Turkmenistan–Uzbekistan border

Closing the border

Soon after independence, Central Asian states agreed to let each other’s citizens travel without visas. Turkmenistan pulled out of that accord in June 1999, and Uzbekistan suspended it from 1 January 2000, giving only vague reasons about national interests and security. A former Turkmen foreign minister later said President Saparmurat Niyazov had mainly wanted to keep out journalists and human-rights monitors.^[3]

Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan signed a border delimitation agreement in September 2000, and Turkmenistan had settled its borders with both Central Asian neighbours by 2001, long before the harder disputes in the Fergana Valley were resolved. In November 2017 the foreign ministers of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan signed a treaty on the point where their three borders meet.^[2][4]

Smuggling and a thaw

Relations hit a low in 2002, when Niyazov accused Uzbekistan of aiding an attempt on his life. Along the border, Turkmenistan kept many basic goods, above all petrol, artificially cheap, and Uzbeks smuggled them home past Uzbekistan’s high tariffs; Turkmen guards reportedly fired on suspected smugglers. Shortly before a 2004 summit, Turkmen guards detained 25 Uzbek police officers at the Tuyamuyun hydro station on the border for 32 days.^[1]

At Bukhara on 19 November 2004 Niyazov and Uzbek president Islam Karimov said all their disputes were resolved, agreed a framework for sharing water and signed rules for border crossings. Uzbekistan was also worried that Niyazov’s planned Golden Lake reservoir would draw so much water from the Amu Darya that it would harm its cotton. On 1 December 2004 the two countries began demarcating the frontier.^[1]

“There are no disputed problems which could give rise to any suspicion or doubt about mutual relations.”^[1]