Will the Net Hurt or Harm Turkmenistan?

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Certainly, this interpretation seems consistent with what the government itself has said, including a 20 September statement that connected the planned satellite launch with catching up with the "critical role that telecommunication systems [have] played in the modern world."

There has obviously been no mention of the Internet's potential use for dissent. Yet, a certain tolerance for criticism would also be consistent with a policy geared toward long-term development.

However, given the government's consistently grievous track record on human rights and democracy, the idea that the authorities may actually envision a free and unfettered Internet as useful to the country's development strains credulity.

Another possibility, along the same lines, is that the government is naïve, incompetent, disorganized, or some combination of the three. The authorities may simply not yet understand the anarchic effect of the perceived anonymity that comes with the Internet – a social phenomenon known all too well in the wired West. Similarly, the government's online expansion may be outpacing its own ability to police the new cybernetic spaces its decisions are creating.

Yet, the mental image of the government somehow being caught off guard by the Internet, much less its own policies, seems highly unlikely. In fact, previously the authorities have demonstrated a very high aptitude in regulating the Internet.

A more frightening possibility, then, is that the authorities actually want digital dissent. They may be confident in their policing abilities to the extent that they don't feel a need to obsessively squash online dissent because they see it is as limited to an observable few and easily stoppable.

Conversely, the authorities may find digitalized dissent useful to vent discontent. Indeed, they may be seeking to lure out malcontents in order to catalog them for future elimination. It's an Orwellian proposition, yes, but Turkmenistan wouldn't be the first totalitarian regime to try it.

As always with this shadowy government, it is impossible to know its motivations. But one fact is clear: Turkmenistan has embarked upon an odyssey that could have major consequences for its future political and cultural life.

Recent events in Iran have shown that the Internet, once unleashed, is infectious and resilient. It carves out new and ever-shifting spaces of personal freedom too slippery for state control. It is within these spaces that dissatisfaction finds its voice. Dissidents, newly cyberized, discover that they are not alone and that there is strength in numbers, even binary ones.

Provided by Transitions Online—Intelligent Eastern Europe

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