In recent years Turkmenistan has ceased to renew expired, expiring, or nonvalid passports or replace lost ones for its citizens living abroad via diplomatic missions. As a result, many Turkmen migrants cannot conform to migration laws of the countries where they reside.
This takes place in the wider context of the Turkmen government’s extreme repression within the country, its efforts to silence dissent among Turkmen citizens abroad and to pressure them to return to Turkmenistan, and other actions that restrict the rights of its citizens both at home and abroad.
This report documents the Turkmen authorities’ refusal to renew or replace passports in Türkiye, which is believed to host more Turkmen citizens than any other country. Most are migrant workers who left dire economic conditions in Turkmenistan to seek employment abroad to earn a living and send support to their families at home.
While authorities do grant some exceptional extensions of travel documents pursuant to presidential decrees introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic, these are scheduled to cease by the end of December 2024. Even with these temporary provisions in place, Turkmen diplomats routinely tell applicants that passports can be renewed or issued only at their place of residence in Turkmenistan and seek to compel the applicants to return to Turkmenistan. However, not only is returning to Turkmenistan burdensome and disruptive for migrant workers, many Turkmen nationals do not wish to return because they fear that if they return, Turkmen authorities might bar them from leaving again.
Their fears are not unfounded. The Turkmen government arbitrarily and regularly bars its citizens from traveling abroad, including by stopping them at airports and passport control counters and forcibly removing people from flights. And, in recent months, some Turkmens who have returned from abroad for passport renewals have subsequently been banned from foreign travel.
Interfering with freedom of movement is only one feature of Turkmenistan’s extraordinarily repressive government. Torture is widespread in detention facilities. Authorities severely punish peaceful critics and fully control and monitor all means of communication, access to media, and information. This report documents instances in which Turkmen consular staff in Türkiye threatened, harassed, and in one case we documented, used physical violence against people who expressed frustration at or criticized authorities for refusing to assist with passport renewals or replace passports. The report documents one case in which unknown assailants in Türkiye, speaking Turkmen, viciously beat individuals who had spoken out, and at least nine instances in which Turkmen authorities harassed and threatened their families in Turkmenistan.
There are serious concerns that Turkmen citizens in Türkiye who have publicly criticized the Turkmen government and its policies, or who have engaged, however modestly, in civic activism critical of Turkmenistan’s government may be detained, interrogated, prosecuted, and even tortured if returned to Turkmenistan.
The Turkish authorities should abide by their international obligations and the fundamental principle of nonrefoulement, which obliges states to ensure that they do not send anyone to a place where they would face a real risk of torture or other ill-treatment. Türkiye should uphold its international obligations and ensure the protection of rights and freedoms of Turkmen nationals residing in the country and allow those who express fear of being subject to persecution, torture, or other serious harm upon return, to access international protection to regularize their status in Türkiye.
Of the 17 Turkmen migrants Human Rights Watch spoke with in Türkiye, 11 had publicly criticized the Turkmen government, in some cases regarding passport issues, and in others, with broader critiques of the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, economic and other policies when already in Türkiye. All 11 had participated in public protests outside Turkmenistan’s consulate in Istanbul to express their discontent with Turkmen authorities’ lack of support for Turkmen migrants abroad. All 11 expressed fears that if they return to Turkmenistan for passport renewals, they will face arrest, imprisonment, risk of torture, and other human rights violations in retaliation for their peaceful activism.
Each experience at the consulate was an ordeal for the people Human Rights Watch interviewed, whose passports had either expired or been lost or stolen. Thirty-nine-year-old Aman A. (a pseudonym) is a Turkmen migrant worker and activist in Türkiye. From 2013 through 2018, when he last attempted to renew his passport, Turkmen diplomats repeatedly refused to renew his passport. He told Human Rights Watch:
They [the Turkmen embassy employees] always say ‘we cannot help you. Go back to Turkmenistan!’…They don’t explain anything, don’t even try…They look through you…Their attitude is very insulting, arrogant. We are not human beings to them….
For some, the ordeal lasted more than a decade: One interviewee, Djeren D. (a pseudonym), had started trying to renew her passport in 2010; another, Kumush K. (a pseudonym), in 2012. Djeren said she had been to the Turkmen consulate in Istanbul 15 to 20 times between 2010 and 2023 to try to have her passport renewed, but without success.
Interviewees said that consular officials provided no reasoning or documentation and cited no government regulations explaining why a renewal request was denied. People said that consular employees barely listened to them, were overly rushed, often extremely rude and insulting, and in some cases even threatened them with physical abuse.
By arbitrarily depriving its citizens abroad the ability to obtain valid passports and other identity documents, the Turkmen authorities are violating their obligations to their citizens under international human rights law, as well as apparently their own constitution. Turkmen citizens, like everyone, have a right to freedom of movement, and the Turkmen government is obligated under international law to respect and ensure that freedom of movement, including by providing passports and other necessary documents to facilitate the exercise of that right. This obligation extends both to Turkmen citizens living abroad, as well as those living in Turkmenistan.
Turkmenistan’s refusal to renew the passports of its citizens living abroad without them returning to Turkmenistan is an arbitrary interference with their right to freedom of movement. It also renders Turkmen citizens undocumented in their host countries, impeding their ability to access services essential to other rights, for themselves and their dependents, and imposing tremendous hardships.
The issuance of passports and other travel documents is among the routine functions that consulates are expected to perform, as recognized in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which Turkmenistan is a party.
Turkmen law does envisage the extension of passports for Turkmen citizens abroad if their passports are no longer valid, and if the lack of a valid passport prevents them from returning to Turkmenistan. In 2021, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, authorities began extending the validity of passports for individuals whose passports either expired or were set to expire between 2020 and 2024. This measure, implemented through stamping passports with an extension stamp and a QR-code, has not addressed the needs of many Turkmen migrants whose passports had expired or were lost or stolen before 2020, or who have no current plans to return to Turkmenistan.
Turkmen authorities’ refusal to renew passports in diplomatic missions abroad puts many Turkmen citizens and migrant workers living in Türkiye and other countries at risk of being unable to exercise their rights, as their legal residency status in host countries is inextricably tied to their having a valid Turkmen passport. Without a valid passport, they live in the shadows. They cannot apply to obtain or renew a residence permit.
In Türkiye, in particular, people without a valid passport (or residence permit or stateless person card), cannot legally conduct many activities that may be necessary to realize their rights, including entering into a housing lease agreement, enrolling in utility services for gas and electricity, accessing healthcare services, and enrolling their school-age children at schools. They cannot open or use a bank account, purchase a SIM card for cellular service, or board domestic flights or trains.
Without a valid passport, Turkmen migrants cannot obtain from Turkish authorities birth certificates for their children born in Türkiye or marriage licenses if they wish to marry in Türkiye. They also cannot obtain Turkmen birth certificates abroad. Research for this report documented three instances in which Turkmen authorities told parents that they and their children should return to Turkmenistan and apply for birth certificates there.
Turkmen authorities’ refusal to issue birth certificates to Turkmen children born abroad violates these children’s right to have their legal identity recognized. Registration of birth is a fundamental human right in itself and also in practice in many countries a prerequisite to the enjoyment of other rights such as the right to education and the right to health. Without birth certificates, for example, children face barriers in access to education in Türkiye. The parents interviewed by Human Rights Watch who said they could not enroll their children in Turkish schools due to lack of the required documents expressed utter hopelessness over their children’s lack of access to education.
People interviewed for this report described the severe hardships they endured due to the lack of a valid passport. In some cases, Turkmen citizens with valid passports have been able to find work in the formal sector in Türkiye even without prior work authorization, if their employer is willing to apply for their work permit. But once their passports expire, they lose all ability to find legal employment opportunities. They are pushed into jobs in the informal economy, where they are not protected by national labor laws and are subsequently more vulnerable to exploitation and unjust labor practices, including any opportunity to access social security. Without access to social health insurance, they often have no choice but to pay for healthcare services from unaffordable private clinics and hospitals, or else they often forego needed medical care.
For many years, Turkmenistan has been experiencing a severe economic crisis that has prompted unknown numbers of Turkmen migrants to seek employment opportunities abroad, making their families fully dependent on remittances. Fearing potential reputational damage, authorities do not officially confirm the economic hardship that has led in recent years to widespread shortages of affordable food and increased unemployment and poverty. Many Turkmen nationals abroad are reluctant and fearful at the prospect of returning to a politically repressive and economically dire situation in Turkmenistan.
Thirty-three-year-old Govher G. (a pseudonym) came to Türkiye in 2011 to find a job. For many years before that, she had struggled to find an adequately paid job in her hometown in Turkmenistan. She worked a few different jobs simultaneously and struggled to care for her newborn child, to “even have time to feed the baby.” In 2011 she went to Türkiye, where she found informal work. Turkmen consular officials in Türkiye denied her passport renewal requests in 2012 and 2019 and told her both times she should go back to Turkmenistan and apply for a new passport there. In 2022, Govher told us:
Turkmen authorities should order security agencies, migration authorities, and diplomatic missions to end all extralegal impediments to issuing identity documents and facilitate such requests.
Türkiye and other countries hosting Turkmen migrants should not deport or otherwise remove anyone to Turkmenistan who would be at risk of persecution, torture, or other serious harm upon return, and should allow people expressing such fears to apply for asylum. When assessing these asylum claims, governments, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and other asylum adjudicators should take into consideration reports documenting ongoing repression in Turkmenistan as well as the inability of many dissidents abroad to obtain identity documents.
To the Government of Turkmenistan
-
Ensure Turkmen nationals abroad have streamlined access to passport renewal services via Turkmenistan’s consular and diplomatic missions worldwide and authorize these consulates to start renewing expired or expiring passports or reissuing passports in case of a loss without undue delay and without arbitrary requirements or restrictions.
-
Issue clear instructions to all consular services abroad and migration authorities in Turkmenistan that Turkmen citizens do not have to return to Turkmenistan in order to get new passports.
-
Consider a process for ensuring that the biometric content of expired passports can be read and replicated in new passports by, at the very least, shipping expired or expiring passports to migration services in Turkmenistan, where biometric content can be read, and shipping the new biometric passports back to the consular offices of the host country. Turkmen authorities should consider authorizing Turkmenistan’s consulates and diplomatic missions to issue temporary emergency passports or other identification documents to Turkmen nationals for use while their passports are being renewed.
-
Continue the practice established in COVID-era of issuing presidential decrees extending the validity of passports of Turkmen citizens abroad via Turkmen consulates and diplomatic missions as envisioned in article 29(6) of the law on migration.
