The Conversation Heard Around the World: What Ashgabat Promises Generation Beta
Tariq Saeedi and Elvira Kadyrova
As the final echoes of speeches faded in Ashgabat on December 12, 2025, what lingered was not merely diplomatic courtesy but something far more significant: the dawning recognition that active, dynamic neutrality is not a relic of 20th-century idealism but a framework whose moment has finally arrived—perhaps just in time.
Beyond Ceremony: A Global Brainstorming Session
This gathering represented something unprecedented in contemporary diplomacy. When President Putin of Russia sat in the same hall as President Pezeshkian of Iran, when President Erdogan of Turkey shared a platform with leaders from Armenia and Azerbaijan, when the Prime Ministers of Pakistan and Myanmar joined Presidents from Iraq and Sao Tome and Principe, it signaled more than protocol. It demonstrated that Turkmenistan’s thirty-year commitment to neutrality has created something the world desperately needs: a space where competitors can think together rather than merely compete.
This was not a traditional conference where nations arrive with entrenched positions and haggle over communiqué language. It was, in President Tokayev’s words about UN reform and President Mirziyoyev’s vision for preventive diplomacy, a genuine brainstorming session conducted at planetary scale—where ideas like Kazakhstan’s International Water Organization could be proposed in the morning and endorsed by afternoon, where Turkmenistan’s University of Peace and Neutrality could move from concept to international support within hours.
The real measure of success will not be found in the transcripts of December 12, but in the decisions these leaders make when they return home. Will Kazakhstan actually launch those water organization consultations in April 2026? Will Uzbekistan use its 2027 NAM chairmanship to genuinely advance preventive diplomacy? Will Russia and Turkey translate their economic commitments into sustained investment? Will Iran’s “active and responsible neutrality” concept influence its regional diplomacy?
The test of Ashgabat will be written across a hundred capitals in the months ahead, in languages and contexts far removed from the conference hall, but carrying the DNA of ideas exchanged there.
The Broader Ecosystem: Ideas Without Borders
What made this conference particularly significant was not merely the impressive roster of speakers—eight presidents, multiple prime ministers—but the broader ecosystem it represented and the principles it activated.
Consider who was in the room: the formal addresses we analyzed came from leaders representing Russia (world’s largest country by area, nuclear superpower), Turkey (NATO member bridging Europe and Asia), Iran (major Middle Eastern power), and all five Central Asian republics. But the inaugural session also heard from Armenia and Azerbaijan (nations technically in conflict), Iraq (rebuilding after decades of turmoil), Pakistan (nuclear power of 240 million people), Myanmar (ASEAN’s bridge to South Asia), Georgia (South Caucasus democracy), Sao Tome and Principe (African island nation), and Eswatini (Southern African kingdom).
This geographic and political diversity—from the Arctic to the Equator, from autocracies to democracies, from energy exporters to energy importers, from landlocked nations to maritime states—validates President Berdimuhamedov’s assertion that neutrality is “a living, creative process” that resonates across vastly different contexts.
And beyond those who spoke were the numerous delegations unable to send heads of state or government—whether due to scheduling, domestic priorities, or diplomatic calculations—yet whose representatives absorbed these ideas and will carry them home.
In our age of instant communication, physical presence determines attendance but not participation. The principles of preventive diplomacy, the model of water cooperation, the framework for transportation integration—these require no visas to cross borders. They will circulate through diplomatic cables, academic journals, civil society networks, and media coverage worldwide.
As President Pezeshkian emphasized in his call to “rethink peace,” the real roots of war lie in inequality, monopoly, and discrimination embedded in global structures. The Ashgabat proposals—from Kazakhstan’s demand for UN Security Council reform to Iran’s concept of “active and responsible neutrality”—directly challenge those structures. These ideas, once released into the global conversation, take on lives of their own.
The Urgency Generation Beta Cannot Wait For
But beneath the diplomatic language and policy proposals runs a deeper current of urgency, one that several speakers acknowledged and all must feel. — We stand a quarter of the way through the twenty-first century. The children being born in 2025—demographers call them Generation Beta—will come of age in a world shaped by the decisions being made right now.
