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Turkmenistan
Political Parties
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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