-
Meaningfully implement national legislation that guarantees access to passport renewal services via consular services provided by Turkmenistan’s diplomatic missions abroad. Ensure consular officials provide law-based grounds for any denials to renew or re-issue passports, including to citizens abroad.
-
Guarantee the right to freedom of movement in accordance with article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by ensuring to all Turkmen nationals, including perceived government opponents, critics in exile and their relatives in Turkmenistan, the right to freely leave and return to Turkmenistan, including on valid passports.
-
End the practice of placing citizens on arbitrary travel ban lists. Anyone lawfully placed on a travel ban list should be properly notified in writing of the lawful reasons for the ban consistent with international guarantees of freedom of movement and its duration; any travel ban should be subject to appeal in a court of law.
-
Stop persecuting, including by physically attacking, insulting, threateningTurkmen activists and citizens abroad who peacefully express discontent with or criticism of government policies and stop harassing, detaining, or preventing their relatives in Turkmenistan from traveling abroad.
To the Government of Türkiye and Other Countries Hosting Turkmen Migrants
-
Do not forcibly return anyone to Turkmenistan, where they would face a real risk of persecution, torture, or other serious ill-treatment, or a threat to life.
-
Allow Turkmen nationals who were denied access to passport renewal services by their government and who express concerns and fears of being at risk of persecution, torture, or other serious ill-treatment, or a threat to life if returned, to apply for asylum or access, as relevant, to other international protection procedures.
-
Ensure that in assessing applications for international protection the migration authorities take into consideration credible reports documenting ongoing repression in Turkmenistan, as well as the inability of Turkmens abroad to obtain identity documents.
-
Türkiye in particular should ensure that asylum seekers are not assigned to cities with limited job opportunities or available aid and provide information about the support available.
-
Allow children of Turkmen nationals to enroll in schools regardless of their legal status and ensure that children have uninterrupted access to education.
To Turkmenistan’s International Partners
-
Raise concern with Turkmen authorities over their refusal to re-issue or renew passports to Turkmen citizens abroad and call on the government to ensure that its citizens can access essential documents from Turkmenistan’s consular and diplomatic missions abroad.
-
In bilateral and multilateral dialogues, urge Turkmen authorities to uphold the right to freedom of movement and raise violations of this right documented in this report, among other key areas of concern; raise these concerns at all levels, including with Turkmen embassies, in high-level meetings, and in the context of reviews of Turkmenistan by UN special procedures and applicable UN treaty bodies.
-
Support non-governmental organizations that provide assistance and services to Turkmen migrants, especially in Türkiye, who were denied passport renewals abroad, including by providing funding and technical assistance, to enhance their capacity to meet the essential needs of undocumented Turkmens abroad.
This report presents the findings of research by the Turkmenistan Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (THF), a human rights organization in exile, and Human Rights Watch.
Between June 2021 and February 2024, Human Rights Watch conducted remote, in-depth interviews with 17 Turkmen nationals permanently or temporarily residing in Türkiye. Follow-up interviews were conducted by telephone in August and November 2022, July 2023, and February 2024. In September 2019 and June 2020, THF conducted about 40 interviews with Turkmen migrants in Türkiye and shared information about those interviews with Human Rights Watch. Interviews quoted in the report were conducted by a Human Rights Watch researcher. Interviews by Human Rights Watch and THF focused on the interviewees’ experience trying to renew or replace their passports through Turkmenistan’s diplomatic missions in Türkiye, and the consequences of refusal.
Some of those interviewed by THF said that they applied for new passports and were denied, and some never approached the embassy or the consulate in Türkiye. Seven of the people HRW interviewed had also been interviewed by THF.
Human Rights Watch also independently identified other interviewees with the support of civic activists based in Türkiye.
THF publicly reports on access to passport renewal on its website. Separately, since 2019, THF has been intermittently receiving written complaints and messages from Turkmen citizens living in China, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, and the United Kingdom who have been denied access to passport renewal services by Turkmen diplomats in their respective host countries. A Human Rights Watch researcher read four such communications from Turkmen nationals living in China, England, Belarus, and Ukraine and found that the experiences they described when trying to obtain passport renewals, starting in 2016, through Turkmen consular services resembled the experiences of Turkmen migrants residing in Türkiye whom Human Rights Watch interviewed. Human Rights Watch documented at least nine instances in which Turkmen authorities harassed and threatened the families in Turkmenistan of exiled activists and individuals who had publicly criticized Turkmen government policies and has described several such cases in this report.
Human Rights Watch also interviewed other human rights activists and experts working on Turkmenistan. We reviewed data published by the Turkmen and Turkish governments and information published by independent news outlets that do regular, reliable reporting on developments in Turkmenistan and on the situation for Turkmen migrants abroad.
Human Rights Watch and THF informed interviewees of the purpose of the interview, its voluntary nature, and the ways the information would be used. All interviewees provided verbal informed consent. Human Rights Watch interviews were conducted in Russian by Human Rights Watch researchers fluent in Russian. Several interviews were conducted in Turkmen and translated into Russian, with the assistance of a Turkmen national fluent in both languages. None of the interviewees received financial or other incentives.
The names of all Turkmen migrants interviewed for his report have been disguised with names and initials (which do not reflect real names), in the interest of the security of the individuals concerned.
Human Rights Watch and THF wrote to the Turkmen government on August 29, 2022, requesting information related to the issue. On May 28, 2024, Human Rights Watch shared a copy of the information request letter with the permanent representative of Turkmenistan to the United Nations Office at Geneva, requesting their assistance in obtaining a response. On June 14, 2024, the Turkmen authorities responded with information that has been reflected in this report. The response has been included in an appendix to this report.
Human Rights Watch and THF also wrote to the Turkish government on June 1, 2023, and on February 12, 2024, resent the letter to the newly appointed head of the Migration Management Directorate requesting information. At the time of writing, Turkish authorities had not yet responded to our letter.
Dire Economic Conditions Driving Migration
Turkmenistan has one of the most repressive governments in the world. Although in recent months the government has been more open than previously to international engagement on its human rights record, the country remains largely closed to transparent and meaningful international scrutiny. Authorities severely punish peaceful critics and fully control and monitor all means of communication, access to media, and information.
Due to a lack of reliable government data, the World Bank does not publish key economic data on Turkmenistan, and statistics regarding poverty and food security are unreliable or nonexistent. Turkmenistan is rich in natural gas, but based on anecdotal reporting by independent media, many people there live in poverty. Yet the government claims that the country is wealthy and prosperous.
In recent years, dire economic conditions impelled thousands of Turkmens to seek employment abroad to earn a living and support their families in Turkmenistan. Every person interviewed by Human Rights Watch cited unemployment and low wages as the primary reasons they migrated from Turkmenistan.
The precise number of Turkmen citizens living outside Turkmenistan is unknown due to the Turkmen government’s lack of transparency regarding migration and the large number of undocumented Turkmen citizens living abroad. In 2016, the International Organization for Migration estimated that there were between 200,000 and 300,000 Turkmen migrant workers living outside Turkmenistan.
While the government claimed in its 2022 census that the country’s population is 7 million, the true number is widely believed to be considerably less, with some estimates closer to 5 million and some independent sources even suggesting the population has shrunk to as low as 2.8 million in recent years. The decline is attributed mainly to large-scale emigration, decline in the fertility rate, and a rise in the mortality rate.
Turkmen Citizens in Türkiye
Türkiye is believed to host the largest number of migrants from Turkmenistan. According to the Turkish Ministry of Interior’s Presidency of Migration Management, as of October 2024, there were 105,440 Turkmen citizens with residence permits registered in Türkiye. In 2023, Turkish authorities detained 14,328 irregular migrants from Turkmenistan, and Turkish state data as of October 17, 2024 show 10,692 Turkmen nationals detained so far this year. The true number of undocumented Turkmen migrants in Türkiye is not known. In October 2023, Radio Azatlyk, a US-funded media outlet, reported that “about 2,500 Turkmens in Turkish deportation facilities were flown home in August and September,” citing sources in Ashgabat.
From 2007 until September 2022, Türkiye was one of very few countries to which Turkmen citizens with valid passports could travel without a visa for up to 30 days. On September 13, 2022, at the request of the Turkmen government, the Turkish government abolished its visa-free regime for Turkmen nationals, reportedly on a temporary basis.
Migration Requirements in Türkiye
In Türkiye, as in most countries worldwide, foreigners require a valid passport to obtain residence and/or work permits.
Turkmen citizens who arrive in Türkiye on a valid visa and then wish to stay beyond the validity of their visa may apply for a short-term residence permit, if certain requirements are met. Among the required documents foreigners must provide as part of their application for the short-term residence permit is documentation proving that they have “valid health insurance” and a residential address.
A short-term residence permit, except for tourism purposes, allows a foreigner to apply for a work permit from within Türkiye if “he or she has a past retention period [has already been living in the country] for at least six months and still has a valid residence permit.” Short-term residence permits are issued for periods of up to two years. Work permits and short-term residence permits may be renewed and are strictly tied to the validity of the holder’s passport.
A short-term resident permit entitles the permit holder “to reside in a specific location in Türkiye for a given period of time,” but does not authorize work in Türkiye and does not confer any social benefits. Foreign citizens who want to work in Türkiye can apply for a work permit themselves from their country of residence (from abroad), or as stated above, they can apply from within Türkiye, including through their employer. In both cases a foreigner needs to have an employer and an employment contract. The work permit also functions as a residence permit and is renewable, provided that the person’s passport is valid.
Türkiye’s public social security system, Sosyal Guvenlik Kurumu (SGK), provides covered individuals with access to public healthcare services, including many hospitals and clinics. Healthcare coverage under SGK is available to foreign nationals, but only those who have legally resided in Türkiye continually for at least one year under a residence permit and pay a monthly premium of 24 percent of the monthly minimum wage, or about 5,000 Turkish lira (about $152 at time of writing). Foreign applicants for SGK also must show proof they are not insured or entitled to benefits from their home country.
SGK offers enrolled foreign nationals who are resident in Türkiye access to the public healthcare system. This includes basic medical care, visits to a doctor and hospital, prescriptions, minimum maternity benefits, and unemployment benefits and a retirement plan, conditional upon the length of time an individual has been registered in the SGK system.
For foreigners formally employed in Türkiye, it is the employer’s responsibility to register them with the SGK and make contributions on their behalf. Employees also make contributions towards their social security. Therefore, a work permit or a residence permit, which as noted above are tied to a valid passport, are key to a foreigner’s ability to access this program.
Penalties for Violations of Legal Stay in Türkiye
Under Turkish law, foreigners who violate rules related to their visa, residence permit, or work permit face administrative fines and/or deportation. Those who are deported are banned from re-entering Türkiye. The entry ban is imposed on a temporary basis and its duration varies depending on the length of overstay.
