Since 2014, the U.S. Department of State has designated Turkmenistan as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC), for its systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations. After Turkmenistan’s President stepped down in March of 2022, his son, Serdar Berdimuhamedov, came to power. Despite hopes of a loosening of these highly restrictive regulations on religious practice, they have remained in place. The Government of Turkmenistan continues to appoint Muslim clerics while also surveilling and dictating all religious practice, and punishing nonconformity through imprisonment, torture, and administrative harassment.

Forum 18 News Service editor, Felix Corley, joins us today to discuss Turkmenistan’s highly restrictive religious freedom conditions and its imprisonment of religious prisoners of conscience.

Read USCIRF’s 2022 Annual Report Chapter on Turkmenistan

With Contributions from:

Dwight Bashir, Director of Outreach and Policy, USCIRF

Veronica McCarthy, Public Affairs Associate, USCIRF