December 12 was a double holiday in Turkmenistan: Students’ Day and the twelfth anniversary of the country’s permanent neutrality. On top of the typical countrywide holiday celebrations, the Day of Neutrality was tied to another landmark event in the country, the official opening of the United Nations Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia in Ashgabat. 

Turkmenistan was conferred the status of permanent neutrality during the 50^th UN General Assembly session on December 12, 1995. Since this date, Turkmenistan distanced itself from any political or economic unions in Central Asia, as well as integration efforts in the security sphere on post-Soviet territory. However, this isolationist stance appears to have taken an entirely opposite route with the change of power a year ago, as President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov embarks on progressive foreign policy issues.

The opening of the UN Center for Preventive Diplomacy comes out as a symbolic achievement of the new leadership’s efforts to steer clear of the country’s earlier isolationism. The new UN mission, the first of its kind in the region, aims at preventing possible conflicts in Central Asia by capacity-building measures, and facilitating dialogue among the parties. As has been reported by the UN news center, the new UN mission in Ashgabat has been is granted an initial budget of $2.3 million, with a small international staff contingent, and the senior director is to be appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.  “Preventive diplomacy is not an option but a necessity, and the opening of this new center in Ashgabat “holds tremendous promise” for preventing conflict and reducing the potential threats of cross-border challenges such as drug trafficking, terrorism and environmental degradation,” the UN Secretary General was quoted as saying.

The official inauguration of the new institution was attended by Lynn Pascoe, the U.S. State Department’s Undersecretary General for Political Affairs, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon, the foreign ministers of other Central Asian states, and the heads of the OSCE and NATO missions, as well as the secretary general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In the context of his three-day visit to Turkmenistan, President Rakhmon also highly underscored Turkmenistan’s contribution to a peaceful outcome of Tajikistan’s civil war and its continuing efforts to supply energy to Tajikistan.

Choosing Ashgabat as the location for the UN Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy fits well into Turkmenistan’s neutrality policy overall, and by implication confers it a role of peacemaker in the region. In this connection, it is another step taken by the international community to pay more attention to possible threats in Central Asia. “In Central Asia, we are taking a concrete step now… All this together may serve as a further boost and example for other Member States to take collective action on a regional as well as global level in preventive diplomacy”, General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim was quoted as saying.

After the inauguration of the UN Center on December 10, 2007, a two-day international conference entitled “Preventive Diplomacy and International Cooperation” was held in Ashgabat. Sergei Lebedev, Chair of the CIS Executive Committee said, “today Turkmenistan is more and more opening up to the world, to international cooperation and the world is opening to Turkmenistan too.” Speaking on the opening of the center, Bolat Nurgaliyev, the Secretary General of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization noted that a new type of political psychology in solving regional and global issues is being formed, and in its own part would serve as an integrative factor for Central Asia.

All in all, the creation of the new UN Center for Preventive Diplomacy became one of the major political events in the country, in light of the twelfth anniversary of Turkmenistan’s permanent neutrality. At the regional level, the institution is highly expected to become a major catalyst for political dialogue to prevent possible threats to peace and stability in Central Asia. To what extent the center will manage to fulfill its stated mission remains to be seen, as it soon embarks on real life scenarios in Central Asia.