Foreigners who fail to pay the administrative fine “shall not be allowed to enter [the] country, even after the duration of entry prohibition is over.”
The entry ban is not imposed on foreigners who pay the fine and whose overstay is less than three months and who voluntarily arrive at the border to leave Türkiye “before their situation is detected by the competent authorities” or “who come to the border in order to leave the country within the duration they are provided to leave [Türkiye] upon which a deportation decision has been taken.”
Turkmen Passports
From Turkmenistan’s independence in 1991 until 2008, Turkmen citizens were issued passports that were valid for in-country and foreign travel and apparently had no expiration date. Ordinary passports issued between 1991 and 2008 retained their validity, including for international travel, until further notice or replacement. In July 2008, a presidential decree introduced a new biometric passport with an expiry date and intended for foreign travel only. Adults’ and children’s biometric passports were initially issued for 10 and five years, respectively.
In April 2013, authorities announced that by July 2013, all citizens would be required to replace old non-biometric passports with biometric ones which, authorities said, would have new security and design features. In 2016, the validity period of the biometric passports was reduced from 10 to five years for adults. Since then, new biometric passports have been issued for a duration of five years for everyone. These amendments had a serious impact on Turkmens already residing abroad, including Turkmen migrants Human Rights Watch interviewed who had traveled to Türkiye on old, non-biometric passports or on biometric passports issued between 2016 and 2018 that would have expired by 2023.
Under Turkmen law, Turkmen passports are to be issued by the State Migration Service of Turkmenistan within one month of application. Passports are subject to replacement/ renewal “upon their expiration; change of surname, name and patronymic; inaccuracies in records; due to unsuitability for records; when the passport runs out of pages for visas and marks; and when a citizen’s fingerprints and facial features change due to health conditions or under other circumstances.”
Presently, a valid biometric passport is the only type of passport Turkmen citizens can use to leave or re-enter their country and is necessary for legal stays in other countries.
Article 29(3) of the Law on Migration allows Turkmen citizens residing abroad to apply for passport renewal through Turkmenistan’s diplomatic missions and consular offices, with passports issued centrally by the State Migration Service of Turkmenistan and distributed through government missions and consular offices abroad. Turkmen authorities, in their response to a Human Rights Watch letter of inquiry, said that because the biometric data in passports can be verified only in Turkmenistan, citizens must apply for and receive passports in Turkmenistan. The response did not explain why Turkmenistan does not or could not adopt practices used by other countries’ consular services, which provide options to their citizens abroad to reissue passports with biometric data. Such options include sending passports between the relevant government agency in the home country and their consulates and diplomatic missions abroad.
In 2021, the Turkmen authorities took some steps to assist Turkmen nationals stranded abroad due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Amendments to the migration law announced in June 2021 envisage extension of the validity of passports through presidential decree, with the apparent purpose of enabling the individual to return to Turkmenistan. A July 1, 2021 presidential decree authorized diplomatic missions to extend the validity of passports with an expiration date of January 1, 2020, through December 30, 2022 via an extension stamp and a QR-code. A second implementing decree, adopted in April 2022, allowed for passports to be extended until December 31, 2024, if they were to expire between January 1, 2023 and December 30, 2024.
In their response to Human Rights Watch, Turkmen authorities stated that Turkmen passports extended through the above-mentioned decrees are deemed valid.
In practice, the extensions, while useful to people stranded due to the Covid-19 pandemic who are willing and planning to return to Turkmenistan, do not address the needs of many Turkmen migrants whose passports have expired and who have no immediate plans to return to Turkmenistan.
In March 2023, Turkmen authorities spoke about the issue of passport extensions during an interactive dialogue with the UN Human Rights Committee, as part of the committee’s review of Turkmenistan’s fourth periodic report under the ICCPR. Answering committee members’ questions about the government’s response to Covid-19 pandemic, including freedom of movement, the Turkmen delegation emphasized that Turkmen consulates abroad had extended the validity of passports through presidential decree. The delegation stated: “During the 2020-2022 period, according to presidential decree, entry and exit to and from Turkmenistan by citizens were permitted and there were multiple such exits.”
The delegation went on to say that “diplomatic missions aided 50,000 citizens by providing passports,” although it is unclear whether this means they were provided extension stamps for the purpose of returning to Turkmenistan or new passports allowing people to lawfully remain abroad. As described below, in response to questions from Human Rights Watch, Turkmen authorities said that citizens may receive passports only by returning to Turkmenistan.
The delegation further stated, in reply to another question during the interactive dialogue: “Citizens [abroad] were helped to contact their relatives and were able to access consular services. The validity of their identity documents had been extended. Temporary passports were available to foreign nationals within the country. Several thousand passports were provided for Turkmen citizens.”
Difficulties Obtaining Passports in Turkmenistan
Starting in early 2023, independent media began consistently reporting on increasing
difficulties people faced in Turkmenistan obtaining passports for international travel.
Reports noted, among other things, that applicants faced long lines and that authorities required them to provide additional documents, such as a document proving that neither they nor their family members had criminal records, when applying for passports.
In February 2023, Radio Azatlyk reported that passport offices in Turkmenistan were struggling to handle thousands of applications for biometric passports. In February and March 2024, independent media reported that long queues for biometric passports persisted in all regions of Turkmenistan; for example, in Turkmenbashi and Balkanabad, the virtual wait period stretched nearly a year, until January 2025, and in Mary it stretched nearly two years, until December 2025.
The Turkmen government arbitrarily and regularly restricts the right to freedom of movement, which includes the right to move freely within a country for all who are lawfully within it, the right to leave any country, and the right to enter a country of which they are a citizen.
For many years, nongovernmental organizations have alleged that the government maintains a list of people barred from foreign travel. Estimates of the number of affected people vary. A coalition of Turkmen and international human rights groups estimated in a 2016 report that thousands of people in Turkmenistan had been arbitrarily banned from foreign travel. The report cited, among other sources, a human rights group based in Uzbekistan that had revealed a secret Turkmen government decree, issued in 2010, which barred “civil servants, employees of executive administrations in the regions, and Turkmen citizens under constant surveillance by security services” from exiting the country. The report did not address the duration of the travel bans allegedly imposed against these categories of individuals. In 2020, a reliable source in Turkmenistan told Human Rights Watch that the authorities maintain a blacklist of 5,000 people barred from foreign travel, including some civil servants and their families and some relatives of emigres including activists.
The Turkmen government does not notify people when they ban them from foreign travel. People often find out only when passport control officials, usually at airports, bar them from leaving the country. In some instances, people have been pulled from planes before take-off. The authorities enforcing this policy almost never offer any explanation for the ban or provide legal documentation to support it. As a result, people banned from foreign travel rarely know for certain why they have been targeted or how long the ban on international travel will last.
In a 2023 letter to THF, a migrant from Turkmenistan said that when he applied for a foreign visa, the visa center required him to sign a statement saying “if I am detained by migration service employees at the international airport, I will not have any claims against the authorities and will not take any further action.”
Targeted Travel Bans
For years Turkmen authorities have arbitrarily banned foreign travel for dissidents, government critics, and civic activists.
They have likewise banned these individuals’ family members from traveling abroad, as well as the family members of individuals serving prison sentences or who are on wanted lists, particularly if they are former officials, including those who fell out of favor with the government.
The bans can last many years and are a form of collective punishment against the targeted individual’s family. For example, Turkmen authorities banned the relatives of a former official, Murad Garabaev, now in exile, from travel abroad: since 2003, the authorities have refused to allow his parents-in-law, Rashid Ruzimatov and Irina Kakabaeva, to travel abroad, and have also banned the couple’s son, Rakhim, from travel since 2014. On October 26, 2022, the UN Human Rights Committee adopted an opinion recognizing that the authorities’ actions violated the rights of Kakabaeva, her husband, and son to freedom of movement, and freedom from arbitrary interference with privacy and family life.
Another example concerns the relatives of Pirkuli Tanrykuliev, an exiled former member of parliament. In summer 2014, Tanrykuliev’s brother, Doly, age 71 at the time, was removed before take-off from a flight to Türkiye. In July 2015, when Aizhamal Rejepova, Pirkuly Tanrykuliev’s daughter, and two of her children tried to fly to Türkiye, a migration service official at the airport told them they were banned “for life” from traveling abroad. However, in June 2016, authorities dropped a 13-year travel ban against them, allowing the three to leave the country.[55]
In June 2019, Akdjagul Kakaeva, sister of Tajigul Begmedova, the head of the THF, was barred from leaving Turkmenistan to travel overland to Uzbekistan for medical treatment. Since 2003, Turkmen authorities have also banned at least two other relatives of Begmedova’s husband Annadurdy Khadjiev, a Turkmen dissident, from traveling abroad.[56]
The authorities have also banned some less prominent individuals from foreign travel as a means of control and punishment, including for their independent activities. In 2018, authorities allegedly lured Omruzak Umarkulyev, who had been studying at a Turkish university where he had organized an informal Turkmen students’ club, into returning to Turkmenistan by inviting him to observe the parliamentary elections. Once in Turkmenistan, the authorities barred him from returning to Türkiye. Independent media reported that according to Umarkulyev, migration officials in February and March 2018 repeatedly barred him from boarding flights to Türkiye. In June 2018, independent sources reported that he had been sentenced to 20 years in prison on “treason to the motherland” charges. There was no additional information about Umarkulyev’s fate and whereabouts after June 2018. However, in October 2021, after much international attention to Umarkulyev’s case, a government spokesperson publicly stated that Umarkulyev finished his alleged military service and was living with his family Human Rights Watch has been unable to verify Umarkulyev’s whereabouts since 2018, a reflection of the level of repression within Turkmenistan, and is unable to verify whether Umarkulyev was and is serving a prison sentence or is now at home.
In April 2024, Turkmen authorities refused to allow a sister of Khamida Babadjanova, a minority rights activist in exile, to travel to Uzbekistan via land and in February 2024, passport control authorities at the Ashgabat airport prevented Babajanova’s other sister from travelling to Türkiye. Both women, after they appealed to the authorities, received responses from Turkmen migration officials confirming a travel ban had been imposed on them, but the authorities did not provide any details on or reasoning for the ban. Migration officials verbally informed the two sisters that another sister who lives in Turkmenistan is also banned from travelling abroad and that she “should not even try to exit….”
In one instance Human Rights Watch documented, Turkmen authorities repeatedly barred the brother of a Türkiye-based Turkmen activist from traveling abroad, although it is not clear whether they did so as a means of retaliation against the activist. The activist, Aman, has been living in Türkiye since 2007. In August, October, and November 2019, border control officials at the Ashgabat airport refused to allow Aman’s brother through passport control. They provided no explanation, saying only that “temporarily [he] cannot exit the country.” Aman’s brother was finally able to leave Turkmenistan in December 2022 for Türkiye on a student visa.
