Ashgabat’s interaction with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) started in March 1992, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Turkmenistan, along with other post-Soviet states, joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, which was later re-named the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC). In July 1992, at the Helsinki Summit of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, first Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov declared that Turkmenistan would adhere to the principle of positive neutrality as the basis of its foreign policy, but this did not prevent Turkmenistan from be-coming the first Central Asian country to join the alliance’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) program in May 1994.
Dauren Aben holds a Master’s in International Relations from Kainar University, Almaty, Kazakhstan, and a Master’s in International Policy Studies and certificates in nonproliferation studies, conflict resolution, and commercial diplomacy from the California-based Monterey Institute of International Studies. Dauren previously worked as a senior project manager and researcher at the Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education. In 2011-2014, he worked as a senior research fellow at the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In 2008-20