An Ashgabat mother who's been driving for two decades has found herself stranded after authorities recently refused to extend her driver's license in what looks like a fresh blow to women drivers in the male-dominated Central Asian country.
The woman, who doesn't want her identity revealed for fear of reprisals, says more than a dozen visits to the relevant authorities have elicited no explanation for why they derailed her routine application for a renewal.
She's never gotten a ticket, she says. "When I demanded that one official show me some official document" to explain the cutoff, she adds, he described "a verbal instruction from above."
"He said, 'Please understand me: I can't accept your applications.'"
She says driving is essential to her family life.
Several other women in the capital have shared similar stories with RFE/RL's Turkmen Service about not being allowed to apply for extensions in the past several months. Turkmen driver's licenses require renewal every 10 years.
Turkmenistan suffers from a legacy of Soviet bureaucracy and bribery is rampant. But informal polling of male drivers gave no indication of any similar trend among men.
The women told RFE/RL that while obstacles to license renewal had existed for some time, they believed the flat refusal to accept their applications began only months ago.
An official news website in Turkmenistan published a cartoon showing a woman driver with traffic signs on her ears.
The accusations come against a backdrop of claims that Turkmenistan has already taken measures to discourage women from driving, including arbitrary stops and citations as well as on-the-spot confiscations of licenses.
The mother who lost her license says there was another sign that other women were being targeted specifically. "When [I] asked when the authorities are going to issue licenses again, the official said, 'As soon as they start [issuing licenses again], there will be rumors in the city about it and you'll find out,'" she says.
Dozens of women have described having their licenses seized by traffic-police officers under thin pretexts like missing spare tires or lack of a first-aid kit.
In February, opposition publication Chronicles Of Turkmenistan said 20 or so female drivers were stopped and inspected at a single traffic post on Bitarap Turkmenistan Avenue in one day alone.
In September, RFE/RL's Turkmen Service reported that traffic officers were stopping female drivers en masse on downtown roads and summarily taking their licenses before taking them to the central traffic-police headquarters.
Turkmen authorities have not publicly commented on allegations that they are singling out female drivers despite repeated attempts by RFE/RL to get official comment.