Wider Interference with Foreign Travel
The Turkmen government has also barred people without any apparent ties to government critics or dissidents from traveling abroad for study, work, medical treatment, or family reunification. The Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, (TIHR), a Vienna-based group, reported that in spring 2019 the Turkish Foreign Ministry handed Turkmen officials a list of more than 200 Turkmen citizens who are married to Turkish nationals and have valid Turkish residence permits, but who were barred from leaving Turkmenistan to return to their spouses in Türkiye after having visited family in Turkmenistan. By March 2020, when flights stopped due to the pandemic, only 12 had managed to return to their families in Türkiye, TIHR reported in August 2020. Human Rights Watch was unable to confirm whether the other 188 were eventually allowed to return.
In February 2020, migration officers arbitrarily removed about 20 people from a flight to Türkiye, including two persons traveling for medical treatment, another outlet reported.
Since 2009, independent sources have reported on authorities sporadically preventing numerous Turkmen students enrolled at foreign universities from boarding planes and crossing land borders to depart for study abroad. In fall 2022, authorities at passport control barred several students enrolled at universities in Russia from leaving the country, claiming that their universities had not been approved by the Turkmenistan Ministry of Education.
On January 3, 2024, during check-in for a flight to Moscow, Turkmen authorities barred a group of first-year university students from leaving the country, saying that “there’s nothing for students to do in Russia in winter,” according to TIHR. The students had been unable to get Russian visas on time to begin their studies in September 2023 due to the lengthy visa processing wait time.
Authorities have used other pretexts for barring people from foreign travel. Kurban K., 40, encountered several. He worked in the fishing industry in Turkmenistan but struggled to find a decently paid job. He told Human Rights Watch that when he tried to fly to Türkiye in September 2016, officials at passport control at Ashgabat airport barred him from leaving, falsely claiming his passport was “fake” and that the migration office was “unable to obtain information” on him. Kurban said:
After I had registered for my flight and went through passport control, I was told to go to the migration office at the airport…. The migration officer suggested that I return my ticket… and said I could not leave Turkmenistan, because my passport was “fake” and [they] could not “obtain information on me.” … After spending the night at the airport, the next day I went to the migration office in Ashgabat. … A migration officer checked my passport’s authenticity on a special machine and confirmed it was not fake…. I asked him: “Why was I not able to travel abroad?” … He made a phone call and then responded that I was not allowed to exit the country in accordance with paragraph 8 of article 30 of the Law on Migration of Turkmenistan. According to this law, “temporary restrictions on exit from Turkmenistan may be imposed on citizens of Turkmenistan in cases where there are concerns that a citizen of Turkmenistan during his stay abroad may become a victim of human trafficking or fall into slavery.”
Unable to provide for his family in the following two years, Kurban successfully left Turkmenistan for Türkiye in 2018 seeking a stable and adequate income. However, a border control officer at Ashgabat airport did not allow Kurban’s then-wife, two months pregnant at the time, to leave with her husband, even after seeing that the period of her exit ban from Turkmenistan had ended three years earlier, in 2015. After thoroughly questioning Kurban about the purpose and duration of the trip, where he got money for the ticket, his plans for return, and his work in Turkmenistan, the officer allowed Kurban to leave, but not his wife.
In Türkiye, Kurban joined the efforts of Turkmen activists calling on the Turkmen government to protect and support its citizens abroad and has since been openly active on social media. He has no plans of returning to Turkmenistan. He has never seen his son, who was born after he left the country.
In recent years, independent media also reported at least one episode in which public-sector workers have been denied access to passport renewal services. In 2021, in at least one province – Lebap, authorities reportedly ordered public sector workers to surrender their passports to migration authorities and stated they would not issue or renew passports for these workers to prevent them from foreign travel. In September 2024, authorities in Balkan province reportedly issued an oral order to public sector workers to surrender their passports or submit an official document confirming they do not possess one, to prevent them from foreign travel.
As noted above, independent media have reported very long virtual queues in Turkmenistan to obtain passports, largely for logistical reasons. Following the pandemic, independent sources cited a rise in the number of people seeking to travel abroad. In February 2023, a source in the Balkan province migration services told Radio Azatlyk that the central government had issued an oral order to temporarily suspend issuing passports because biometric passport books, which are produced in Germany, would be available only in May. But another Balkan province migration official told Radio Azatlyk that in communicating the oral instruction, the central authorities cited the “unstable situation in the world” and told Balkan officials they needed to “temporarily prevent Turkmen citizens from leaving for foreign countries.”
In March 2023, Turkmen authorities in Balkan province, the northern part of which lies on Turkmenistan’s border with Kazakhstan, began requiring people traveling to neighboring Kazakhstan to submit notarized letters from relatives working in the public sector, guaranteeing the traveler’s return, according to a Radio Azatlyk report. Anonymous sources in the Turkmen migration services told Radio Azatlyk that about “one-third …citizens who left for Kazakhstan on one-month visa had managed to receive visas there [for other countries] and travel onward.” This, the source said, had prompted the new requirement.
In a letter to THF, a Turkmen migrant in Türkiye said that when, in Turkmenistan, he applied for a Turkish visa, employees at the visa center required him, as a condition for receiving a visa, to sign a statement promising not to “take part in actions that harm the dignity of Turkmenistan in the country where I am travelling to, and I will not violate the laws of this country.”
Independent media and human rights defenders in exile also have reported that authorities subject people returning from abroad to interrogations, holding them at the airport for hours.
Turkmen citizens interviewed by Human Rights Watch expressed fear that, if they return to Turkmenistan to renew their passport, they might not be able to leave again. These fears appear valid given the experience of some who voluntarily returned to Turkmenistan in recent months, and after receiving their new passport, were refused permission by the Turkmen authorities to leave again.
Starting in January 2024, THF received several statements or communications from individuals who had traveled back to Turkmenistan to get their passport renewed.
THF also received communications from three separate individuals who had returned to Turkmenistan to apply for passports but, after receiving their new passport, were prevented from leaving the country or faced certain barriers when attempting to do so. In one case, an individual successfully obtained a new passport upon their return to Turkmenistan; in the second case, a relative of a person who reached out to THF obtained a new passport after returning to Turkmenistan. But in May and July 2024 respectively, both were barred from exiting Turkmenistan by migration officials at the Ashgabat airport. In the case of the relative whose new passport was issued in July, officials claimed their refusal to allow exit “was an order from above,” and in the other, authorities provided no information and recommended that the individual contact the migration authorities at their place of residence. In October, authorities finally allowed the relative to leave Turkmenistan.
In the third case, a Turkmen man travelled to Turkmenistan in April 2024 to renew his passport. He managed to get a new passport, but on two occasions—in spring, shortly after he received his new passport, and in early September—migration authorities at the airport refused to allow him to board the plane to travel to Türkiye.
Even if Turkmen citizens could trust that they would be permitted to exercise their right to leave Turkmenistan after they had obtained a new passport, the requirement to return to their home country places a wholly unjustified and undue burden on Turkmen citizens abroad. As well as the considerable costs involved in the travel, because of the practices of the Turkmen authorities, the time needed to secure a passport is unpredictable and often unreasonably long, jeopardizing their livelihood in the countries to which they have migrated.
Several of those who returned to Turkmenistan explained to THF that they had to wait for long periods of time, allegedly, because of a backlog in processing new biometric passports. In one case, a 67-year-old migrant worker who had travelled back to Turkmenistan in spring 2024, at the time of writing, had not been able to submit their documents for passport renewal due to the long queues.
Risk of Retaliation Against Civic Activists and Dissidents if Returned to Turkmenistan
Turkmen citizens who had publicly criticized the Turkmen government, in Türkiye or elsewhere, or who were engaged in civic activism or peacefully expressed views critical of the Turkmenistan government’s policies often have serious concerns that they may be detained, interrogated, prosecuted, or even tortured if returned to Turkmenistan.
In 2023, Turkish authorities began waves of deportations of Turkmen migrants, who became undocumented during their stay in Türkiye, after they had entered the country legally but been unable to renew their expired or old passports. Among those who were deported were individuals who had become government critics during their stay in Türkiye. The principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits the return of anyone to a place where they would face a real risk of persecution, torture or other ill-treatment, or a threat to life, is a fundamental principle of customary international law, and Türkiye violates its obligations under international law when it deports civic activists who face such a risk of government abuse and persecution in Turkmenistan.
Turkmen rights groups reported that Turkmen officials promptly detained several activists upon their return to Turkmenistan, following deportation from Türkiye. For example, TIHR reported that in August 2023, security officials at Ashgabat airport detained Dovran Imamov, who had openly criticized the Turkmen government on social media and participated in anti-government protests in Türkiye. In September 2023, Imamov was reportedly held in pre-trial detention on presumably bogus fraud charges.
In February 2024, THF reported that authorities freed Imamov to the custody of his father and advised that he “bring some sense to [his] son and does not allow him into a company of ‘bad people.’”
In late July 2023, Turkish officials deported 44-year-old Rovshen Klychev, who had spoken out on opposition social media, having detained him earlier that month. Reportedly he was detained upon arrival in Turkmenistan, and a court later sentenced him to 17 years in prison on unknown but presumably dubious criminal charges. In 2019, Klychev had spent nine months in the deportation center in Türkiye, during which time he sought asylum. He was released after his Turkish’s lawyer’s intervention, but his asylum application was denied. It was also reported that Turkmen authorities allegedly pressured Klychev’s parents into renouncing their relationship to him in writing.
On June 10, 2024, Turkish police detained 32-year-old Merdan Mukhamedov, a blogger and government critic, for violating migration laAw. He is a co-founder and host of the Turkmenistan-HSM YouTube channel that often harshly criticizes the Turkmen government, at times using highly inflammatory language. According to sources close to THF, Mukhamedov had been on a Turkmen wanted list since at least early 2022, allegedly for having organized demonstrations in Türkiye criticizing the Turkmen government.
Mukhamedov, who has resided in Türkiye for more than ten years, did not have a valid Turkmen passport at the time of his arrest. When his passport expired in July 2022, Mukhamedov was already very active on social media, and he decided not to approach the consular services for passport renewal fearing risk of arrest and deportation. On June 12, 2024, Turkish migration authorities issued a decision to deport him, and on June 26 deported him to Turkmenistan. Mukhamedov reportedly had no lawyer at the time to appeal the deportation order.
