Qishloq Ovozi (Archive)

The 12th of December is a holiday in Turkmenistan known as Neutrality Day, with this year marking 25 years since the UN officially recognized the authoritarian Central Asian state as a neutral country.

Turkmen officials -- particularly President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov -- prefer these days to use the term "positive neutrality," and it is a big deal in Turkmenistan.

It is enshrined in the country's constitution, for example in Article 2, where is states: "The permanent neutrality of Turkmenistan shall be the basis of its national and foreign policy." And in Article 68, where it says: "The president of Turkmenistan shall be the head of the state and executive power, the highest official of Turkmenistan, acting as guarantor of...state independence and the status of permanent neutrality of Turkmenistan…"

There is also a 95-meter-high Arch of Neutrality in the capital, Ashgabat, built during the rule of first President Saparmurat Niyazov and topped with a golden statue of Niyazov that used to revolve so that it always faced the sun.

Niyazov even ordered the months of the year to be renamed and for December to be known as Bitaraplyk, which is neutrality in Turkmen.

Cursory Decision

But while the government loudly and repeatedly hails the UN decision to bestow the status of neutrality on Turkmenistan, it was not really an issue when the world body approved it.

The official record from the UN General Assembly's 50th session (and 90th plenary meeting) on December 12, 1995, shows there were 81 items on the agenda, including disarmament agreements, bans on certain nuclear-weapons tests, and a prohibition on the development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons.

The latter topic on biological weapons was agenda item 80 that day, followed by the last item, Turkmenistan's request to be recognized as a neutral country.

The text, read by the General Assembly's president, basically went like this: "The Assembly will now take a decision on the two draft resolutions (the second was the development of good-neighborly relations among Balkan States)." It continued: "Draft resolution A [on neutrality] was adopted by the First Committee without a vote. May I consider that the assembly wishes to do likewise? Draft resolution A was adopted [with 50 of the 80 countries in attendance agreeing to it]."

That is all.

And for the last 25 years that cursory decision on neutrality has been a centerpiece of Turkmenistan's policies, both domestic and foreign.

So what does that actually mean?

It is difficult to say, but the short answer is, not much.

Niyazov envisioned neutrality as, among other things, making Turkmenistan a neutral venue for feuding parties to come and work out their differences.

In the first five years of its neutrality, that was true as Turkmenistan hosted talks between warring parties from the Tajik and Afghan civil wars.

But it has been 20 years since anyone took Turkmenistan up on its offer of providing a place to share "the pilaf of peace," as Niyazov once said.

Turkmen officials have issued the invitation several times, most recently suggesting Afghan peace talks -- currently being held in Doha -- could be held there.

Cocooned And Isolated

The Turkmen government has used neutrality to avoid joining multilateral organizations, particularly security organizations, and at the same time has practically shut off Turkmenistan from the outside world.

The leadership in Ashgabat has basked in splendid isolation while the country's population has been cocooned, receiving only scant information about world affairs and continually being presented with a sanitized and overly optimistic view of domestic affairs even when they can easily see the falsehood of the wonderland presented on state media.

SEE ALSO:

Turkmenistan: Inside Central Asia's Hermit Kingdom

Neutrality has not shielded Turkmenistan from real life and the reality now -- as Turkmenistan prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of the UN neutrality designation -- is that the country's economy is in the worst shape it has ever been in since gaining independence in 1991.

There are constant food shortages, not enough cash, and the country is facing the worst health crisis in its short history due the spread of the coronavirus while the government shockingly continues to deny that there has been a single case in the country of the pandemic that is ravaging the world.

Turkmenistan's border with Afghanistan is no longer secure, with some reports claiming that up to dozens of Turkmen soldiers have died in recent years in shoot-outs with militants operating in northern Afghanistan.

The militants, being nonstate actors, have no respect for Turkmenistan's status as a neutral country and, according to some reports, have attacked and killed Turkmen troops to seize their weapons.

And there is no sign that any of these problems will be alleviated anytime soon. In fact, they will likely worsen in the coming weeks and months -- with "positive neutrality" leaving Turkmenistan without any strong allies that could help it in its time of need.

It is difficult after a quarter of a century to see a single way in which Turkmenistan and its people have benefited from neutrality.

The world's deserts offer many scenic attractions to those hardy souls who dare to venture into such remote regions, with the most spectacular sights often being rock formations that tower above the sand and scrub.

People through the centuries have ascribed religious significance to many of these rocks, and they were invaluable route markers for those traveling through the deserts.

The southwestern United States is known for such rock formations as seen in movies about the American West that use places like Monument Valley in Arizona and Utah as backdrops for their films.

The famed Uluru in the middle of Australia’s Northern Territory is another example.

In Kazakhstan, there is a relatively unknown place called Bozzhira Canyon in western Mangystau Province.

The land around Bozzhira Canyon is generally flat, chalky-white ground that was once -- more than 65 million years ago -- the bottom of the Tethys Ocean. When the ocean receded, it left behind some spectacular rock formations that are now the center of a debate on whether to develop tourism there.

Western Kazakhstan is a desolate area known mainly for its oil and natural gas fields. Most of the money from exports of that oil and natural gas ends up in the big cities of eastern Kazakhstan -- Astana and Nur-Sultan -- while the sparsely inhabited western part of Kazakhstan remains poor.

But the government has recently been working to build up areas in western Kazakhstan along the country’s Caspian coast.

