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Public employees across Turkmenistan are paying out of their own wages to avoid being sent to pick cotton, while military conscripts harvest the crop under daily quotas and children as young as 12 work as replacement pickers — all as the government holds reform talks with international labour bodies and presents a sanitised account of those discussions to the outside world.
Independent outlet Turkmen.news reported in October that oil-depot workers in the Dashoguz region paid roughly $19 a month to secure exemptions, despite earning around $110 — a levy of more than 17 percent of their salary. Bank employees paid approximately $3.50 three times a week; school staff in Turkmenabat paid $1.50 up to ten times a month. Those figures are calculated at an unofficial exchange rate of 19–20 manat to the dollar, against an official rate of 3.5 manat.
The cotton harvest officially opened on September 9 with a national production target of approximately 1.25 million metric tons of raw cotton, including 275,000 metric tons from Dashoguz alone. But mobilisation began weeks earlier: Chronicles of Turkmenistan reported on August 20 that cleaners and maintenance staff from public institutions in the Lebap region had already been assigned 15-day field shifts, with doctors, nurses, and teachers expected to participate on weekends.
Soldiers, Schoolchildren and Systematic Pressure
Turkmen.news documented forced mobilisation in four of the country’s five regions — Ahal, Dashoguz, Lebap, and Mary — drawing on accounts from municipal workers and road-maintenance employees required either to pick cotton or pay for replacements. In an October 22 report, the outlet described military conscripts harvesting cotton in the Mary and Lebap regions under daily quotas of 40 to 50 kilograms. One conscript said soldiers were nominally paid one manat — roughly five U.S. cents — per kilogram, but that unit commanders took the money. The accounts involving soldiers and minors rely partly on anonymous sources, and the reports contain no response from the authorities to these specific allegations.
The International Labour Organization has been permitted to send monitors to Turkmenistan’s cotton harvest since 2023, operating under agreed road maps, the latest covering 2026. Its 2025 monitoring report found that observers saw children in the fields during 38 percent of visits, up from 23 percent in 2024. Among farmers interviewed, 34 percent reported the presence of children, compared with 17 percent the previous year. In the Dashoguz region, children were observed in 59 percent of fields visited. The ILO cautioned that its findings were not statistically representative and could not be used to estimate nationwide prevalence.
Observers also reported interference during 35 percent of field visits and 34 percent of visits to public institutions and state-owned enterprises. Twelve percent of public-sector employees interviewed said they had participated in the harvest.
The Cotton Campaign coalition’s report on the 2025 harvest, published in May 2026, found that all categories of public-sector employees were required to pick cotton or contribute money, with payments to avoid fieldwork averaging approximately one to two dollars and fifty cents per day. The coalition said authorities had reversed some of the limited exemptions introduced in 2024 for certain doctors and teachers.
Farmers Absorb Losses While Targets Stay Fixed
The state sets both delivery quotas and purchase prices. The same ILO monitoring report found that official prices for medium-staple cotton in 2025 were approximately $233 to $256 per metric ton at the unofficial exchange rate, but after mandatory deductions for agricultural inputs and services, many farmers reported receiving only $123 to $128 per metric ton — roughly half the headline price. Pest damage compounded the hardship in 2026: farmers in the Mary region told Turkmen.news that fields yielded one to 1.5 metric tons per hectare, against three to 3.5 metric tons the year before. The government’s procurement target remained unchanged.
At an international conference in Ashgabat on November 4, representatives of the ILO, United Nations agencies, and trade unions discussed labour rights protection. The government’s own account of the meeting made no mention of the cotton harvest or the forced mobilisation of workers. In May, the ILO and the European Union had jointly launched a project for 2026–2027 to prevent child and forced labour in cotton production, and consultations in Ashgabat on October 27–28 addressed hiring pickers under simplified labour agreements that would include injury insurance.
In June 2026, the International Labour Conference’s Committee on the Application of Standards examined Turkmenistan’s compliance with the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (No. 105) for the fifth time, calling for an end to forced worker mobilisation and the abolition of mandatory cotton quotas. It asked Turkmenistan to report on progress by September 1.
International Pressure and the EU’s Coming Prohibition
The United States has restricted imports of Turkmen cotton and products made wholly or partly from it since May 2018, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a Withhold Release Order under legislation barring goods produced with forced labour. The U.S. Department of Labor also lists Turkmen cotton on its register of goods produced by child or forced labour.
In its 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report, the U.S. Department of State upgraded Turkmenistan to Tier 2 from the Tier 2 Watch List — a step up from the additional-monitoring category, and a significant improvement on the Tier 3 classification the country previously held. The same report nonetheless noted that authorities continued to mobilise adults and children for cotton harvesting in 2025 and failed to investigate officials involved in the practice.
Turkmenistan’s cotton reaches European consumers largely through third-country processing. According to the Cotton Campaign’s trade analysis, Türkiye accounted for an average of 84 percent of Turkmenistan’s cotton product exports between 2020 and 2023. In 2024, Pakistan imported approximately $29 million worth of Turkmen cotton and semi-finished cotton goods. Turkmen fabrics were also exported to Italy, Poland, and Portugal.
From December 14, 2027, EU Regulation 2024/3015 will prohibit the sale on the European market — and export from it — of products made using forced labour, regardless of country of origin. Unlike the blanket U.S. restriction on Turkmen cotton, the EU rules require an investigation and a formal finding of forced labour before goods can be removed from the market, meaning enforcement will depend heavily on the speed and rigour of that process.