Tariq Saeedi
For thirty years, Turkmenistan has lived its neutrality not as a quiet diplomatic footnote, but as a living, breathing conviction—one that begins in the home and reaches all the way to the world stage.
And at the very heart of that conviction stands the Turkmen woman. — She is not a symbol. She is the architect.
While much of the world still treats women’s empowerment as a trendy add-on to peace talks, Turkmenistan has understood something deeper, older, and truer: no society can call itself peaceful if its women are sidelined, and no nation can claim genuine neutrality if it picks sides in the oldest conflict of all—the one that tries to diminish half of humanity.
That is why, on December 9–10 in Awaza, something far more significant than another conference will take place. The International Conference “The Role of Women in Modern Society” is not a polite sideshow to the 30th anniversary of permanent neutrality. It is the clearest declaration yet of what neutrality actually means in Turkmenistan: a refusal to accept any form of confrontation—including the quiet, daily confrontation that says a woman’s voice matters less.
Central Asia has always known what Western conflict-resolution experts are only now rediscovering: lasting peace is not negotiated by men in suits behind closed doors. It is woven by women in kitchens, courtyards, classrooms, clinics, and fields.
It is the mother who teaches her son that strength is not domination, the grandmother who settles a feud between cousins with a single look, the sister who keeps extended families from splintering across continents. These are not sentimental traditions. They are proven statecraft at the most intimate level.
Turkmenistan is simply scaling that wisdom up.
When the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov Charitable Foundation join hands with the United Nations to host this conference during the International Year of Peace and Trust, they are not asking for permission to speak about women. They are showing the world how it’s done.
And they are doing it on their own terms—honoring women not by forcing them into male roles, but by recognizing the incomparable power of the roles they already embody: life-givers, bridge-builders, long-term thinkers, guardians of the future.
Watch closely: on the eve of the conference, a new branch of the Charitable Foundation will open its doors—because a neutral nation knows that protecting children and empowering the women who raise them is not charity. It is strategy. It is survival. It is the surest way to guarantee that the next generation inherits harmony instead of hatred.
This is what sets Turkmenistan’s model apart. It does not imitate. It does not lecture. It simply lives its truth: women and men are different, yes—but equally indispensable. Their roles complement, never compete. That balance is itself a form of neutrality: rejecting extremes, choosing harmony, proving that true equality is not sameness but mutual reverence.
And Awaza, that gleaming Caspian jewel, will host voices from every continent—not to be told how to think about women’s rights, but to witness a nation confident enough to say: “This is how we do it. This is how we keep peace for thirty years and counting. This is how we build a future worth inheriting.”
In a world that grows louder with division, more addicted to taking sides, Turkmenistan offers something radical: the courage to refuse every false choice. Including the one that pretends you can have real peace while treating women as anything less than indispensable.
That is not just neutrality. — That is moral clarity.
And it begins—and endures—with the women of Turkmenistan leading the way. /// nCa, 2 December 2025