On August 21, Turkmen authorities reportedly put Mukhamedov on trial on multiple criminal charges, including “conspiracy to violently seize power and/or violently change the constitutional order,” and “open calls to commit extremist or other actions aimed at damaging the national security of Turkmenistan using the Internet.” Mukhamedov faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
Turkmen authorities’ practice of arbitrarily refusing to renew passports via diplomatic missions in Türkiye is longstanding. Each experience at the consulate was an ordeal for the people Human Rights Watch and THF interviewed, whose passports had either expired or been lost or stolen.
Of the 17 people Human Rights Watch spoke with, at least 14 no longer had valid Turkmen passports, one had a passport scheduled to expire by the end of 2024, and Human Rights Watch was unable to confirm the passport status of the other two.
Some began efforts to renew their passports more than a decade ago: one interviewee had started trying to renew her passport in 2010 but was repeatedly refused by consular officials. Another, Kumush, has been in Türkiye since 2012. Although her old, non-biometric passport is no longer valid, Kumush did not try to replace it at the consulate. She explained why:
I arrived in Türkiye in April 2012. I came for work…. I never went to the consulate or embassy. I heard a lot about what people faced when they went there…. I was afraid that I would be sent back to Turkmenistan … and then would be barred from leaving [the country].… And what is out there [in Turkmenistan]? Hunger?
Interviewees who attempted to apply for passport renewal at consular sections in Istanbul or Ankara told Human Rights Watch and THF that consular officials provided no explanation as to why a renewal request was denied. People said that consular employees barely listened to them, were overly rushed, often extremely rude and insulting, and in some cases even threatened them with physical abuse.
When Human Rights Watch interviewed 58-year-old Byashim B. in 2022, he held a valid passport but during the Covid-19 pandemic, when Turkmenistan’s borders were closed, he initially got stranded in Türkiye with his family members, including his then 28-year-old son, whose passport expired in June 2022. As described below, Byashim and his family faced serious reprisals after Byashim publicly called on Turkmen authorities to open the borders or otherwise assist Turkmen citizens stranded abroad. He described the poor treatment at the consulate:
They spend 2-3 minutes [per person to serve] on average. They explain nothing…, they provide no information…, they ask no questions.… They do nothing as per the law. They act like bandits…. They say one word “wait, wait’ … no waiting area, no seats, no toilet…. Three times I waited for 10-12 hours outside under the summer heat.
Two people Human Rights Watch interviewed had lost their passports in Türkiye. They reported that Turkmen consular officials had failed to provide them any assistance in replacing their lost passports, or information on measures they could take to minimize their risks of becoming undocumented.
Thirty-eight-year-old Djeren said that soon after she arrived in Türkiye for work in 2009, her passport was stolen at her workplace, where she worked as a nanny. She filed a passport theft report with the Turkish police and sued her employer, who denied responsibility for the theft and offered no compensation or assistance. The Turkish court that heard the lawsuit issued Djeren a document stating that her passport had been stolen while she was at her workplace, but when she went to the consulate, she received no help.
Djeren said:
The first time I went to the consulate [in Istanbul] …, in January 2010, I met with consulate employees, I knew neither their titles nor names…; they did not even look at my documents carefully, did not even read them. I told them [my passport was stolen] and I needed a new one. I wrote a statement about the passport loss, they accepted it, I paid US$20 for that, got a receipt, but no help followed.
Between 2010 and January 2023, the last time Human Rights Watch contacted Djeren about her passport situation, she repeatedly went to the Turkmen consulate in Istanbul to try to replace her stolen passport, but each time, authorities denied her any assistance by saying that they could not help her and that she should return to Turkmenistan.
In May 2019, Ashir A., 29, who arrived in Türkiye in 2018 after financial difficulties forced him to drop his university studies in Russia, lost his passport that had been valid through October 2022. Consular officials refused to reissue his passport five times—in July 2019, June 2020, October 2021, and twice in 2023—saying that he “need[s] to go back to Turkmenistan and apply for passport replacement there.” During Ashir’s first consular visit, in July 2019, he informed consular employees of the loss, and enquired about the steps he could take to ensure his stay in Türkiye is legal. Instead, the consular officials asked him to fill out a form with invasive questions, including about his religious practices. Ashir said:
A man [consulate employee] said “no one will issue you a passport here.” I asked if the consulate could issue me a document confirming my citizenship. He [an employee] asked me to fill out some form. He did not even listen to me, did not provide any instructions on how to fill out the form. I did not fill out the form…. It was very general…not related to my problem, required information about my parents, my marital status…do I read Namaz [pray]…. I asked what will this document do for me? What was the purpose of the form? They did not explain, only said “go away, fill out the form and come back” …. I left…. Even if I stand there for 100 hours, if I die there, nothing will change, they won’t do anything. They do not care!
In October 2021 Ashir went to the consulate again to seek assistance with a document confirming his citizenship and was given the same form to fill out. He refused to fill out the form and left. In June 2022 the Turkmen consulate in Istanbul issued Ashir a “Certificate for return to Turkmenistan” valid through June 2023. The certificate enables Ashir only to travel to Turkmenistan on a direct flight.
When Returning to Turkmenistan is Not an Option
Eleven of the 17 individuals interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that they opted not to return to Turkmenistan to attempt to renew their passport because they feared that Turkmen authorities would ban them from exiting the country.
Govher, an activist who arrived in Türkiye in 2011 on a non-biometric passport, said:
In 2012, I went to the consulate in Istanbul for the first time…. I wanted to apply for a new passport…. They were extremely rude, said that I needed to go back to Turkmenistan to get a new passport…. That’s all they said….
Govher continued:
I did not go back to Turkmenistan, because … I feared that if I go back there, I will be barred from exiting the country…and I would end up having a tough life there, with no opportunities to earn money…. My uncle [and aunt] went back to Turkmenistan in December 2012, they were issued new passports by the migration authorities, but they were not allowed to leave Turkmenistan with their new passports.
Kumush said:
I did not go to the consulate. I am afraid that I will be sent back to Turkmenistan and they [Turkmen authorities] will not let me out.
A number of the people Human Rights Watch interviewed have had a public profile criticizing Turkmen government policies. For example, they participated in public protests outside Turkmenistan’s consulate in Istanbul to express their discontent with Turkmen authorities’ lack of support for Turkmen migrants abroad. Ten of them are still active on social media, protesting against the Turkmenistan’s authoritarian government. All 11 expressed fears that if they return to Turkmenistan for passport renewals, they will face serious repercussions and reprisals by authorities in retaliation for their peaceful activism. They fear arrest, imprisonment, risk of torture, and other human rights violations.
Kurban said:
When my passport expired, authorities already knew me as an activist demanding my constitutional rights.… If I were to return to Turkmenistan, I would be imprisoned on trumped-up charges…and I would vanish…. Knowing this I did not go back [to Turkmenistan when my passport expired].”
Fifty-year-old Chary C. said:
After I became an activist, I could not and cannot go back to Turkmenistan, it’ll be like committing suicide. [I]f you end up in Turkmenistan as an activist [the suffering] will last long and will be very painful. Laws do not work in Turkmenistan.
Human Rights Watch documented three instances in which Turkmen consular officials repeatedly refused to issue birth certificates to Turkmen citizens’ children born in Türkiye, in two cases telling parents, who were denied passport renewals in Türkiye, that they should return to Turkmenistan with their children and apply for birth certificates there. One of these two cases involved an individual with one child who requested that Human Rights Watch not disclose any details. The other involved a couple, Djeren and her Turkish partner, who have two children and encountered repeated refusals from Turkmen diplomats to issue birth certificates.
The third instance involves a married Turkmen couple, 38-year-old civic activist Sapar S. and his wife Soltan (not her real name), who have been residing in Türkiye since mid-2018 and whose youngest child was born in Türkiye in early 2022. At the time of their appeals to the Turkmen consulate in Istanbul for the birth certificate, both parents had valid Turkmen passports, but were denied a birth certificate for their son.
All four children had birth report records issued by Turkish hospital authorities, which is not the same thing as a birth certificate. Foreign children who do not have a birth certificate face serious challenges enrolling in Turkish schools. Turkish law requires the parents or guardians of a foreign child to possess a document confirming the child’s identity and foreigner identity number in order to access education in Türkiye.
Djeren and her Turkish partner’s last attempt at seeking the Turkmen consulate’s assistance with birth certificates was in January 2023, when their children were ages three and a half and four and a half. But they received no help. In order to legalize their stay, in June 2023 Djeren and her children applied for international protection. Turkish migration authorities issued Djeren and her children international protection applicant (asylum seeker) status identification documents limited to a certain city and valid for one year, but extendable.
Sapar and his wife made four attempts to apply for a birth certificate for their son between May and July 2022, but on each occasion, the Turkmen consulate employees refused to assist them and provided no information or legitimate grounds for denying their application.
Sapar said:
In May 2022…we were told that some documents were missing, [although] we thoroughly collected all the papers as per the list of required documents, they [the consulate] sold us in April 2022. On July 14, we–the whole family–went to the consulate again. It’s a three-hour ride from where we lived [in Istanbul], so before going there I [checked online [to confirm] that the consulate was open. But when we arrived there [we were] all very tired, sweating, had a crying and hungry baby, it [the consulate] was closed. There were about 50 people standing outside. I started recording a video of people with my phone and made some comments, “Look, this is the attitude of our [Turkmen] government towards its people.” I uploaded the video on TikTok. We returned home that day.
A week later, I went back to the consulate with my older son [13 years old at the time]. One consular employee recognized me and asked, “Did you make a video?” I responded “Yes, it’s me.” He grabbed my hand and said, “Let’s go, I have to have a talk with you.” Four men took me and my son to his office. [The same consular employee] said that I made a “big mistake by making a video.” The men started pulling my bag [where I had all our documents, including our passports]; my son got very scared. I held on to my bag very tightly…. I said “I won’t give you my documents. If you want to beat me, [then] beat me, but I won’t give you my documents.” They let us go…. I think [it was] because of my son.
When Sapar’s wife tried again to submit the documents a week later, a consular employee told her again that “some documents are missing.” After she pointed out the list of required documents provided to them by the consulate earlier, he told her “Go wherever you want to, but I won’t accept your documents.” Sapar also added, “She came out of the consulate building in tears.”
In April 2023 Sapar, his wife, and their four children, were granted international protection applicant status in Türkiye. Their Turkmen passports expired in 2023. Without valid passports, they are not able to apply for their child’s birth certificate at the consulate in Türkiye.
The international protection applicant status documents allow Djeren and her children, as well as Sapar and his family to legally reside in Türkiye and benefit from some basic public services essential to rights, such as health care and education, while their applications are under review.
