ABSTRACT
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen government initiated simultaneous economic and political reforms. In the economic sphere, the intended transitional trajectory was to open the Turkmen economy to the global economic system, by facilitating its exit from the highly centralised Soviet system. Similarly to the process of political transition, economic reforms in post-Soviet Turkmenistan had been controlled by the central government. Economic policies implemented since 1992 had facilitated the process of regime establishment and a number of economic reforms had helped to strengthen the position of Niyazov and his associates. There is no reason to think that the economic foreign policy, driven within the framework of the Doctrine of Positive Neutrality, represented an exception to this norm.
