Peace
and security strategy:
joining efforts in countering terrorism
Turkmenistan
is a competent member of international politics as one of active UN-member
states, makes its significant contribution to consolidate international
community efforts in countering the threats against humanity, especially
terrorism and radicalism. The President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly
Berdimuhamedov underlines that, countering terrorism acquires strategic
significance on the agenda of multilateral cooperation of Turkmenistan within Community
of Nations along with global tasks in ensuring security such as disarmament and
non-proliferation, transport and energy, environment and several other aspects
defined by the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Turkmenistan’s position rests upon fundamental concept of the President
of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov when state formulates approaches in
ensuring global security. The concept covers the completeness and
indivisibility of this idea in terms of geopolitics and interconnectedness of
its concrete aspects. The backbone of this concept is that security of one
state may not be guaranteed when there is no security in the region, continent
and world. In similar way, political and military security will not be
long-term and complete without ensuring economic, energy and food security,
preventing and neutralizing risks, threats of environmental and technological
character, countering effectively international terrorism, organized crimes,
proliferation of mass destruction weapons and other global challenges.
Terrorism and its all forms are very dangerous threats to humanity irrespective of development level of one specific country or others
and regions. Countering terrorism is becoming very important issue at present
when globalization process is deepening and where one of the most important
conditions is to ensure sustainable development of states and regions under
peaceful and safe environment. Terrorist movements acquire new forms at the
time of rapidly advancing technology, technological progress, mass media
communication development, different types of information dissemination and
this requires effective measures of countering
Turkmenistan takes all necessary measures and actions at the national
and international level to eliminate threats against peace and security as well
as counters terrorist and radical acts.
National legislation of Turkmenistan provides сlear definition and forms legal framework in this field.
More particularly,
the Law of Turkmenistan “On countering terrorism” stipulates legal and
organizational base for countering terrorism, authorities and responsibilities of state
bodies, social
assosiations, other entities and competent authorities, as well as it defines guarantees
for legal and soial protection of citizens involved in countering terrorism.
The Law of Turkmenistan defines terrorism as follows: «terrorism – is an ideology
of violence and actions to influence central government, local government,
either international organizations or other entities decision-making process;
socially dangerous acts which use force intentionally for hostage taking,
arson, murder, torture, intimidation of population and bodies of power or
committing any offence against lives and health of innocent people or threats
to commit any act for achieving such criminal goals»
The same Law defines international terrorism as follows: «international terrorism – is socially dangerous violent acts commited with terrorist
groups or organizations on global or regional scale including the support of state
bodies of other states with the purpose of achieving specific goals related to
kidnapping, hostage taking, murdering innocent people or posing threat to their
lives and health, destructing or threat of destructing important facilities, life
support, communication systems or using or posing threat of using nuclear,
chemical, biological other weapons of mass destruction.
It is evident that, the terrorism may be countered successfully with
only joint efforts of states in close cooperation with international agencies.
In this regard, Turkmenistan cooperates closely with other states, as well as,
reputable international bodies, first and foremost the UN, EU and OSCE.
Turkmenistan closely coordinates its actions with the UN on countering terrorism,
drug trafficking and other threats. Strategic partnership between Turkmenistan and
the UN is long-term, implemented in systemic basis and similar principles and
views on final outcome are shared. In this context, Turkmenistan supports efforts
of international community to effective mechanism for countering
terrorism and is for fully implementation of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.
These facts
demonstrate that, Turkmenistan maintains constructive and efficient cooperation
with international agencies such as the
UN Counter-Terrorism Office, UN
Regional Center for Central Asia for Preventive
Diplomacy and neighboring countries.
Turkmenistan demonstrates its strict adherence to UN Global
Counter-Terrorism Strategy in practice and attaches regional context to it
taking into account historical, economic, social, cultural and other features
of one or another region. In this regard, high level dialogue in the region
will give political impetus to adopt necessary, complementary and coordinated
strategic approach to counter terrorism for Central Asian States. Consolidating
efforts and developing commonly accepted approach in the states of the region
to address existing issues will lead to explore and find effective ways of
addressing them.
It is a fact that,
International community recognized
the peaceful policies of
the President of independent and neutral Turkmenistan – Gurbanguly
Berdimuhamedov when the Resolution on «The role of UN Regional
Center for Central Asia for Preventive Diplomacy» was adopted.
