THE INTERNET’S SLOW ADVANCE IN THE TURKIC WORLD

In spite of its current messiness, Kyrgyzstan’s revolution provides an illustrative example for those who claim that Internet freedom leads to political freedom.  They find in Kyrgyzstan, as they did in Iran, a wired population and a political revolution, and assume that one causes the other. There is only tentative evidence of this claim, but there is more substantial evidence of the reverse causal relationship; that is, political freedom causing Internet freedom in the Turkic world.

BACKGROUND: Internet subscriptions in Turkic states are quite low relative to both global rates and Turkic subscription rates to a comparable technology: cell phones.  Today most Turkic peoples use cell phones, but only a minority uses the Internet.Globally, mobile phones subscription growth has slightly outpaced the growth of Internet subscriptions, but in Turkic states mobile phones subscriptions have far outpaced Internet subscriptions. Over half of the Turkic peoples have mobile phone subscriptions, but barely 10 percent have Internet subscriptions.

The ratio of Internet-to-mobile subscriptions (Internet subscription rate/cell phone subscription rate) illustrates the relative growth of the two technologies. Only in Kyrgyzstan does the ratio approximate the global ratio; everywhere else in the Turkic world, the ratio is smaller than the global ratio.

This ratio is smaller in Turkic states not because these states have extraordinary mobile phone subscription rates, but because they have lower Internet subscription rates than the global average. Income does not play an exclusive causal role: Turkic states, on aggregate, also have a lower Internet subscription rate than countries with equivalent GDP per capita income (US$ 8,000). Kyrgyzstan provides further evidence that income is not everything when it comes to Internet proliferation — it is both the poorest and the most wired Turkic state. Certainly poverty prevents individuals from subscribing to phones and the Internet, but if poverty has a constant effect on Internet and phone subscription rates, the ratio should either vary in correlation with income, or stay uniform as income differs between states. However, in reality the ratio differs both across and within different wealth levels. 

What about timing? The Turkic region is remote and the Internet market was only launched in the last decade. A comparison with the cell phone market provides a helpful contrast: cell phones services also arrived late, but rapid sales more than compensated for the delay. In fact, mobile phone markets that opened later experienced faster growth than markets that opened earlier. For example, cell phones were introduced in Turkey in 1996 and in Kazakhstan in 2000, but today there are more cell phone subscribers per capita in Kazakhstan than in Turkey.  Mobile phone use has increased rapidly in every Turkic state, with growth in Turkey beginning in the late 1990s and steadily growing since. Only in Kyrgyzstan has Internet growth kept reasonably apace.

If not poverty or delayed market entry, what has impeded Internet subscription in the Turkic world?  The answer, in short, is political history. Most Turkic states, including Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, run Internet markets in the Soviet style. The approach is a contradictory one: on the one hand, regimes announce ambitious Internet development plans “as a means for national development”. On the other hand,  they construct elaborate curbs on online content. The Open Net Initiative (ONI) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) rank Turkic states—notably Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan—among the world’s worst enemies of the Internet. 

Repression is one reason for this state of affairs; access is another. In Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan, logging on is exceedingly costly. Until recently, access in Turkmenistan was only possible in one kiosk in a well-guarded café. Even now, connection speeds remain absurdly slow. In Azerbaijan, one state-owned ISP, Delta Telecom, monopolizes service and charges a minimum of US$ 75 for a one-megabyte-per-second connection. At that price, only 13 percent of Azerbaijanis, who on average earn US$ 100 per month, can afford to surf the Web. Costs have also been an issue in Kazakhstan, with Internet service going at about a thousand times higher than in Western Europe.   

As in Uzbekistan, the Kazakh government has insisted that Internet proliferation is a priority:  “President Nursultan Nazarbayev”, states ONI, “is determined to turn Kazakhstan into an IT powerhouse in the region”. Usage is climbing as rates fall, but now state censorship is increasing, leading ONI to conclude that “The Kazakh government exhibits an ambiguous and at times contradictory approach to the Internet” — a statement that sums up Internet policies of the more repressive and obstructionist Turkic regimes.

Turkey and Kyzrgyzstan are different — Turkey especially. In fact, Turkey is so different from its Turkic brethren that it is less useful as a test case. Dozens of variables might explain Turkey’s relatively greater political freedom and Internet subscription rates. Notably, Turkey was never part of the Soviet empire.Kyrgyzstan is similar to other Turkic states in all but two relevant variables: its free Internet regime and its susceptibility to political turmoil. Since these are the two variables in question, and all other things being somewhat equal, Kyrgyzstan therefore provides a more useful test case than Turkey. ONI has judged Kyrgyzstan to be the least repressive of the Turkic states.

Kyrgyzstan chose some years ago to allow private companies to provide Internet services. Now, Internet access is cheap and available — early privatization of Kyrgyzstan’s Internet service provision has made the Internet affordable for the majority of the population. Despite having the lowest GNI per capita of any of the Turkic states, the Kyrgyz generally do not cite cost as an obstacle to Internet usage.

IMPLICATIONS: In Kyrgyzstan, unlike its Turkic neighbors, geographic access and “lack of interest” rather than high cost and state censorship prevent further Internet access. In other words, the market has been efficient. Kyrgyzstan’s Internet proliferation, restrained by demographics and geography rather than regime control, is an example of what other Turkic states might have achieved had their political environment been more liberal. Granting service providers the liberty to compete allowed the proliferation of the Internet. Whether the proliferation of the Internet will, in turn, liberalize Kyrgyzstan’s polity is another question — one that recent events have intensified rather than answered.

In the early years of Internet expansion some experts doubted whether closed Internet systems — of the kind found in Russia, China, and Iran — could survive. Content, artistic and political, it was thought, wanted to be free. Then came the failure of the “twitter revolutions” in Moldova and Iran. The populations of China and Iran became increasingly wired, but hardly more liberated. Today, closed systems are entrenched in many countries, providing a model for other hybrid or authoritarian regimes. Thomas Carothers’ observation about the end of “the transitional paradigm” applies not only to regimes, but also to cyber-regimes.

Turkic Internet markets are inchoate, and the shape of their control is yet to be determined. These markets could move toward free regimes of the kind found in the West, or toward controlled systems common in the region. Karimov, Aliyev, and Berdimuhamedov — even the governments of Turkey — clearly lean toward the latter. Controlled systems have proven sustainable and manageable.

While discouraging to Western rights activists, the endurance of oppressive cyber-regimes may actually encourage Internet proliferation, since such regimes have been shown that the Internet can be tamed. Turkic regimes may begin promoting Internet proliferation, confident that increasing Internet access does not inevitably lead to increasing political freedom. 

CONCLUSIONS: Amid the stagnancy of the other long-serving Turkic regimes, Kyrgyzstan’s frequent political upheavals represent a threat and a challenge to regional stability. Unlike their neighbors, the Kyrgyz have now known some measure of Internet freedom.  The continuation of their free cyberspace through political turmoil provides some hope to the cyber-optimist that the road to Internet freedom is mostly one-way.  That is, the transition from free cyberspace, if it should come, may prove just as difficult as the transition to it. 

AUTHOR’S BIO: Kevin Cross is an MA Candidate at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.