Aqtau is the best such example.

That city's beach is being developed, new hotels are being built, and seaside restaurants line the shore just below a newly built boardwalk. Exclusive neighborhoods with luxurious beachfront homes now dot Aqtau's coastline.

But a few miles inland there is nothing but wide-open territory that stretches as far as the eye can see, with no manmade objects to break up the rugged landscape.

And some 300 kilometers from Aqtau is where the Bozzhira Canyon is located.

For several years, it has been possible to travel from Aqtau to Bozzhira.

Off-road tourist agencies offer such trips, and some include the option of spending the night in tents, a sensible choice for those with the time, since the round trip from Aqtau to Bozzhira takes about eight hours.

But a Turkish company is in talks with Kazakh officials to build a luxury hotel at the base of one of the main rock formations in Bozzhira.

The Rixos hotel chain is seeking Kazakh investors and official permission to build the Bozzhira Safari-Hotel at an estimated cost of some $100 million.

Rixos has already built hotels in Nur-Sultan, Almaty, Shymkent, Turkestan, and at the Borovoi resort area, and recently completed the five-star Rixos Water World Hotel in Aqtau.

The concept design graphics for the hotel in Bozzhira are impressive, yet at the same time give a sense of what this structure would mean in an area people often travel to specifically because of its isolation:

RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service, known locally as Azattyq, spoke with people in Kazakhstan about the idea of a luxury hotel in Bozzhira.

Ruslan Churov was born and raised in Mangystau Province and currently runs a tourist agency in Aqtau that takes people to Bozzhira. Churov is against building a hotel there.

“The construction of a hotel means construction of roads and infrastructure that will have a negative effect on the natural setting,” he said. “Not only on the landscape and the uniqueness of the place, but it will also inflict irreparable harm on the flora and fauna…and block the paths [for animals to go] to the salt marshes and water.”

Churov said his clients go to Bozzhira because they want to “look at the pristine beauty of the place, where there is no trace of human activity.”

Ecologist Orynbasar Tokzhanov warned that the fauna is already in danger at Bozzhira and that the number of saiga antelope has dropped since 1998 by more than 90 percent and gazelle by an even greater percentage, mainly due to disease.

“Construction will drive away the other animals,” Tokzhanov said.

Archaeologists have also pointed out that Bozzhira is a treasure trove for artifacts, from the petrified shells of mollusks to traces of the people who lived or passed through the area over the course of thousands of years.

Sergei Sklyarenko, director of the Center for Applied Biology at the Association for the Preservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan, said Bozzhira should be on the UN’s list of cultural heritage sites. He pointed out that Bozzhira is especially unique for Kazakhstan.

“In Kazakhstan, we have either cultural or natural [heritage sites]. We do not have any that are mixed,” he explained.

But oil and gas exploration has held up formal recognition of Bozzhira as a national park or for being forwarded as a candidate for the UN's list of sites of special cultural heritage.

Sklyarenko was not against developing tourism in the area. He said the government should establish a visitors center for people coming not only to Bozzhira but to the many other interesting sites in the Ustyurt Plateau where Bozzhira is located.

But he said hotels would be better located “not far from the Beket-Aqtau highway, at a distance of some 20 kilometers from the Bozzhira Canyon.”

The example of Australia's Uluru -- also known as Ayers Rock -- is instructive here.

For centuries, it held a special meaning to the people of the area, and it was not until the 1870s that the first Europeans came to the area.

The first tourists arrived in the 1930s, and by the 1950s tourism was well-developed in areas around Uluru. Hotels were built close to the rock and, later, holes were bored into it and steel posts put up to hold guide ropes and chains that helped tourists climb the 348-meter formation.

The damage being done to the local environment was clear by the 1970s. The hotels and other facilities catering to tourists were ordered to be relocated 15 kilometers from Uluru.

The native inhabitants, for whom Uluru had great spiritual significance, had asked people not to climb on the rock. In October 2019, the ropes, chains, and steel posts were removed and climbing was banned.

But the scars left on the rock will take years to wear away.

Kazakh eco-activist Azhar Jandosova said the same thing could happen at Bozzhira, while also noting that a luxury hotel in the middle of the canyon makes no sense because “there is practically no water in the region.”

Many of the oil towns developed during the years Kazakhstan was a Soviet republic continue to depend on water that is delivered by trucks. Hotels at Bozzhira would be no different.

Western Kazakhstan could use an economic boost, and tourism is certainly one way to bring in more money. There certainly is much to see there. (For one example, look up Sor Tuzbair.)

Handled correctly and implemented carefully, the development of the tourist industry in Mangystau Province could benefit many people in the region. But a luxury hotel might not be the best way to start.

On November 17, social activists published an open letter to President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev and the governor of Mangystau Province asking them to designate Bozzhira and other natural attractions in the province as state natural monuments and prohibit any activity that could cause damage to these natural wonders.

Toqaev’s press office said the government has been ordered to review the issue of building the Rixos Safari-Hotel at Bozzhira.

UPDATE: On December 12, Kazakh Ecology, Geology, and Natural Resources Minister Magzum Mirzagaliev posted on his Twitter account that after a “series of meetings with scientists, biologists, foreign experts, and local activists,” it was agreed to move the hotel project outside the area of the Zhabayushkan reserve where Bozzhira is located. Mirzagaliev said the investors in the project also agreed to find another place for the hotel outside the reserve area.