Counter-Terrorism
Implementation Task Force was d with the purpose of ensuring the consistency
of UN activities in given field. The Office coordinates membership in CTITF
which covers 36 UN agencies, World Customs Organization and Interpol. United
Nations Counter-Terrorism Center (UNCTC) which was established within CTITF in
2011 provides assistance to member states in capacity building in Strategy
implementation.
Turkmenistan
participates in project
implemented jointly by Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force (CTITF) of
United Nations Counter-Terrorism Center (UNCTC) and UN Regional Center
for Central Asia for Preventive Diplomacy (UNRCCA) in
Ashgabat with the support of EU and Norway. UN
Regional Center for Central Asia
for Preventive Diplomacy implemented project on applying abovementioned UN
Strategy in Central Asian States jointly with Counter-Terrorism Implementation
Task Force and EU. On November 30, 2011,
Joint Action Plan on implementing UN Global
Counter-Terrorism Strategy and Ashgabat Final Declaration
were approved in the high level
meeting jointly organized by the Government of
Turkmenistan, CTITF, EU and UNRCCA in Ashgabat.
This Action Plan was the first document ever
adopted. The projects on Action Plan items were implemented in
the past years. On June 13, 2017, the final event in
the second phase of
project “on implementing Joint Action
plan to realize UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy” took place
when “High-level UN Central Asian Dialogue among countries and the on
implementing the UN Global Counter-Terrorism
Strategy in Central Asia” was held in Ashgabat. The main ive of the
meeting was to discuss the issues related to improving
stability and security and the ways to achieve them.
General Secretary
of the UN Antonio Guterras, ministers, senior officials,
the representatives of countering
terrorism agencies and national security
agencies from Kazakhstan,
the Kyrgyz Republic, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan participated in
the sessions. The review of joint Action Plan for Central Asia to implement UN
Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy at the regional level was presented.
Joint Declaration on strengthening regional cooperation in countering terrorism
was adopted at the end of meeting. UN General Secretary Antonio Guterras
welcomed Ashgabat Declaration on countering terrorism adopted by Central Asian
countries and their permanent efforts to implement UN Global Counter-Terrorism
Strategy and joint Action Plan for Central Asia. The Declaration represented support
given to General Secretary’s initiative of to reform the UN countering
terrorism office by creating new Office for countering terrorism and recognized
the importance of efforts to counter terrorism in the region by the community
of nations.
There was a high-level meeting "Towards a
comprehensive implementation of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in
Central Asia" at the end of April 2018, in Ashgabat and the third phase of
a joint project on supporting the Joint Action Plan for Central Asia was
launched. The first and second phases of the project were implemented in
2010-2017 and are dedicated to consider four main directions of the Global
Strategy for drafting recommendations for the development of the JAP, which was
adopted in December 2011 in Ashgabat.
While delivering speech , the UN Under-Secretary-General and head of the UN
Counter-Terrorism Office, Vladimir Voronkov underlined that the main activities of the project
would include providing targeted support in developing national and regional
strategies to counter terrorism and prevent violent extremism, further
strengthening the capacity of the Central Asian countries in priority areas
identified in the JAP for Central Asia and facilitating the exchange of best
practices in the region and beyond it.
During the meeting, the Deputy Minister of Foreign
Affairs of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov stated the readiness of Turkmenistan
to cooperate with the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Center (UNCTC) on the
implementation of the Ashgabat Action Plan of the UN Counter-Terrorism
Strategy. In this context, the Turkmen side made several concrete proposals by using the UNRCCA in given direction.
The Statement on the outcomes of High-level meeting "Towards a
Comprehensive Implementation of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in
Central Asia" was adopted at the end of the forum. It is expected in the
long term that the new phase of the joint regional counter-terrorism initiative
of UNRCCA and the UNCTC entitled "Towards a comprehensive implementation
of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in Central Asia" will be aimed
at further strengthening the capacity of the Central Asian states in the field
of countering terrorism and preventing violent extremism in a strategic basis.
One of the emerging and acute problems is the elimination of terrorist financing sources,
where special attention needs to be paid to combat drug trafficking. Enormous
work is being done in this direction under the leadership of President
Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, including legal framework and the organizational
basis development for this work in Turkmenistan.
Turkmenistan maintains close, effective and targeted
cooperation with neighboring states, as well as with specialized UN agencies,
primarily with the UNODC. Long-term national programs for combating drug
addiction and drug trafficking have been adopted and are being implemented and
good results are obtained.
Thus, Turkmenistan pursues foreign policy directed at eliminating threats and dangers against peace
and makes its significant contribution to consolidate international efforts.
The International Information Department of the MFA of Turkmenistan
한국국제교류재단
