Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon this week, during a working visit by Kazakh Foreign Minister Murat Nurtleu, finally signed the Treaty of Friendship, Good-Neighborliness, and Cooperation for the Development of Central Asia in the 21st Century.
The treaty was signed amid the fourth Consultative Meeting of Central Asian Leaders on July 21, 2022 by the presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Tajikistan and Turkmenistan demurred, citing the need to adhere to their own “domestic political procedures.”
RFE/RL’s Farangis Najibullah and Ainura Asankojoeva wrote on July 22, 2022:
… Tajik and Turkmen officials offered no time frame for when the “procedures” will be done or what exactly needs to be done.
Analysts dismissed it as an excuse, saying that in authoritarian countries like Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, all major political decisions rest with the presidents themselves, not with the people or the parliaments.
Reporting on the treaty a few days later, Tajik news outlet Asia Plus cited Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Jeenbek Kulubayev telling journalists that Tajikistan and Turkmenistan had “asked for a time-out of 2-3 weeks” before signing the treaty.
Three years later, Dushanbe has finally signed onto the treaty, which, per a draft that was published by Kazakhstan, lays out a new era in regional cooperation.
Across its 32 articles, the treaty epitomizes the most momentous shift in Central Asian regional relations over the last decade: a concerted effort at engaging in tangible regional cooperation.
Article 1, for example, commits the Central Asian states to building “their relations on the basis of mutual respect, equality, mutual understanding, and comprehensive consideration of each other’s interests” and consolidating their efforts “in order to ensure lasting peace in the region and create favorable conditions for the sustainable and progressive development of the Central Asian states.”
Of particular note back in 2022, given the Russian war in Ukraine – and of no less salience now – was Article 5, which hinted at collective defense. It did not commit the signatories to more than consulting together, “[i]n the event of a situation that poses a threat to the security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of one” of the signatories “with the aim of determining measures that will contribute to the effective prevention of the threat that has arisen.” But even hinting at the concept of collective defense is a significant step for Central Asia.
Article 6 – in which the signatories “confirm their firm commitment to refrain from the use of force or threat of force in interstate relations between themselves…” – may have been why Tajikistan didn’t sign on in 2022. The previous year, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan had engaged in violent clashes along their unsettled border. In September 2022, the violence escalated uncomfortably close to outright war, involving drone strikes and mortar fire.
Over the last decade, the five states of Central Asia have moved ever closer together. One catalyst was the 2016 passing of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, whose vision for Uzbekistan was notoriously insular (self-sufficient, he would have argued). His successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has embraced a far more cooperative vision for the region, and Uzbekistan – literally the center of Central Asia – is critical for any regional cooperative efforts to bear fruit.
Meanwhile, one of the motivational reasons for greater Central Asian cooperation hasn’t changed since 2022 – that is, the Russian war in Ukraine. It’s no coincidence that at the heart of the friendship treaty are the concepts of “independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
At the same time, one of the largest spoilers preventing deeper cooperation – the difficult relationship between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – has seen distinct progress (albeit progress that is a product of authoritarian leadership and thus may face difficulties in on-the-ground implementation if not handled deftly).
After 33 years of independence in which the Kyrgyz-Tajik border was not agreed upon, and after years of negotiations, in December 2024, the governments of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan announced that they had come to an agreement on the border. In February 2025, they two sides finalized the deal and in April the Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Uzbek presidents held a groundbreaking trilateral summit in Khujand, Tajikistan – a significant marker of the progress made in the fractious Fergana Valley where their borders meet.
The settling of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan’s border disagreements arguably unlocked the door to Dushanbe’s signature on the friendship treaty.
The 7th Consultative Meeting of Central Asian Leaders is due to take place in Uzbekistan later this year.
No word on whether Turkmenistan will sign onto the friendship treaty.