In cases documented in this report, Turkmen diplomats in Türkiye threatened and harassed people who expressed frustration or criticism regarding the authorities’ refusal to replace or renew passports. Their treatment of activists who criticize the Turkmen authorities at protests or online, and who approached the consulate to renew or replace passports was egregious and, in some cases, violent. Their families in Turkmenistan also faced threats and harassment.
As noted above, Byashim and his family travelled to Türkiye in December 2018. They had no plans to stay in Türkiye permanently, but they could not return to Turkmenistan when in late February 2020 Turkmen authorities imposed severe travel restrictions and completely closed the country’s borders in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Byashim began to publicly express his frustrations about the lack of Turkmen government assistance for Turkmen nationals stranded abroad. He said, “I demanded that borders be open. We went to the consulate with this demand. We pleaded on YouTube…. We became ‘traitors to the Motherland.’”
A consular official threatened Byashim’s son, Dovlet, when he tried to have his passport extended. During a five-month period in 2022, Byashim and his son made altogether 18 visits to the consulate to renew Dovlet’s passport; Dovlet alone made 10 visits between June and August 2022. Byashim publicly appealed to the Turkmen government via various social media calling on the authorities to issue his son a new passport and criticizing their inability to adequately assist Turkmens abroad.
Byashim said:
One time…a consulate’s employee threatened him [his son]: “If you return here for your passport, we will beat you up very badly.” The other time he said to my son “we will break your legs and arms, do not return here, have your father come by.”
I went there three times in August…. On August 8 the same employee said to me “you can come back here 33 times to get your son’s passport” [indicating it would still be futile] …. We gave up on my son’s passport.
Eventually, on October 3, 2022, Dovlet received a stamp and a QR-code extending his passport through December 2024. However, when Dovlet submitted his extended passport to apply for a residence permit in Türkiye, Turkish migration authorities refused to accept his documents, saying “it was too late and he should have come earlier.” The officials provided no further information, but the denial was presumably due to the fact that Dovlet’s residence permit had expired, and he had therefore violated the rules for legal stay in Türkiye, as per the Turkish migration law, which requires residence permits to be extended before they expire.
“To extend his residence permit, [Dovlet] needs to exit and re-enter Türkiye, which he cannot do, because his passport’s extension is only for return to Turkmenistan,” Byashim said.
In late October 2021, consular staff refused to return the passport of 32-year-old Yagmyr Y., a Turkmen activist in Türkiye. He had submitted it for renewal in mid-September 2021 and then requested its return several weeks later. Yagmyr made the request after unidentified Turkmen men beat him shortly after he had visited the consulate.
Yagmyr has resided in Türkiye since 2019. Using mainly Tik Tok and YouTube, he has been openly critical of Turkmen authorities, including diplomats in Türkiye, since August 2021. Before August 2021 Yagmyr criticized the Turkmen authorities on social media but concealed his face under a mask.
Yagmyr submitted his passport, which was to expire on December 25, 2021, to the consulate in Istanbul in mid-September 2021. Fearing retaliation from consular staff because of his public profile and criticism, he filmed his first visit and shared the video on social media. The consular employee said that Yagmyr’s new passport would be ready in a week and that he should return then. When Yagmyr went back to the consulate a little more than one week later, he was told his “passport was not ready yet” and he should return in one week. But on October 11, there was no passport again. Yagmyr said:
There was no passport again. They said to come back the following Monday. I begged them, I explained that my Turkish residence permit is about to expire, and I may not apply for a renewed one without my passport, but they did not listen to me. All was pointless.
Later that day three unidentified men, who spoke in Turkmen, attacked Yagmyr and two other Turkmens he was with on a street in Istanbul. The attackers caused a laceration injury to Yagmyr’s left eye and broke his nose. Yagmyr received first aid, including stitches to the eye area, from a local hospital. He filed a police report on the same day. Yagmyr believes the attack was in retaliation for his peaceful activism, including the video he shot on his first visit to the consulate and other videos sharing his public demands to start issuing passports to Turkmen citizens abroad.
On October 18, 2021, Yagmyr returned to the consulate and asked for his expiring passport to be returned. A different employee said that they “couldn’t find [his] document” and that he should return in one week.
Yagmyr said he had feared returning to the consulate both because of the October 11 incident and because he understood there had been other incidents in which consulate employees “make an appointment with activists, [and then] engage other Turkmen nationals in staging provocations against them…. This gives them an opportunity] to call the police and report on activists….”
When Yagmyr returned to the consulate on October 25, employees allegedly called the police after a Turkmen consulate guard provoked an argument with Yagmyr.
Yagmyr said:
When the police arrived, they threatened me and not the provocateur…. [T]hey said “we will arrest you, send you to the deportation center and you’ll be deported.”
On August 16, 2022 in Istanbul, six men wearing masks beat five Turkmen activists in the courtyard of the Turkmen consulate. The activists, whom consular staff admitted onto the premises, were attempting to deliver a one-page open letter to President Berdymukhamedov regarding the dire situation many Turkmen migrants face abroad, in particular due to the authorities’ failure to provide assistance with passport renewal requests and the lack of charter flights to Turkmenistan.
Human Rights Watch spoke with one of the five activists, Kurban, who sustained a head injury as a result of the beating. Kurban explained that he and the other activists decided to get involved in the letter initiative out of despair. He said that after Turkmen diplomats started extending passports, during the Covid-19 pandemic many Turkmens, including older people and children, were spending days sitting on the ground in front of the consulate in Istanbul in the heat, seeking passport extensions or charter flights home.
Kurban said that he and other Turkmen activists in Türkiye wanted to help their countrymen:
Witnessing the grim situation with many Turkmens in Türkiye, we decided to…send an open letter to our [Turkmen] president Serdar Berdymukhamedov, describing the many problems of Turkmen people in Türkiye, such as long queues to apply for passports.… We asked in the letter to arrange more flights to Turkmenistan, to send additional employees to the consulate in Istanbul to meet many people’s needs….
We decided to deliver our letter on August 16 to the Turkmen consulate in Istanbul…. We were accompanied by Turkish lawyers and Turkish NGO representatives. We told the consulate employees that our intentions are peaceful, and we asked the consulate to deliver our letter to the President.
We entered the courtyard [of the consulate], and when we approached the building’s main entrance, we were told [by employees] to wait for “a relevant person to come out to receive the letter.” We waited [expecting a consular employee to come out of] the building’s main entrance, but some masked people came out from the rear entrance…attacked us from behind and started beating us. As a result, the letter was not handed over; …I was beaten with a brass knuckle…. They beat us, called the police, filed a complaint against us. I was detained, as well as one other activist and one representative of the Turkish NGO.
Police drove us to the first aid post first, officers talked to the medical personnel…. Blood was running from my forehead…and I was issued a medical record stating I was “healthy and no bodily injuries were diagnosed.” We were then taken to the anti-terrorism police department…. Can you imagine?
Around four to five hours later, after Turkish lawyers had intervened, police released Kurban and the others. Kurban went to a hospital, where medical personnel examined him and issued a new medical report confirming the injuries he sustained.
Turkmen government officials routinely harass and intimidate families of peaceful government critics and dissidents abroad, including in some extreme cases, with physical violence and arbitrary detention. The experiences of Byashim and others were no exception. They said that their families in Turkmenistan have been targeted for their peaceful public expression of frustration with the refusal by Turkmen diplomatic missions in Türkiye to assist them with passport renewals and other issues related to official documents. Byashim said:
We started receiving messages from our relatives in Turkmenistan [saying]… “do not return, police officers visit us every day, check [a family tree] to see if any family members have a criminal record] every two months…. If you return you will be imprisoned….” [Our] relatives [in Turkmenistan] were harassed. Our relatives begged us to stop doing what we do here [in Türkiye], but we did not do anything wrong! My son…was dating one girl for two years, and when he proposed to her, her parents said, “we won’t marry our daughter to a traitor’s son.”
Yagmyr and his family in Turkmenistan have been the subject of repeated intimidation and harassment by Turkmen authorities, including arbitrary detention and other humiliating forms of pressure and mistreatment, according to information gathered by THF. Yagmyr told Human Rights Watch:
My [uncle and aunt] do not talk to me. Police [in Turkmenistan] told my aunt “if Yagmyr returns, he will be imprisoned.” On November 1, 2021, my father…was detained…. [T]hey [police] held him for 24 hours, released him next day. On November 6 or 7, I can’t remember the exact date, they summoned him again and held him undressed for 24 hours. Police told my father, “Yagmyr is your son?… Have him ask for mercy from our president and he may get a light punishment…. He is a traitor of the Motherland!” … My relatives tell me to quit what I do, not to post on TikTok, not to be public…. They say “activists you work with are all traitors.”
Without valid passports, Turkmen nationals in Türkiye are rendered undocumented and therefore face considerable hardships in their daily lives. They cannot apply for or extend residence or work permits. They cannot sign apartment leases, apply for legal employment, open or use bank accounts, travel internationally, travel on domestic flights or trains, or obtain health insurance. They also cannot send their children to school or register births or marriages.
People also fear random identity and document checks by the police or gendarmerie. Chary, whose passport expired in September 2020, said:
I have no rights, it’s terrible. I am always afraid that Turkish police will stop me and will ask for my documents, and I have nothing to show them, although it is not my fault, it’s the [Turkmen] government’s.” I can’t travel even within the country [Türkiye]. It’s like I live in a cage.
Annagul A., whose passport expired in September 2019, said in 2021:
I am illegal here. I cannot get medical treatment, cannot get a Covid-19 vaccine even. I live like a robber. We [my husband, son and I] are always frightened when we see police…; we change our route. We are always anxious.
Domestic Travel
A foreigner needs to have a valid passport, or an official document accepted as a passport by the issuing nation, or a residence permit card to be able to purchase a train or air ticket for domestic travel in Türkiye. Interviewees said that without passports or valid resident permits, they lack straightforward access to internal train and air travel in Türkiye and often depend on others to buy transportation tickets and for transportation services. But they said it is fear of deportation that prevents them from travel within Türkiye, including within the cities where they reside.
Gulnara G., a 34-year Turkmen migrant worker who has been living in Türkiye since 2011, said:
We do not go outside of our house…; on weekends we stay at home. We have all we need [at home]. We do not need weekends.… In Türkiye we move around only in our friends’ cars. If we get caught without passports…we fear we will be deported. We do not want to return to Turkmenistan. We would like to stay in Türkiye.
Aman said, “I cannot travel internally, within Türkiye. I do not like to take risks and only go from work to home and from home to work…to avoid police checks.”
