Turkmenistan

Cluster Munition Ban Policy

Last updated: 04 September 2020

Ten-Year Review: Non-signatory Turkmenistan has never commented on the humanitarian concerns raised by cluster munitions or elaborated its position on joining the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It has participated in meetings of the convention, but not since 2015. Turkmenistan was absent from the vote on a key United Nations (UN) resolution promoting the convention in December 2019.

Turkmenistan is not known to have used, produced, or exported cluster munitions, but it possesses a stockpile.

Policy

The Republic of Turkmenistan has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Turkmenistan did not participate in the Oslo Process that created the convention and has never made a public statement on cluster munitions.

Turkmenistan participated as an observer in the convention’s First Review Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia in September 2015. This marked its first and, to date, only attendance at a meeting of the convention.

In December 2019, Turkmenistan was absent from the vote on a key UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution thatcalled on states outside the Convention on Cluster Munitions to “join as soon as possible.”[1] Turkmenistan has been absent from the vote on all previous UNGA resolutions promoting the convention since the annual resolution was first introduced in 2015.

Turkmenistan is party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

Turkmenistan is not known to have used or produced cluster munitions.

Turkmenistan possesses cluster munitions that it inherited from the break-up of the Soviet Union. It has never shared information on the types and quantities the stockpiled cluster munitions.[2] It is reported to possess Smerch 300mm, Uragan 220mm, and Grad 122mm unguided surface-to-surface rockets, but it is not known if these include versions with submunition payloads.[3] Turkmenistan reportedly received a transfer six Smerch rocket launchers in 2009–2010.[4]



[1]Implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions,” UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 74/62, 12 December 2019.

[2] As part of its Mine Ban Treaty obligations, Turkmenistan destroyed a stockpile of remotely delivered antipersonnel mines, specifically 5,452,416 PFM-type scatterable mines contained in 75,718 KSF-type cassettes, which are sometimes identified as cluster munitions. See, ICBL, Landmine Monitor Report 2004: Toward a Mine-Free World (New York: Human Rights Watch, October 2004), pp. 830–832. Turkmenistan may also have stocks of cluster munitions from when the main ammunition storage facility for Soviet combat operations in Afghanistan was located in Charjoh (now Turkmenabad), according to Turkmeni military officers in April 2004.

[3] International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2011 (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 279; and Colin King, ed., Jane’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal, CD-edition, 10 January 2008 (Surrey, UK: Jane’s Information Group Limited, 2008).

[4] Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “Arms Transfers Database.” Recipient report for Turkmenistan for the period 1950–2011, generated on 4 May 2012.