Conditionality, Impermeability, and Regime Stability: Rethinking EU Relations with Turkmenistan

The European Union’s declining emphasis on good governance in the implementation of the ‘New Strategy for Central Asia’ provided local leaderships with new opportunities to seek domestic political consolidation through foreign policy. This paper will place its spotlight on the identification and discussion of some of these strategies, with particular reference to post-2007 developments in EU-Turkmenistani relations. Here, particular attention will be placed upon the discussion of the complex nexus between conditionality and impermeability. Ultimately, this paper argues that EU normative aspirations came to clash with the power technologies of the Berdymuhamedov regime, relegating good governance promotion at the very margins of the increasingly close relationship linking Brussels with Ashgabat.