Turkmenistan signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997, ratified on 19 January 1998, and became a State Party on 1 March 1999. Turkmenistan has not passed any national legislation or other implementation measures as required by Article 9, but officials have commented that the existing criminal code could be used to prosecute violations involving possession, transfer, sale or use of explosives.[1]
On 6 April 2006, Turkmenistan submitted an annual updated Article 7 transparency report for a period listed as 2004 to 2006. It is the first time Turkmenistan has used the standard voluntary reporting format.[2] It includes voluntary Form J, which contains a statement that Turkmenistan has completed stockpile destruction, “is proud to have been included into the group of states that do not possess antipersonnel landmines,” and that the “Ministry of Defense of Turkmenistan has acquired enormous experience in destroying antipersonnel mines and is always supportive of states that strive to rid their territories of antipersonnel landmines.”[3]
Turkmenistan did not send delegations to the Sixth Meeting of States Parties in Zagreb, Croatia in November-December 2005, nor the intersessional Standing Committees meetings held in Geneva in June 2005 and May 2006.
Turkmenistan joined the Convention on Conventional Weapons and its Amended Protocol II on 19 March 2004. It did not attend the Seventh Annual Meeting of States Parties to the protocol in Geneva in November 2005, and did not submit the required annual Article 13 report for 2005.
Turkmenistan has stated several times that it has not produced antipersonnel landmines.[4] It is not believed to have exported mines in the past, or to have used antipersonnel mines in the period from independence to its signing of the Mine Ban Treaty.
In April 2005, Turkmenistan reported that it “has totally destroyed all anti-personnel mines, including those that were retained for training purposes.”[5] Turkmenistan inherited 6,631,771 antipersonnel mines from the Soviet Union upon its collapse in 1991.[6] This stockpile included 5,452,416 PFM-type scatterable mines in 75,718 KSF-type cassettes.[7]
The government states that there are no mined areas in Turkmenistan.[8] There have been no known mine casualties.
[1] Interview with Col. Chorly Myradov, Deputy Chief of Staff, Ministry of Defense, Geneva, 22 June 2004.
[2] This is the fourth transparency report submitted. Turkmenistan submitted its initial report on 14 November 2001 (due on 27 August 1999) and updates, for unspecified periods, on 11 February 2004 and 6 April 2005. Turkmenistan’s first three Article 7 reports were incomplete, did not provide information on all items specified in Article 7, and did not use the standard, voluntary reporting format.
[3] Article 7 Report, Form J, 6 April 2006. Unofficial translation by Landmine Monitor (HRW).
[4] Most recently, Article 7 Report, Introductory Letter, 6 April 2006.
[5] Article 7 Report, 6 April 2005. The exact date of completion in 2004 is not known. In November 2001, Turkmenistan requested an extension of its 1 March 2003 stockpile destruction deadline until 2010. Informed that no extension can be granted, Turkmenistan notified the UN that it completed destruction of its stockpiles on 28 February 2003, except for 69,200 mines retained for training purposes (the actual total retained was 572,200 individual antipersonnel mines). In a dramatic reversal announced on 11 February 2004, it said it had started to destroy 60,000 of the antipersonnel mines retained for training and invited interested parties to observe the destruction. In June 2004 it announced it would destroy all of the retained mines. See Landmine Monitor Report 2005, pp. 593-594.
[6] The presence of such a large stockpile was the result of the main ammunition storage facility for Soviet combat operations in Afghanistan being located in Charjoh (now Turkmenabad), according to military officials.
[7] Turkmenistan reported a total of 102,628 PFM and KPOM cassettes. This equates to 5,560,016 individual mines. Turkmenistan cited a total stockpile of 1,174,383 antipersonnel mines in its Article 7 reports, counting cassettes as one unit, even though they contain multiple antipersonnel mines.
[8] Article 7 Report, Introductory Letter, 6 April 2006.