President Erdogan invoked the words of the great Turkmen poet Magtymguly Pyragy: “Let beautiful days come, let peace reign. Let every country be peaceful, and every people prosperous.” These are not merely poetic aspirations but urgent necessities.
The babies sleeping tonight in Ashgabat or Mexico City or Jakarta, still cradled in their mothers’ wombs in Lagos or Stockholm or Manila, will eventually ask the questions every generation asks its predecessors: What kind of world did you build for us? When you saw the problems clearly, when you had the tools to address them, what did you do?
Those questions will demand honest answers. Generation Beta will grow up with access to historical records in ways no previous generation has experienced. They will examine the climate data from 2025, the hunger statistics, the refugee flows, the military expenditures.
They will compare what was known with what was done. They will ask why, if solutions were available—if conferences like Ashgabat identified concrete proposals for water management, transportation integration, preventive diplomacy, and economic cooperation—the world struggled so desperately to coordinate its response.
President Rahmon’s call for a “Decade of Strengthening Peace for the Sake of Future Generations” speaks directly to this intergenerational responsibility. It is not for our sake that Tajikistan proposes this decade, or that Kazakhstan seeks to reform the UN, or that Turkmenistan offers its neutral ground for dialogue. It is for those who will inherit the consequences of our choices.
What Active Neutrality Means in Practice
The Ashgabat conference cannot, by itself, provide a satisfying answer to Generation Beta’s future questions. No single gathering bears that weight. But it can—and perhaps did—mark a moment of collective acknowledgment: that the path we have traveled is insufficient, that the frameworks we have relied upon are buckling under interconnected global challenges, and that alternatives exist if we summon the will to embrace them.
Active and dynamic neutrality, as President Berdimuhamedov articulated and as other leaders endorsed, is neither passivity nor isolationism. It is, as President Pezeshkian clarified, about “adopting principled and fair positions against any injustice and blatant violation of sovereignty and rights.” It is, as President Japarov demonstrated through Kyrgyzstan’s border agreements with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, about choosing dialogue over confrontation. It is, as President Putin showed in Russia’s 35% trade growth with Turkmenistan, about allowing mutual benefit to override zero-sum thinking.
This is a deliberate choice to serve as bridge rather than partisan, to offer dialogue rather than ultimatums, to seek collaborative solutions rather than competitive advantages.
In a century already scarred by climate disruption, pandemic risk, technological transformation, and mass displacement, the nations that can play this bridging role—that can convene conversations others cannot, that can propose compromises requiring no victor and no vanquished—will prove indispensable.
What Ashgabat underlined is that this principle need not be limited to officially neutral states. Elements of the neutrality framework—prioritizing preventive diplomacy (Uzbekistan’s 2027 initiative), investing in connectivity infrastructure (Kyrgyzstan’s transport corridors), treating water and energy as shared challenges rather than weapons (Kazakhstan’s water organization, Russia’s North-South corridor), maintaining communication channels even amid disagreement (Turkey’s continued engagement with both Russia and Ukraine)—can be adopted by any nation willing to subordinate short-term tactical gain to long-term strategic stability.
From Rhetoric to Reality: The Translation Challenge
The leaders who gathered in Ashgabat came from different political systems, different historical experiences, different geographic realities. They spoke different languages—literally and figuratively. President Erdogan invoked Turkish-Turkmen brotherhood and common civilization. President Pezeshkian framed peace in terms of confronting global inequality. President Tokayev focused on institutional reform and water security. President Mirziyoyev emphasized cultural dialogue and youth engagement. President Japarov highlighted practical infrastructure cooperation. President Rahmon centered environmental threats and future generations. President Putin stressed economic pragmatism and multipolar partnership.
Yet through these varied idioms ran a common recognition: that the zero-sum competitions of the past century have yielded diminishing returns, and that Turkmenistan’s three-decade experiment in active neutrality offers practical value for a world that can no longer afford perpetual strategic rivalry.
They return to countries facing different pressures and pursuing different priorities. But they return having participated in a conversation that reframed neutrality not as abdication of responsibility but as an active form of global citizenship. They return having heard from peers that the benefits of this approach—reduced tension, increased trade, enhanced security, expanded dialogue—are tangible and achievable.
