A growing shortage of conscripts is threatening to disrupt the Turkmen government’s efforts to modernise the country’s armed forces.

RFE/RL reports that Turkmen officials are considering raising the maximum draft age to 30 in order to fill the ranks. Currently, Turkmen young men aged 18-27 are eligible to be drafted.

During a meeting of the State Security Council in early February, the top Turkmen military officials reportedly told President Serdar Berdimuhamedov “that the number of draft-age men is decreasing with each conscription season and has currently reached a catastrophic level,” RFE/RL quoted an “informed source” as saying. Participants at the meeting also discussed eliminating many medical exemptions for the draft.

Berdimuhamedov has made military modernisation a top governmental goal for 2025. “Among the priority tasks were identified the provision of the Armed Forces with advanced military equipment and means, [and] training in accordance with the realities of the time of officers and qualified specialists in the military sphere,” read a statement issued in the president’s name in January following an earlier State Security Council meeting.

Berdimuhamedov has also issued instructions to improve living and service conditions for conscripts and officers alike. In its most recent country report on Turkmenistan, watchdog group Freedom House noted that “physical abuse and hazing in the military have reportedly led to several deaths among conscripts in recent years.” 

Meeting draft quotas is not a new challenge for Turkmen officials. In 2022, Ashgabat ordered university students studying abroad to return home to undertake military service, even though university students were technically exempt from being conscripted.

Concurrent with efforts to bolster military capacity, Ashgabat has moved to address a major security challenge by improving diplomatic relations with the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan, which shares a roughly 800-kilometre-long (497-mile-long) frontier with Turkmenistan. On February 28, Turkmen and Afghan officials signed three agreements worth $7mn to improve cross-border rail connections. 

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.