Turkmenistan Expanding Military to Support Its Increased International Activity

Executive Summary: 

• Turkmenistan is rapidly expanding and modernizing its military to allow Ashgabat to defend itself against domestic challenges, threats from Afghanistan, and increasing competition on the Caspian, as well as to support its expanded political and economic activity internationally. 

• While it still lags militarily behind Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan now has more tanks than any other country in Central Asia, is investing heavily in modernization and training, and leads Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in international rankings of military strength by wide margins. 

• Ashgabat is less dependent on Russia or the People’s Republic of China than many have assumed and is rapidly becoming a force to be reckoned with in the region. 

For most of the time since gaining independence in 1991, Turkmenistan has been ignored even by those who focused on Central Asia. The nature of Turkmenistan’s authoritarian regime made it difficult, if not impossible, for outsiders to obtain the kind of everyday information that even other countries in the region supplied. Ashgabat’s commitment to absolute neutrality and isolation only further restricted what was known about that republic. Over the last decade and especially in the past three or four years, however, Turkmenistan has become significantly more active internationally. It has been rapidly and very publicly expanding its army and navy with programs that the country’s leaders pledged to continue last week. These military modernization programs are intended to both support its international activities and to defend itself against domestic and foreign challenges (Business Turkmenistan; TurkmenPortal, January 23; Kaspiskii Vestnik, January 27).  

While Turkmenistan still lags militarily behind Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, it now has the highest number of tanks among Central Asian countries, is investing heavily in equipment modernization and training, and leads two other Central Asian countries, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, by wide margins in international rankings (Vesti.kg, January 14; Orda, January 16). As a result, Ashgabat is already less dependent on Russia or the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for its defense than many have assumed (EurAsia Daily, August 5, 2021; Window on Eurasia, August 19, 2021). It is rapidly becoming a force to be reckoned with in the unstable borderlands between Central Asia proper, on the one hand, and Afghanistan and Iran, on the other, as well as along major east-west and north-south pipeline and trade corridors (see EDM, July 23, 2024).   

Faced with an increasingly impoverished and restive population, Ashgabat decided at the start of this decade to become more open to the outside world. This decision allows the country to take advantage of its prime geopolitical location, one that made it a natural focus for those interested in developing north-south and east-west corridors as well as putting it at greater risk of attention from the Taliban in Afghanistan (see EDM, December 15, 2022; Window on Eurasia, May 14, 2023). As such intervention could threaten the Ashgabat regime, the government combined the opening up of the country with a commitment to improving and expanding its military capacity. This first and foremost is an effort to defend the regime itself but also to be in a position to ensure that Turkmenistan would remain master of its own fate. (On the combination of those calculations and the outcomes, see EDM, December 15, 2022, May 11, 18, 2023.) 

This effort involved overcoming longstanding problems with military recruitment. Ashgabat appears to have resolved this over the last three years by increasing salaries for military personnel and improving conditions for draftees (Turkmenistan Today, October 8, 2021, July 12, 2024). This rapidly grew into a drive to improve the weaponry the army carried and the capacity of its navy to defend its oil and gas platforms in the Caspian and to cooperate with or counter moves by Russia, the PRC, Iran, and Azerbaijan (see Commentaries, March 2, 2015; see EDM, March 13, 31, 2015, June 24, 2021). The current order of battle of the Turkmenistan armed forces justifies that drive. As Ashgabat knows well, however, that drive will remain only if Turkmenistan continues to invest in its military, given the efforts of its neighbors to invest in theirs.

At present, the Turkmenistan military numbers some 40,000 personnel, 90 percent of whom are in the ground forces (estimates by Global Fire Power Index, 2025). Turkmenistan’s annual defense budget is approximately $1 billion dollars. It boasts more tanks (654) than any other country in the region, of which 392 are fully operational (for comparison, Kazakhstan has only 350 tanks, of which 210 are in a state of readiness) (ibid). The latest Global Firepower Power Index ranks Turkmenistan’s military as 77th in the world, behind Kazakhstan (57th) and Uzbekistan (58th), but well ahead of Kyrgyzstan (105th) and Tajikistan (108th) (ibid; Orda, January 12). Judging from the comments of senior Turkmenistan officials last week, Ashgabat will expand its military and spending on equipment in 2025 in order to ensure “the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country” (Kaspiskii Vestnik, January 27). The state will also increase spending on the purchase of ships and on shipbuilding, where Turkmenistan has lagged because unlike some other Caspian littoral states it did not receive any ships from the Soviet flotilla when the Soviet Union disintegrated (see EDM, June 25, 2021; Turkmenistan Today, August 11, 2021; Mil.Press FlotProm, April 19, 2024). Ashgabat will do so to defend its own infrastructure in the Caspian, to meet its commitments to cooperation with Azerbaijan, and to counter the buildup of Iran’s forces on the Caspian and south (see EDM, December 15, 2022, January 12, 2023; Window on Eurasia, December 13, 2023). 

The Turkmenistan government is clearly committed to ensuring the military remains sufficiently strong enough to serve as the regime’s last line of defense not only in the event of a popular uprising but also to enforce its increasing role in trade and international cooperation. While even the largest army can dissolve if its soldiers become disenchanted with the regime, a fact that likely has not escaped the minds of Ashgabat’s rulers, Turkmenistan currently appears to have sufficiently ramified its land forces to counter any potential domestic challenges or uprisings against the regime. This subsequently may place Turkmenistan in in a better position to counter possible threats from the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. On the one hand, Ashgabat’s neutrality has afforded it a position as a potentially attractive negotiating partner for Kabul than the positions of any of the other Central Asian countries. On the other hand, Turkmenistan does not face the same threat as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan of a possible mass influx of co-ethnic refugees from Afghanistan. Consequently, in this regard, Ashgabat may not require strategic support from either Moscow or Beijing which has thus far been assumed necessary if such a refugee crisis occurred, Turkmenistan is also likely to be able to avoid potential threats from Iran given their mutually-beneficial military cooperation (Caspian News, November 5, 2024). Should Iran attempt to project more power northward than Ashgabat is prepared to tolerate, the latter is likely to heighten its pre-existing naval cooperation with Azerbaijan as a counterbalancing effort (SNG.Today, August 12, 2024). 

What this reality likely means for Turkmenistan is ensuring sufficient military capabilities to support itself and its current policies without relying on foreign assistance, as largely assumed necessary, from partners such as Russia, the PRC, Iran or Afghanistan. Turkmenistan has evolved into a country whose neutrality is reinforced not only ideologically but by material power and military capabilities. Ashgabat is likely to play an ever-growing role in the region precisely because it has adopted this two-pronged approach to maintaining neutrality to the extent possible. This in turn may lead other countries in the region to replicate Turkmenistan’s approach to navigating the complex international environment given what appears to be Ashgabat’s success in doing so thus far. At the very least, this means that Turkmenistan’s approach to foreign and defense policy deserves, and can now receive, far more attention than it did only a few years ago.