Whether they act on what they heard is now the question. — Whether the brainstorm translates into policy shifts, whether Kazakhstan actually convenes those water consultations in April 2026, whether Uzbekistan genuinely makes 2027 a Year of Preventive Diplomacy, whether the University of Peace and Neutrality moves from proposal to institution, whether the North-South corridor gets built, whether the Youth for Peace and Trust program actually mobilizes the next generation—these will be the measures by which history judges this conference.
The World Generation Beta Deserves
A quarter-century into this era, as Generation Beta begins to arrive, we owe them more than promises. We owe them what President Rahmon called “the triumph of peace as a guarantee of ensuring justice, equality, and respect for human rights and freedoms.” We owe them what President Mirziyoyev described as “cooperation based on mutual respect, trust, and solidarity capable of bringing the most ambitious plans to life.” We owe them what President Berdimuhamedov embodied in Turkmenistan’s constitutional commitment to “peace and trust as indisputable postulates of world politics.”
We owe them a world that has learned from the failures of the twentieth century and has not simply replicated them with sleeker technology. We owe them demonstrable commitment to the idea that nations can advance their interests without undermining others, that security can be collective rather than zero-sum, that prosperity can be shared without being diminished.
President Putin spoke of building relations “based on the principles of the UN Charter” in “this new era of a multipolar world.” President Tokayev called for “restoring strategic balance and building a fair world order” through UN reform. President Pezeshkian insisted that “peace and development can only be achieved through equal dialogue, collective cooperation, respect for international law.” President Erdogan pledged Turkey’s readiness “to take responsibility for establishing international dialogue, cooperation, trust, and peace.”
These are not empty words if—and only if—they translate into the concrete actions outlined in Parts One and Two of this analysis: the water organization, the transport corridors, the preventive diplomacy initiatives, the cultural exchanges, the youth programs, the educational institutions, the reformed international frameworks.
Ashgabat’s Accountability Moment
The babies in their cribs tonight, in Ashgabat and everywhere else, will not remember this conference. But they will live with its consequences—or with the consequences of its failure.
When they ask us, as they surely will, what we did when we could see both the problems and the solutions clearly, the answer will need to be more than speeches delivered in December 2025. It will need to be visible in the world we built: in rivers shared equitably, in trains moving freely across borders, in universities teaching peace, in young people engaged in cultural dialogue, in conflicts prevented before they erupt, in institutions reformed to serve all rather than a privileged few.
President Berdimuhamedov declared that “neutrality is not a fixed construction, but a lively creative process that keeps up with the times, responding to new changes and trends.” The Ashgabat conference provided the creative space for that process. Eight presidents, multiple prime ministers, and delegations from across the globe contributed their visions to this collective creation.
Now comes the hard part: the implementation, the follow-through, the transformation of diplomatic language into policy reality, of proposals into programs, of aspirations into achievements.
Ashgabat has provided the conversation. The world is watching for the action.
And Generation Beta, whether they know it yet or not, will be the ones grading our work. They will measure us not by the beauty of our words in conference halls, but by the world those words helped create—or failed to create.
The poet Magtymguly knew this centuries ago: “Let conscience multiply, let oppression disappear, let everything be filled with joy.” These are not passive wishes but active demands. They require will, coordination, sacrifice, and sustained effort across borders and generations.
Turkmenistan’s thirty years of neutrality have created a platform.
The December 2025 conference filled that platform with ideas, proposals, and commitments. The next thirty years will reveal whether those ideas were seeds planted in fertile ground—or words spoken into wind.
For the sake of Generation Beta, for the sake of Magtymguly’s vision, for the sake of “beautiful days” and “prosperous peoples,” let them be seeds. Let this be the moment we chose building over competing, dialogue over confrontation, collaboration over isolation, peace over perpetual rivalry.
Let the children yet unborn look back on Ashgabat and see not merely where we talked, but where we began to build the world they deserved.
The conversation has happened. History awaits the action. /// nCa, 13 December 2025