Kumush, a housekeeper and caregiver, said, “I have one day off per week. I stay at home. I didn’t leave the house for 10 years. I am scared…. What i I get caught? What will I do?”
Insecure Employment
Most Turkmen migrants Human Rights Watch interviewed had travelled to Türkiye, some more than a decade ago, looking to earn higher incomes to help support their families in Turkmenistan through remittances. However, most had neither a residence permit required to apply for work permit, nor a valid passport, which, as noted above, is required to apply for residence and/or work permits in Türkiye.
As a result, at the time of the interviews, most were working without work authorization. Under international human rights law, workplace protections apply to all workers, regardless of citizenship and work permit status. However, interviews with workers who did not have authorization to labor in Türkiye made clear that they lacked vital workplace protections, including regarding pay, safe and healthy working conditions, and access to certain social security programs, such as general health insurance, unemployment benefits, and disability, old age, and death insurance). Fear of retaliation and possible deportation also causes many workers without work authorization to be hesitant to speak up in the workplace or report abusive employers and working conditions.
Workers in the informal economy, in particular, are often excluded from minimum wage protections, social security, protection from discrimination, and other internationally agreed labor rights. The lack of protections makes them more prone to financial insecurity and exploitation.
After arriving in Türkiye in 2019, Esen E. applied for and received a Turkish short-term residence permit that was valid through November 3, 2021. During his entire stay in Türkiye, Esen worked irregularly and struggled to find a Turkish employer willing to apply for a work permit on his behalf. At first, he worked at a plastic recycling plant and later at a resort in Izmir. Esen said:
My employer did not ask for my passport. They [employers] know that [many Turkmens] have no passports. We do not have social insurance. We are like their slaves. I work 15 to 17 hours every day. The employer threatened that if we have minor injuries, he will not let us go to the hospital, because he will be fined. I have been injured many times. One time I could not even move my arm, my boss said “do not go to the hospital, … I will fire you…; winter is coming up, no one will employ you. I will bring you medicine.” And he brought me one pill [for the entire time I was unwell].
I take on every opportunity to do extra work. They [employers] pay well for it [overtime]. After my 12-hour shift, after 8 pm, I work another 4 to 6 hours to make extra money and on average I make an extra US$10 per overtime shift.…
In summer 2021, a dog attacked Esen outside his workplace, inflicting a serious injury. His employer told him to get some rest and that he would not pay him for that day.
Govher described the vulnerability she experienced vis a vis her employer when she was undocumented due to her expired passport. She said:
[At] work I had to be quiet.… I had no rights.… I worked as a nanny, [and] they kept my [expired] passport…. One day my employer’s wife couldn’t find her jewelry…they accused me of stealing and withheld my salary for three months…. I couldn’t file a police complaint even after the jewelry was found, because I had no [valid] documents.
While some interviewees had jobs in which they had been employed for a year or more, others had seasonal jobs or were day laborers, with no prospects for job stability and protection because they do not have valid passports and consequently are unable to apply for a work permit.
Byashim said:
My [then 28-year-old son] cannot get a formal job here [he doesn’t have a valid passport]. He works as a handyman: one day he is a loader, next day he works at some construction site. He gets paid daily. Some offers are for more than one day.
Most people interviewed said their employers in their off-the-books jobs were conscientious, for example by paying them on time.
Ashir said:
I work in a printing house. It’s not official. I found this job via some friends of friends. I have no benefits: no sick leave, no vacation, no pension contributions…. My employer is very good. I do not have a sigorta [insurance], but my employer pays me this [amount] in cash. I’ve been with him for three years now. When I was sick, he sent me potatoes, onions.
Inadequate Housing Conditions
Without a valid passport, foreigners cannot sign a lease on an apartment rental. Turkmen migrants whose passports expired while in Türkiye face serious obstacles securing housing, forcing many to make living arrangements in which they are invisible to the authorities and to live in precarious and potentially unhealthy or unsafe conditions.
We documented cases of Turkmen nationals sharing overcrowded accommodations with many of their family members and relatives, where usually at least one has a valid passport and can sign rent and utilities contracts.
Aman, for example, said:
The rent, SIM card, utilities, everything is in my mom’s name [who has a valid passport]. If it were not for my mom…, I would have lived without electricity, gas and water…. Nothing is possible without a passport.
Turkmen migrants without valid passports and no relatives with documentation who can help them, as Aman’s mother helped him, try to find other Turkmens willing to provide their passport information to potential landlords and enter into a lease agreement on their behalf. They often end up in informal, overcrowded, insecure, and poor housing conditions.
While he still had a valid passport and residence permit, Ashir rented an apartment with his cousin, whose name was on the lease; the utilities were in Ashir’s name. After Ashir and his cousin раrted ways and Ashir’s passport expired, he had to find a new place to live. Ashir said:
[Now] I rent an apartment with seven other people. I pay 200 Turkish liras per month [US$20 in November 2021]. Conditions are poor…no heating, the place is very cold in winter. It’s overcrowded, cockroaches everywhere…. I stay at work to be in a warm place.
Three of the Turkmen migrants Human Rights Watch spoke with were domestic workers who were living with their employers, who also provided meals. 54-year-old Kumush lives in the same house with her employer’s older parents, for whom she is the caregiver. A married couple of migrant workers from Turkmenabad, Gulnara and Guvanch, reside in their employer’s house working as a housekeeper and a gardener.
Gulnara said:
My employers [a married Turkish couple] … pay on time and treat us well…. Food is provided. They were once fined because we did not have work permits…, nonetheless they did not fire us, they let us stay. But now we are afraid that an inspect[or] may come back any time and the fine may be higher. So, we hide every time there is a knock on the door.
Both of Esen’s employers—a hotel in Izmir and a plastic recycling plant in Istanbul—allowed him to live on site. At the time of his interview with Human Rights Watch, Esen had submitted his passport to the consulate, for an extension, and he lived at the hotel where he was working and had only three days left with the employer. Esen said:
I work at a hotel in Izmir. I wash dishes. I live in an outbuilding on the hotel’s grounds.… The hotel [administration/employer] provides me with accommodation. [The employer] also provides food … well … gives us [workers] leftovers.… On Monday I will become homeless and jobless…. I do not know what I will do then.
Lack of Access to Social and other Services
Health Care
Turkmen migrants without valid passports, and therefore without work or residence permits, are much less likely to have health insurance and much more likely to lack access to health care, in violation of their right to health. Without a valid residence or work permit, they cannot obtain jobs for which employers would register them with Türkiye’s state social security institution (SGK). Instead, they often have no choice but to either pay for unaffordable healthcare goods and services at private clinics and hospitals or forego needed medical care altogether.
Ashir said:
When I was sick, I did not go to the hospital, I practiced self-medication at home, I drank a lot of tea. I can go to the [private] hospital, but I would have to pay five times more, because I do not have any documents.
In May 2023 Ashir was diagnosed with a spinal hernia, which caused him severe pain and left him unable to walk independently for nearly two months. Ashir had to borrow money to start treatment. “Every time I get sick, I have to pay significantly more, because I can only go to the private clinic,” he said.
Additionally, fear of arrest and deportation prevents many Turkmen nationals without valid passports from seeking needed medical treatment.
When a dog bit Esen, injuring him severely, he went to the police station to seek assistance in claiming compensation from the dog’s owner. Police refused to work on his case and provided no support. He said:
I asked them [police] to call an ambulance for me, but they said, “[D]o it yourself.” My employer also saw the injury, but he did nothing. A piece of flesh on my leg was just hanging.
Esen said that the police officers threatened to send him to a deportation center because he was working without a work permit.
Esen said:
I went to the state hospital’s emergency room hours later and they [medical personnel] stitched up the wound. They asked for my name and wrote it down but did not check my documents. They told me to come back with my documents to have the stitches removed.
Esen did not return to the state hospital to have the stitches removed, fearing the Turkish police’s threats of deportation: “I couldn’t go back to the state hospital. I was afraid they would report to the police [that I had improper documents]….” Esen said:
When the time to remove the stiches came, I went to the private clinic, to remove the stiches and was asked to pay US$50. I did not have that much money, and I returned to work, and I used my workplace tools and removed the stitches myself.
In the absence of accessible health care, people said that they “try not to get sick,” “practice self-medication,” or otherwise “manage [the illness].”
“I try not to get sick. My employer is a doctor. If I get sick, he provides medical care for me. He even buys medicine for me,” said Kumush.
Education
Three interviewees expressed serious concerns over their inability to enroll their school-age children in Turkish public schools, where education is free of charge. Under international law all children have the right to education, and this right does not depend on their status, including whether they are documented or not. What is more, Türkiye has established the right to education in its domestic law. Nevertheless, Turkish schools are not authorized to enroll children without valid identity documents. Foreigners must have legal status in Türkiye and have a foreigner’s identification number issued by the Turkish authorities to benefit from the right of education in Türkiye.
Under Turkish law, all children of foreigners with a residence permit have the right to study in public schools in Türkiye free of charge. In order to enroll a child in school in Türkiye, parents or guardians must possess a document confirming the child’s identity and a foreigner identity number. However, many Turkmen migrants in Türkiye lack these documents, including due to Turkmen officials’ refusal to issue or renew their passports and issue birth certificates to children of Turkmen citizens born in Türkiye.
People with school-age children said that school administrations refuse to enroll their children in schools and require that parents have residence permits or work permits or alternatively documents issued by the Turkish authorities confirming that they are seeking international protection.
The three individuals who said they could not enroll their children in Turkish schools did not have any of the required documents and expressed utter hopelessness over their children’s lack of access to education. They also said that they did not want to return to Turkmenistan and that in the end their only option was to come to terms with the situation and not send their children to school.
By refusing to provide passport renewal services to Turkmen nationals that would allow them to obtain legal status in a host country, and by denying birth certificates to their children, Turkmen authorities are responsible for depriving the school-age children of many Turkmen migrants access to education, in violation of their rights.
Barriers to Obtaining Marriage License Certificates
The lack of valid documents creates barriers for Turkmen nationals to apply to get married in Türkiye.
Both Djeren and Ashir have had long-term Turkish partners, and both struggled for years to legalize their relationships, because without valid passports they could not apply for a marriage certificate at the municipal marriage departments where they are living.
In February 2023 Ashir managed to secure a marriage certificate after acquaintances helped him deliver records of his Turkmen birth certificate to Türkiye, for which he had to pay a bribe. But obtaining a marriage certificate did not address Ashir’s core problems with residence and work permits in Türkiye. Turkish migration authorities legitimately claim that Ashir violated migration regulations by overstaying in Türkiye illegally and that his best visible option is to pay a fine, exit, and re-enter Türkiye on a valid Turkmenistan-issued identification document and apply for a family residence permit.
