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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Turkmenistan
Index
Although the constitution guarantees the right to form political
parties, in fact the former Communist Party of Turkmenistan has retained
the political control exercised by its predecessor. Opposition parties and
other politically active groups have remained small and without broad
support.
Democratic Party of Turkmenistan
At the twenty-fifth congress of the Communist Party of Turkmenistan
held in December 1991, the party was renamed the Democratic Party of
Turkmenistan, and Niyazov was confirmed as its chairman. According to its
new program, the Democratic Party serves as a "mother party"
that dominates political activity and yet promotes the activity of a loyal
political opposition. Following a proposal of Niyazov, a party called the
Peasant Justice Party, composed of regional secretaries of the Democratic
Party, was registered in 1992 as an opposition party.
The Democratic Party of Turkmenistan essentially retains the apparatus
of the former communist party. Party propaganda aims at explaining the
need for preserving stability, civil peace, and interethnic accord. Party
publications boast that its primary organizations operate in every
enterprise, organization, and institution, and that its membership
includes over 165,000, whereas critics claim that most citizens hardly are
aware of the party's existence.
Opposition Parties
The 1992 constitution establishes rights concerning freedom of
religion, the separation of church and state, freedom of movement,
privacy, and ownership of private property. Both the constitution and the
1991 Law on Public Organizations guarantee the right to create political
parties and other public associations that operate within the framework of
the constitution and its laws. Such activity is restricted by prohibitions
of parties that "encroach on the health and morals of the people"
and on the formation of ethnic or religious parties. This provision has
been used by the government to ban several groups.
In the mid-1990s, Niyazov described opposition groups as lacking both
popular support and political programs offering constructive alternatives
to existing policy. He has cited these qualities in disqualifying groups
from eligibility to register as opposition parties. Insofar as such groups
have the potential to promote ethnic or other tensions in society, they
may be viewed as illegal, hence subject to being banned under the
constitution.
Given such an environment, opposition activity in Turkmenistan has been
quite restrained. A small opposition group called Unity (Agzybirlik),
originally registered in 1989, consists of intellectuals who describe the
party program as oriented toward forming a multiparty democratic system on
the Turkish model. Unity has devoted itself to issues connected with
national sovereignty and the replacement of the communist political
legacy. After being banned in January 1990, members of Unity founded a
second group called the Party for Democratic Development, which focused on
reforms and political issues. That party's increasing criticism of
authoritarianism in the postindependence government led to its being
banned in 1991. The original Unity group and its offspring party jointly
publish a newspaper in Moscow called Daynach (Support),
distribution of which is prohibited in Turkmenistan. In 1991 these two
opposition groups joined with others in a coalition called Conference
(Gengesh), aimed at effecting democratic reforms in the republic.
Data as of March 1996
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