. In general, in order to channel funds toward maintaining the cult of personality and the pervasive security services, schools were systematically underfunded, setting back standards far behind pre-independence levels.

Today the oath of loyalty has largely been abandoned and the references to Niyazov’s name in the national anthem have been dropped and replaced with “the people.” Niyazov is coming to be remembered less as the visionary who engendered the country’s independence and more as the first president of an independent Turkmenistan.

 

Yet the emphasis on ideology continues in school and university education. Teaching from the Ruhnama has been scaled back but has not been replaced with a modern curriculum. According to a local reporter for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Turkmen service, history lessons are organized on the basis of teaching epics such as Goroglu and Gorkut Ata, which comes close to Niyazov’s interpretation of Turkmen history as outlined in the Ruhnama. The Turkmen nation’s recent history, as well as accounts of Turkmen national and historic figures, are missing from school and university textbooks. While textbooks and placards containing Niyazov’s image are disappearing, new ones decorated with Berdymukhammedov’s are emerging that awake memories of the past. Pupils have begun to learn quotes from the current president’s public speeches and statements about the current period, which is called the “great era of revival.” And, as before, on national anniversaries and other festive holidays, students are used as supplementary labor and taken from schools to official ceremonies to greet visiting delegations, perform dances, and chant songs.

 

RESTRICTED ACCESS

 

Internet access is also an area where observers have expected improvement over the Niyazov years when only government officials, diplomatic staff, and employees of international companies were allowed to surf on the Internet. As part of Berdymukhammedov’s proclaimed intention to improve the communications infrastructure of the country, he has vowed to improve Internet access for schools and universities. In the 2008-2009 school year, 30 schools with the latest multimedia equipment were to be opened, according to the Chronicles of Turkmenistan, a website published by the Vienna-based Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights. It’s not clear if that has happened. While several schools in the cities do have computers, they lack Internet connections and remain largely useless, as teachers with the necessary computer skills are hard to find and training programs are not readily available.

 

The government’s declared intention to educate a young generation proficient in the Turkmen, English, and Russian languages remains in the planning stages as the country still suffers from the massive brain drain that occurred after Niyazov dismissed hundreds of teachers from schools, forcing them to go abroad in search of jobs. And new textbooks haven’t yet reached schools in rural areas where most of the population lives, according to Farid Tuhbatullin, the head of the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights.

 

Minorities have it even worse, having been marginalized by the country’s policy of favoring ethnic Turkmen in education and employment. Aside from a couple of bilingual Turkmen-Russian and Turkmen-Turkish schools, educational institutions put a heavy emphasis on instruction in the Turkmen language. As a result, students without a thorough command of Turkmen have a tough time entering local universities. There are no Uzbek- or Kazakh-language schools in the country, although about 9 percent of Turkmenistan’s 5.1 million people are Uzbeks, making them the second largest ethnic group in the country. About 2.5 percent are Kazakhs.

 

Even those who speak fluent Turkmen face long odds getting into institutions of higher education, where the limited number of open slots has spurred petty corruption. Bribes for university entry and degrees can run as high as $40,000, according to some accounts. This summer the dean and lecturers in a department of the Azadi Institute of World Languages appeared on Turkmen state TV to apologize for taking bribes, apparently after being arrested. They confessed to receiving a total of $119,000 from eight prospective students, according to the NBCentral Asia website.

 

With limited opportunities at home and some liberalization taking place, many Turkmen youngsters have expressed the wish to study in the United States or take part in U.S.-affiliated education programs, despite the difficulties involved – such as having to pass examinations to enter foreign universities and supplementary state exams on Turkmen history and language upon return, a condition for validating their degrees. Their parents are willing to help fund the foreign study, as many are concerned that their children will otherwise grow up without the ability to think independently and obtain access to unbiased scientific knowledge.

