On June 22, the European Union and Turkmenistan will hold their 18th annual Human Rights Dialogue in Ashgabat. The International Partnership for Human Rights and the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights published a joint briefing this week outlining what they want the EU to raise — and what they want the EU to condition.
The briefing's central demand: tie further development of EU-Turkmenistan relations — including ratification of the pending Partnership and Cooperation Agreement — to measurable human rights progress. The organisations argue that engagement without conditions has produced no meaningful improvement in Ashgabat's behaviour.
Turkmenistan ranked 173rd out of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index. State media functions primarily as a propaganda outlet.
The specific concerns the groups want on the table: severe restrictions on independent media and internet; expanding censorship and blocking of circumvention tools including Starlink equipment; persecution of journalists and activists at home and abroad through transnational repression; impunity for torture and enforced disappearances; and forced mobilisation of citizens for state-organised mass events. Among the named individual cases: journalist Nurgeldy Khalykov, released from prison in 2024 but still banned from travel on national security grounds; journalist and human rights defender Soltan Achilova, who reported suspected poisoning attempts in autumn 2025.
The EU's posture toward Turkmenistan has been shifting. Brussels has deepened engagement with Ashgabat on energy — the Trans-Caspian Pipeline discussions give the EU strategic reasons to maintain a working relationship with Turkmenistan regardless of the human rights record. The rights groups' briefing is precisely a response to that tension: they want the EU to use the leverage it has before it trades it away for gas access.
CAW CONTEXT
The June 22 dialogue in Ashgabat is not just a procedural event. The EU and Turkmenistan have a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement pending ratification — a document that would significantly deepen formal ties. The TCP gas pipeline is the other thread: Brussels needs Ashgabat's cooperation for any Trans-Caspian energy route, which gives Turkmenistan real negotiating leverage. The IPHR/TIHR briefing is an attempt to put the human rights condition back into that equation before the PCA ratification and TCP decisions are made. Whether the EU acts on it — or follows the pattern of the previous 17 dialogues, which produced incremental language and limited change — will become clear by end of June.