Far East: Engineering Silence in Turkmenistan's Authoritarian Regime
AFP / Stringer
Turkmenistan’s internet censorship and media environment is widely considered by reporters and researchers as one of the world’s most repressive, with reports showing that people in the country face near-total media censorship and internet surveillance. According to Human Rights Watch, the country is ruled by one of the most authoritarian governments in the world.
This year, 2026, Turkmenistan holds a freedom score of 1/100 according to Freedom House. Each year, Freedom House releases an annual global report — called “Freedom in the World” on political rights and civil liberties, with the most recent 2026 edition covering 195 countries and 13 territories from January, 2025 to December 31st, 2025. The report is grounded in the principle that freedom for all people is best achieved in liberal democratic societies, and it assesses “freedom” and “rights” enjoyed or possessed by individuals, rather than the government. The scores are divided into segments such as "freedom of expression and belief”, "political rights”, and “personal autonomy and individual rights”. Turkmenistan's score for political rights was 0/40 in 2026.
The numbers “1/100” and “0/40” seem abrupt, and incomplete. They quantify the absence of civil rights and political rights of citizens in Turkmenistan, but they do not fully explain how such a high level of control is maintained. The answer lies in the nation’s political history, its sophisticated system of media censorship, the state’s control over telecommunications infrastructure, and much more.
Political History
Political scientists and reporters characterize Turkmenistan’s political regime as “personalist authoritarian regime”, in which political power in the state is controlled almost entirely by one person, while legislatures, courts, and political parties have limited independent authority.
The current chairman of the People’s Council of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, previously served as the second president of Turkmenistan from 2006 to 2022. Now, he has entered into a power-sharing arrangement with his son, Serdar, who is the current president. Berdimuhamedow and his son’s power transition marks Turkmenistan’s rule of a dynastic system, the first modern country in Central Asia to do so.
One of the most influential changes Berdimuhamedow made while in power was to install himself as elected chairman of the Halk Maslahaty, the upper chamber of the parliament. The Halk Maslahaty is home to the People’s Council, where discussion on constitutional amendments, national development plans, and foreign policy priorities in the nation takes place. According to Articles 73 and 87 of the Constitution of Turkmenistan, the sitting president cannot be a member of either chamber of parliament, and members of parliament are restricted from holding certain other state offices simultaneously. In 2021, after Berdimuhamedow proposed constitutional amendments, transforming Turkmenistan's parliament from one chamber to two chambers, he simultaneously held the positions as the president of the country and Chairman of the upper house.
Berdimuhamedow’s move to consolidate power in this way, which he did in 2021, was likely a succession strategy, so that he could retain real political influence after leaving the presidency.
Berdimuhamedow’s authoritarian role is reflected in Turkmenistan’s internet restrictions. During his rule, the state maintained a near-monopoly over internet services. For common internet access, YouTube and LiveJournal have remained inaccessible since 2009, preventing Turkmen from blogging or sending videos abroad, while VPNs services are mostly blocked. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter are also blocked. Citizens can only access digital services within boundaries established by the government. This dynamic thus raises some broader question: How does a modern state create and sustain one of the world's most comprehensive systems of internet censorship? In an era of technological advancement, information travels across borders in seconds – how is Turkmenistan able to build such a tightly controlled digital environment? Is it truly as oppressive and controlled as it seems?
Turkmenistan Technical Censorship Infrastructure
To begin with, the Turkmen government owns and controls the internet providers: all the internet cables, routers, mobile networks, and fiber-optic connections. For instance, The Domain Name System (DNS) is blocked in Turkmenistan. DNS translates human-readable domain names to machine-readable IP addresses. Therefore, if one types in facebook.com in their browser, while the website still exists, the search results will show “no such website” because the government simply refuses to tell your computer where it is.
However, steps such as DNS or IP address blocking is only one simple step toward censorship. The Turkmen government also extensively utilizes Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to track websites, applications, VPN traffic, messaging apps, and file transfers to further block apps, VPN, or certain services. In a study on Turkmenistan's internet censorship, researchers tested 15.5 million domains, discovering that more than 122,000 blocked, are blocked, with censorship at multiple protocol layers (DNS, HTTP, HTTPS, etc.) The researchers also found pervasive overblocking. Upon the 122,000 blocked domains, millions more became inaccessible because the filtering rules were poorly written and accidentally matched them.
Beyond blocking, another strategy is bandwidth throttling, with which the government intentionally makes internet connections extremely slow and limits the flow of data to and from one’s account. A normal speed of 100Mbps can be limited to 0.1 Mbps, making it much more difficult for Turkmen to use the internet as they normally might.
Furthermore, mobile telecommunications in Turkmenistan have been controlled by the state. When one purchases a SIM card, it is generally required to present official identification, so one’s online activity is linked to their identity. Not only can the state censor activities, they can disable a SIM card. As infrastructural control compounds control over identity and internet traffic in Turkmenistan, the nation’s digital authoritarian systems operate through in multiple intertwined layers to digitally repress its citizens.
Conclusion
Compared with other authoritarian states, such as China or North Korea, Turkmenistan's political reality and human rights situation remain comparatively underexamined in global public discourse and scholarly discussion. Its reputation as one of the world's least understood dictatorships reflects not only the secrecy of the regime but also the barriers that prevent journalists and researchers from accessing reliable information. In the end, the full extent of political repression and human rights abuses in Turkmenistan is difficult to verify, which raises concerns that conditions may be even more severe than what is now publicly documented.