 

THE STUDY ABROAD BLACKLIST

 

But other obstacles to studying abroad surfaced in 2009. New travel restrictions were imposed on Turkmen students studying at U.S.-affiliated universities in Kyrgyzstan and Bulgaria. In July Turkmen authorities suddenly started to deny exit permits to students seeking to leave for Bishkek. With the situation unresolved by 1 September (when Turkmenistan was celebrating the newly proclaimed “Day of Students and Learning”), Turkmen students at the Bishkek-based American University of Central Asia started packing their suitcases. Parents of students who had stayed abroad during summer break and continued their studies in Bishkek were pressured to call their children home.

 

According to reports, students were also pulled off planes and not allowed to cross the borders by land en route to Kyrgyzstan and their names entered on a government blacklist. Negotiations between the U.S. Embassy and the Turkmen authorities that would have seen AUCA students transferred to the American University of Bulgaria proved fruitless.

 

In an atmosphere of pervasive secrecy, Turkmen authorities have issued no public statements about the travel ban or its motivation.

 

A similar situation occurred in June 2004 when Turkmen citizens who had studied abroad since 1993 at their own initiative and without permission from Turkmen ministries found their foreign diplomas invalidated by a presidential decree, prohibiting the holders from working in the public sector. “If we don’t have an agreement with those countries, students should be taught in our country,” Niyazov was quoted as saying at the time.

 

Some observers have opined that the Turkmen authorities simply want to disrupt what they see as a growing expatriate community of young Turkmen using Kyrgyzstan as a base for dissent. Apparently some Turkmen students have demonstrated a willingness to meet members of the Turkmen opposition in exile while in Bishkek or to give critical interviews about the political situation in Turkmenistan to foreign media.

 

“Kyrgyzstan is a former Soviet republic with a relatively free media and a functioning parliament, and the people in this country are allowed to speak their mind,” said Nurmuhammed Hanamov, a leader of the Turkmen opposition in exile.  “The Turkmen students are able to see the difference between the situation in Kyrgyzstan and in Turkmenistan.”

 

Others suspect that the Turkmen government concluded that some of AUCA’s individual and institutional donors also funded the civil society organizations that contributed to the various “color revolutions” in the former Soviet Union. “The Turkmen government is wary of such funding,” Tuhbatullin said.

 

About the same time as the AUCA affair, Turkmen officials denied entry to 47 U.S Peace Corps workers shortly before their arrival in late September, on the grounds that Turkmenistan would not be able to accommodate them, country director Christopher Leal told RFE/RL in October. Peace Corps volunteers teach English to the local population, among other activities.

 

FAR-REACHING CONSEQUENCES

 

The new travel restrictions could have implications far beyond the 65 students affected so far, with many young Turkmen in the future barred from leaving despite assurances from their government that next year more students will depart to study in foreign universities.

 

“The unwillingness of the Turkmen government to allow Turkmen to study at U.S.-sponsored universities belies a true intention to bring Turkmenistan up to world standards,” said Annette Bohr, an associate fellow of the Russian and Eurasia program at the Chatham House think tank in London.

 

“Most of the reforms were simply due, reversing damaging policies under Niyazov, while many of them are superficial, lacking content,” Bohr said. “The restoration of the 10th year of education makes it formally possible to continue on to higher education, but in fact the 10th year did not differ from the ninth year because the curriculum hasn’t really changed. Although 26 different subjects were introduced at university level there is no new curriculum and no new staff to teach it.

 

“There’s a lot to be done in terms of implementing a solid and consistent standard of education throughout,” Bohr said.

 

Tuhbatullin agrees. “We are probably going to hear more news about the opening of new schools and new computers – simply measures that would not change the current political system,” he said.

 

“What Berdymukhammedov is trying to say is that he is acting differently than Niyazov. But in the domestic and foreign policy of Turkmenistan there are no major changes. It’s being done for the outside world. What is missing is real reform,” Tuhbatullin said.

 

Ulunyan, the history professor, said the government seems to want to improve the educational system, but “there are a lot of problems, such as the question of who will carry out the reforms and how they will be carried out, as during the previous president’s rule tutors and specialists were sidelined and kept out of schools and institutions in Turkmenistan. And, secondly, will [Berdymukhammedov] agree to foreign assistance? Third, they should remove any ideological restrictions on education. The results may not be achieved easily, quickly, or in the near future.”