Gulshat Chmaisse 
June 9, 2026 
5 min read 
I began researching Turkmenistan’s migration system not only as a scholar, but also as someone who has lived migration personally. I left Turkmenistan in 2017 and have since lived, studied and worked across several countries. Along the way, I have met many Turkmen men and women abroad. Their stories were often different in detail, but they returned to the same themes: the need to earn money, the difficulty of leaving, the insecurity of life abroad, and the obligation to support families at home.
That is why I wrote Turkmenistan’s migration policies: Reshaping economy and society. The paper tries to explain a paradox. Turkmenistan depends on migration, but also obstructs it.
On paper, Turkmenistan does not look like a remittance-dependent country. The official figures suggest that money sent home from abroad plays only a tiny role in the economy. But anyone who speaks to Turkmen migrants, or to families who rely on them, knows that this is misleading. Remittances are often invisible because they pass through informal networks, cash transfers, trusted intermediaries and accounts in third countries. They do not show up clearly in official statistics.
In practice, these flows matter enormously. Money earned abroad helps families buy food, pay for housing, support children, and survive in an economy marked by inflation, low wages and limited state support. Remittances have become a kind of informal welfare system. They reduce pressure on the state by shifting unemployment abroad and sustaining household consumption at home.
But the same state that benefits from migration also restricts it. Leaving Turkmenistan can involve passport delays, opaque paperwork, informal payments, blacklists and arbitrary exit bans. Since the pandemic, these restrictions have become more visible and more uneven. Some people can leave. Others discover at the airport that they cannot. Political activists, journalists, students at “suspicious” foreign universities and relatives of dissidents are especially vulnerable.
Turkmenistan does not want to stop migration entirely, because remittances are useful. But it does want to control who leaves, when they leave, and under what conditions.
One of the most important consequences of this system is what I term the feminization of migration. More Turkmen women are leaving independently to work abroad, especially in Turkey. Until 2022, Turkmen citizens could travel to Turkey without a visa, and strong networks developed there. Even after the end of visa-free travel, Turkey remains the main destination for many labor migrants, while Russia is more important for students.
The gender pattern is an important one to understand properly. Men face particular scrutiny because of military service and border controls. I have seen men removed from planes because they had not completed military service. Women often face fewer obstacles to exit, while labor demand in Turkey is concentrated in domestic work, care work, cleaning and service jobs. These are sectors where Turkmen women can find work quickly, often through existing networks.
This creates new forms of agency, but also new vulnerabilities. Some women become the primary earners for their families. They send money home, support children, and build lives abroad. But many also work without secure legal status. If they return to Turkmenistan after overstaying abroad, they may face travel bans. Some mothers are separated from their children for years. In my fieldwork, I have met women whose children had grown up barely knowing them.
The risks are serious: exploitation, legal insecurity, social stigma and trafficking. These are not side issues. They are central to understanding how Turkmenistan’s migration system works.
My paper therefore argues that migration should not be treated as a marginal issue. It is now a structural part of Turkmenistan’s political economy.
Reform would be difficult to achieve, if the government aspires to it, but it is not impossible. Visa simplification, formal money-transfer channels, labor-mobility agreements and protections for female migrants would benefit not only migrants and their families, but also the Turkmen state itself.
Migration is already reshaping Turkmenistan. The question is whether policy will continue to push people into insecurity, or begin to recognize the reality on which so many families already depend.
Gulshat Chmaisse
PhD candidate at the Australian National University’s Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies
Read the full paper here:
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