An Associated Press article appeared in the International Herald Tribune in mid-February suggesting that Turkey could hold the path to Turkmenistan developing a more open foreign policy.
In addition to citing the standard tropes about similar language and cultural heritage, the writer suggests that the unrivalled access enjoyed by Turkish media and delegation was indicative of Ankara’s potential to expand on its interests in the area.
A similar sense of anticipation about this trans-Turkic link-up was expressed about most of the Asian region in the years after Soviet collapse. The difference now is that the relationship has already been in place for some years and has not appeared purely in the wake of Saparmurat Niyazov’s death, as the AP article seems to suggest.
As even the writer admits, Ashgabat is home to around 20 Turkish schools and Turkey is possibly the most popular destination for Turkmen students seeking scholarship overseas. This is but one of the many ties that have been developed between the two partners since 1991.
This relationship is neither as new nor benevolent as the AP writer implies. As the state-run newspaper Neutralniy Turkmenistan reported Wednesday,
President Kurbanguly Berdymuhammedov met with prominent Turkish businessman, Ahmet Calik, this week. Calik, who runs the Calik Holding Company, was reputed to enjoy unparalleled access to Niyazov and was one of his main advisers in international dealings. Having the ear of a country’s president filled with the ego-fulfilling gibberish that was evidently fed to Niyazov did not and will not serve Turkmenistan well.
After meeting with Calik on Tuesday, Berdymuhammedov then held talks on Wednesday with the head of another Turkish company, Polimeks. Among other things, Polimeks CEO Erol Tabanj spoke about his high hopes for the timely completion of the new Ministry of Culture and Telecommunications building. Aside from the notorious French construction firm Bouygues, which has won contracts for some of the most overwrought government buildings in the country, most of the foreign construction tenders in Turkmenistan since independence have been given to Turkish firms.

That said, as Business New Europe observes in an e-mailed newsletter:

Turks have always been welcome in Turkmenistan. In the 1990s, the late Turkmen president Saparmurad Niyazov used to force cognacs on his visiting counterparts while he necked coloured water. If he wanted a shopping centre built, or another monument to his megalomania, he turned to Turkish construction companies to do the job.

In return, he only ever offered a little natural gas, Turkmenistan’s only real resource. Judging by the number of top Turkish officials who attended the February 14 inauguration of the new Turkmen president, Gurbanguly Berdimukhammedov, it’s an oversight Turkey hopes the new administration will rectify.

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Dependent on Russia for 60% of its gas supplies, Turkey sees Turkmenistan is a means of diversifying its own resources. But Turkmenistan also has a key role to play in Turkey’s broader strategy to turn itself into an energy corridor and the “fourth artery” for Russia-dependent Europe.

It is intriguing to consider that Turkey may become, as the United had hoped in the early 1990s, the West’s path into Central Asia. But if there is to be a new and more vigorous impetus in the relationship, it will come not from the construction moguls that have done little more with their access than flatter Niyazov.
Turkey and Turkmenistan are not set to renew their friendship, because it never ended in the first place. The potential now is for a partnership based on mutual respect and, one would hope, a shared vision of national development.