Djeren still may not apply for marriage in Türkiye, because Turkmen consular officials repeatedly refuse to assist her with obtaining a “certificate of non-marriage registration” (showing she is not already married) in Turkmenistan.
Turkmenistan has an obligation to ensure the right to freedom of movement of all Turkmen citizens, including by providing passports and other necessary documents to facilitate the exercise of that right. Turkmenistan’s refusal to renew the passports, as well as birth certificates and other identity documents, of its citizens living abroad through its consular services violates the right to freedom of movement, may interfere with their ability to obtain legal status in host countries, and risks jeopardizing other rights such as access to employment, medical care, education, adequate work conditions and to family life.
This refusal not only violates Turkmenistan’s binding international human rights obligations, but also appears to violate its obligations under domestic law.
Domestic Legal Standards
The right to freedom of movement is guaranteed in Turkmenistan’s domestic law. Article 36 of the Constitution of Turkmenistan states that “Every citizen has the right to move freely….” In addition, article 24 of Turkmenistan’s Law on Migration provides that “A citizen of Turkmenistan cannot be deprived of the right to leave Turkmenistan and enter Turkmenistan.”
Article 29(3) of the Law on Migration states that Turkmen citizens “permanently residing outside Turkmenistan may apply to the State Migration Service of Turkmenistan through the diplomatic missions and consular offices of Turkmenistan in foreign countries to obtain a passport. Passports for these citizens are issued at the central office of the State Migration Service of Turkmenistan and handed over to them through diplomatic missions and consular offices of Turkmenistan in foreign countries.”
In response to a request for information from Human Right Watch, Turkmen authorities stated that because Turkmen passports “contain an electronic storage device with the holder’s personal biometric data, and due to the necessity of identifying the issued passport by reading the biometric data of the holder from the data stored in the electronic device, the application and receipt of processed passports are carried out within the territory of Turkmenistan.” The authorities did not explain why biometric data on expired or expiring passports cannot be read and replicated at migration services in Turkmenistan or why new passports could not be issued and shipped to the passport holder via the “consulates and diplomatic missions of Turkmenistan in foreign countries” where the passport holder is residing, as stipulated by article 29 (3) of the law on migration. Similarly, the government’s response does not make clear why its consulates cannot issue valid temporary identification documents to passport holders, while the migration services are issuing and shipping their new passports.
In their response, the Turkmen authorities stated that under article 29(6) “in cases when citizens of Turkmenistan, temporarily staying or permanently residing in foreign countries, are unable to leave foreign countries for Turkmenistan for reasons beyond their control, the validity of their passports, with expired or expiring dates, may be extended based on the Resolution of the President of Turkmenistan.”
Turkmenistan’s refusal to renew passports in its diplomatic missions also would appear to hinder the Turkmen government’s ability to ensure the protection of Turkmen citizens’ rights in host countries in violation of Turkmenistan law.
Turkmenistan’s laws on citizenship and migration guarantee Turkmen citizens abroad “protection and patronage” beyond the country’s borders. Article 6 (1), (2) of the Law on Citizenship obliges Turkmenistan’s diplomatic missions and consular offices abroad, “as well as their officials,… to take all measures to ensure that citizens of Turkmenistan have the opportunity to fully enjoy all the rights granted to them by the legislation of the receiving State and international treaties to which Turkmenistan and the receiving State are parties, to protect their rights and legitimate interests in accordance with the procedure established by law, and, if necessary, to restore the violated rights of citizens of Turkmenistan.”
International Legal Standards
Turkmenistan is a party to several international human rights treaties relevant to freedom of movement. Key among these is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Turkmenistan ratified in 1997. Article 12 of the ICCPR states that everyone has “the right to liberty of movement” and is “free to leave any country, including his own.” Restrictions on these rights can only be imposed when lawful, for a legitimate purpose, and when the restrictions are proportionate, including in considering their impact.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee, the international expert body that oversees the interpretation of the ICCPR, has stated that “…the right to leave a country must include the right to obtain the necessary travel documents.” The committee stressed that “the refusal by a State to issue a passport or prolong its validity for a national residing abroad may deprive this person of the right to leave the country of residence and to travel elsewhere. It is no justification for the State to claim that its national would be able to return to its territory without a passport.”
The Human Rights Committee has also specifically found that a travel document that only provides for return to the country of nationality violated article 12 of the ICCPR because “it prevented the individual from leaving any country including her own.” The committee has also criticized bureaucratic hurdles and other obstacles to obtaining passports such as high fees, harassment of applicants, and the “refusal to issue a passport because the applicant is said to harm the good name of the country.”
Turkmenistan has ratified other treaties that contain provisions relevant to freedom of movement, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
In addition to the right to freedom of movement, the refusal of the Turkmen authorities to provide or renew passports, as well as other legal documents such as ID cards, birth certificates, profoundly interferes with the enjoyment of other rights. These include the right to access to health care, education, employment, an adequate standard of living, and family life.
All states are obliged to register children’s births in order to ensure their right to a legal identity and nationality. Article 7 of the Convention of the Rights of Child (CRC), which Turkmenistan ratified in 1993, states that “The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have… the right to acquire a nationality…” and that States “shall ensure the implementation of these rights…” The right of the child to acquire a nationality and be registered immediately after birth is also enshrined under article 24 of the ICCPR, to which Turkmenistan has been a party since 1997.
Turkmenistan has recognized that consular functions properly include the provision of necessary legal documents such as a passport, as well as providing other assistance to nationals who are abroad. Under article 5 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations to which Turkmenistan acceded to in 1996, “consular functions consist in … (d) issuing passports and travel documents to nationals of the sending State …; (e) helping and assisting nationals …, of the sending State.”
As described throughout this report, among undocumented Turkmens in Türkiye are those who would face a real risk of persecution or torture were they to be returned to Turkmenistan.
Türkiye is bound by treaty and customary international law to respect the principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits the return of anyone to a place where they would face a real risk of persecution, torture or other ill-treatment, or a threat to life. Türkiye must not coerce people into returning to places where they face serious harm.
Türkiye is a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol but has retained a geographic limitation that excludes anyone not originally from a European country from full refugee recognition.
The prohibition against returning a person to a place where they risk facing torture is absolute, meaning that Türkiye is obligated to comply with the principle of nonrefoulement in all cases regardless of the geographical limitations on its adherence to the Refugee Convention.
Türkiye is also a party to the United Nations Convention Against Torture since 1988, which obliges states to ensure that they do not send anyone to a place where they face a real risk of torture or other ill-treatment.
The UN Committee against Torture, in its concluding observations on the fourth periodic report of Türkiye, in June 2016, raised concern about Türkiye’s geographic limitation to the Refugee Convention and found that Türkiye had violated the nonrefoulement principle by sending people to countries where they were at risk of torture. The committee called on the Turkish government to lift the geographic limitation and ensure that “no one is expelled, returned or extradited” to a country where they may risk torture.
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Türkiye is a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which stipulates that state parties must guarantee the rights in the covenant can be exercised without discrimination of any kind including on grounds of national origin or other status. The rights under the ICESCR include the rights to health, housing, education, work, and an adequate standard of living and extend to migrants living in Türkiye, including Turkmen citizens, whether or not their government has facilitated the extension, renewal, or replacement of their passports.
The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has set out the scope of the prohibition on discrimination in the ICESCR in a general comment, and explicitly reminds states that the covenant rights “apply to everyone including non-nationals, such as refugees, asylum-seekers, stateless persons, migrant workers and victims of international trafficking, regardless of legal status and documentation.”[177] The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination has also made clear that states’ obligation to eliminate racial discrimination includes discrimination against non-citizens. They have specifically called on states to take measures to eliminate “obstacles that prevent the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights by non-citizens, notably in the areas of education, housing, employment and health”.
Türkiye should take steps to ensure that irrespective of whether Turkmenistan facilitates the extension, renewal or replacement of its citizens’ passports at consulates or diplomatic missions it will remove and not create other barriers for Turkmen citizens living in Türkiye to access and enjoy their economic, social and cultural rights on an equal basis with others living in the county.
Specifically on the right to education, not only is Türkiye party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), but also to a number of other international treaties that outline and guarantee the right to access education without discrimination, including on the basis of the children’s or parents’ legal status. These include the CRC, the ICCPR, CEDAW, and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR).
The CRC and ICESCR provide that primary education shall be “compulsory and available free to all” and that secondary education “shall be made generally available and accessible to all.” For children who have not received or completed their primary education, “[f]undamental education shall be encouraged or intensified.” Governments also have an obligation to “[t]ake measures to encourage regular attendance at schools and the reduction of drop-out rates.”
Furthermore, the Law on Foreigners and International Protection states that the “[A]pplicant or international protection beneficiary and family members shall have access to primary and secondary education.”
Türkiye has voted in favor of adopting the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), under which states “commit to ensure… that migrants are issued adequate documentation and civil registry documents, such as birth, marriage… certificates…,” “ensure that migrants without proof of nationality or legal identity are not precluded from accessing basic services nor denied their human rights,” and provides for “access to relevant services, through the issuance of registration cards to all persons… including migrants, that contain basic personal information, while not constituting entitlements to citizenship or residency.”
This report was researched in collaboration between Human Rights Watch and the Turkmenistan Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (THF), an independent human rights organization, under the direction of Tadzhigul Begmedova.
The report was written by Vika Kim, Central Asia assistant researcher in the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, who also participated in the research. Emma Wilbur and Elly Bleier, respectively intern and senior associate in the Europe and Central Asia division, provided additional desk research.
The report was edited by Rachel Denber, deputy director, and reviewed by Emma Sinclair-Webb, associate director, Deniz Bayram, assistant researcher, and Iskra Kirova, advocacy director in the Europe and Central Asia division. It was also reviewed by Lena Simet, senior researcher, and Matt McConell, researcher in the Economic Justice and Rights Division; Michael Bochenek, senior legal advisor in the Children Rights Division; and Nadia Hardman, researcher and advocate in the Refugee and Migrant Division.
Holly Cartner, an acting senior legal advisor for the Legal and Policy Office, provided legal review, in consultation with Aisling Reidy, senior legal advisor. Joseph Saunders, deputy program director, provided program review.
Elly Bleier and Travis Carr, publications officer, prepared the report for publication. José Martinez, administrative officer, coordinated production.
Dmitry Shabelnikov translated the report from English to Russian.
Human Rights Watch and THF would like to express their deep gratitude to all of the individuals who agreed to speak with us and who gave us their time to share their experiences.
Human Rights Watch and THF extend their appreciation to the Turkmen activists and experts working on developments in Turkmenistan. Their analysis and insights were invaluable.
