Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan ranked 173rd of 180 countries in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index, with a score of 23.06. This represented an improvement of one position and 3.92 points from 174th and 19.14 in 2025. It had ranked 175th in 2024, 176th in 2023 and 177th in 2022.

Turkmenistan remains the lowest-ranked of the five Central Asian republics, below Tajikistan at 155th, Kazakhstan at 149th, Uzbekistan at 147th and Kyrgyzstan at 146th. It also ranks one place below Russia at 172nd.

The Government maintains tight control over newspapers, radio, television and the internet, with news amounting largely to praise for the regime. Independent and opposition media operate from abroad, while the few journalists and sources remaining inside Turkmenistan work covertly and risk prosecution, imprisonment and torture. Citizens lack access to worldwide information sources online and risk fines for using virtual private networks to circumvent internet censorship.

State Media Monitor maps three entries in Turkmenistan. All are classified State-Controlled, and none sits in the independent family.

Turkmen TV is State Media Monitor’s analytical grouping for the broadcasting system administered by the State Committee for Television, Radio Broadcasting and Cinematography, established on 17 October 2011. The Committee’s current institutional page lists eight television channels and four radio services.

The Turkmen State Publishing Service is an identifiable state body providing publishing, printing, distribution, subscription and sales infrastructure for the newspaper and magazine sector. Its platform currently lists 27 newspaper or newspaper-supplement categories and 28 magazine or electronic-journal categories. These are platform categories and should not be treated automatically as 55 separately constituted, currently active media organisations.

TDH, the Turkmenistan State News Agency, is the central state news agency. It publishes in Turkmen, Russian and English and is the founder of the electronic newspaper Turkmenistan: Golden Age.

Only Turkmen TV is an analytical grouping rather than a single institution. The Publishing Service and TDH are identifiable state bodies. The Publishing Service entry nevertheless covers a wider print system in which the founder, editorial office, publisher and distributor of a title may be legally distinct. Inclusion on its platform is therefore evidence of a publishing or distribution relationship, but not by itself conclusive evidence of ownership.

A single pattern runs through all three entries: formal legal safeguards exist, but State Media Monitor identified no independent mechanism capable of enforcing them.

Article 4 of the Law on Mass Media, Law No. 355-IV of 22 December 2012, declares the media free, guarantees freedom of expression through the media and prohibits censorship, unlawful interference, pressure on journalists and monopolisation. The law entered into force on 4 January 2013 and applies to print publications, broadcasting, online media and regular news-agency releases.

Articles 15 to 17 distinguish the roles of founder, editorial office and publisher, describe editorial offices as professionally independent and require editorial charters governing the appointment of editors and editorial boards. The same provisions nevertheless allow founders to determine a publication’s aims, approve its charter and participate in the appointment or dismissal of its editor under the applicable charter or agreement.

Shortly after the law entered into force, media freedom NGOs described it as a dead letter, finding that its formal guarantees were contradicted by comprehensive state control. Current evidence supports that assessment. State Media Monitor identified no independent supervisory board, protected appointment procedure or external oversight mechanism at any of the three mapped entries.

Presidential control extends from the heads of the three institutions to individual channels and editorial offices. Meýlis Rejepow was appointed Chairman of the State Committee for Television, Radio Broadcasting and Cinematography by presidential decree on 12 July 2024, moving from the leadership of the Aşgabat television channel. His predecessor was dismissed on health grounds, and new directors of two other channels were appointed the same day.

Mahmut Çaryýew was appointed Chairman of the Turkmen State Publishing Service by presidential decree on 9 February 2024. Merdan Gazakbaýew was appointed Chairman of TDH on 11 February 2021, with a deputy appointed by presidential resolution at the same time, according to the Government’s published personnel decisions.

Presidential intervention also continued during the review period. In February 2026, the President appointed a new director of the Altyn Asyr channel and reassigned the director of Arkadag. On 10 July 2026, he removed the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Nesil and appointed Hallygözel Şanazarowa as successor on six months’ probation.

The available evidence establishes that financing across the three entries remains under state control, but it does not establish uniform or exclusively direct state-budget financing.

Presidential Resolution No. 4680 of 4 May 2000 provides that TDH is financed from the centralised budget and directs that annual funding be provided for its development and technical modernisation.

For broadcasting, media freedom NGOs broadly describe Turkmen media as government-owned and government-financed. At the same time, presidential instructions issued in 2017 and 2021 called for television and radio channels to move towards self-financing through advertising and other self-accounting revenue. The State Committee currently lists four self-accounting entities under its authority, including the Mahabat advertising company. State Media Monitor could not determine the present balance between budgetary and commercial income.

For print, local experts interviewed by State Media Monitor and earlier independent reporting describe the Publishing Service as operating through a self-financing model based principally on compulsory subscriptions. Public-sector employees have repeatedly been required to subscribe to newspapers or magazines assigned through their workplaces. Because the subscriptions are institutionally compelled, this revenue remains a form of state-controlled financing rather than an independent commercial market.

Journalists working domestically face restrictions extending beyond censorship. In November 2023, border officials prevented independent journalist and human rights defender Soltan Achilova from travelling to Geneva after deliberately damaging her and her daughter’s passports, according to Human Rights Watch. In November 2024, Achilova and two family members were forcibly hospitalised on the day she was due to leave for an international human rights event and were held for six days.

In material published in March 2026, Achilova described two further alleged poisoning incidents in September and October 2025. These allegations added to concerns about her safety previously expressed by human rights organisations and United Nations experts. The incidents remain allegations and are attributed as such.

Nurgeldy Khalykov was released in June 2024 after serving a four-year sentence imposed on charges widely regarded as retaliation for his cooperation with Turkmen.news. On 12 January 2025, authorities prevented him from boarding a flight to the United Arab Emirates, where he was due to begin work outside journalism. In December 2025, the State Migration Service justified the continuing restriction by asserting that his departure would be contrary to national security interests.

Former Radio Azatlyk correspondent Khudayberdy Allashov died on 13 August 2024, aged 35. Reporters Without Borders said he had endured eight years of detention, torture, surveillance and harassment after working for the independent outlet for three months.

More recent reporting raises concerns about repression of social-media commentary. International Partnership for Human Rights cited RFE/RL reporting that TikTok blogger Didar Amansakhatov disappeared in November 2025 after criticising rising food prices and was believed to have been detained, tortured and to have died from his injuries. The case has not been publicly acknowledged by the Turkmen authorities and is presented as reported rather than conclusively established.

Repression also extends beyond Turkmenistan’s borders. Bloggers Alisher Sakhatov and Abdulla Orusov were detained in Turkey in April 2025 and ordered deported on public-security grounds. Turkey’s Constitutional Court suspended their deportation in July 2025 so that the risks associated with returning them to Turkmenistan could be assessed. They subsequently disappeared following their reported release from detention.

Their whereabouts remained unconfirmed in 2026. Relatives and human rights organisations fear that they may have been forcibly returned to Turkmenistan and imprisoned. In April 2026, a Turkish prosecutor requested surveillance footage from the detention centre, which said that the recordings were no longer available.

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