Procedures
Courts wholly dependent on presidential appointment
The Civil Procedure Code provides first instance, appeal and cassation. Judges are appointed and dismissed by the president for five-year terms, so there is no security of tenure.
Key rules
- Jurisdiction — District and city courts, provincial courts, Supreme Court. Arbitrazh functions sit within the ordinary courts.
Governing law
- Civil Procedure Code of Turkmenistan2015
- Law on the Courts of Turkmenistan2014
In practice
Because every judge is appointed by the president for a renewable five-year term, structural independence is absent, and no published case law allows outside assessment of consistency. Procedure is written and judge-led. Enforcement is by state officers. Turkmenistan is not a party to the New York Convention, which is the single most important commercial fact here: foreign arbitral awards have no treaty route to enforcement, so contracts with Turkmen state entities typically rely on offshore assets or intergovernmental pressure instead.