• Turkmenistan is experiencing a notable rise in logistics activity, with total cargo reaching 20 million tonnes in 2025 and transit freight growing strongly, reflecting broader expansion across all transport modes despite airfreight remaining a small but strategically relevant share.
• The country’s growing importance is closely tied to geopolitical rerouting across Eurasia, as Central Asia becomes a central transit space for disrupted global trade flows, elevating Turkmenistan’s position due to its strategic location between major regional markets.
• Policy and infrastructure alignment is beginning to follow demand, with participation in Middle Corridor rail cooperation, development of free trade zones and customs modernisation efforts, though future airfreight growth will depend on whether dedicated cargo infrastructure and carrier partnerships scale quickly enough to capture momentum.

Turkmenistan rarely features in global logistics conversations, but the numbers coming out of 2025 make a case that is increasingly difficult to dismiss. Total cargo volume processed through state border checkpoints reached 20 million tonnes last year, the highest level since 2019, according to the State Customs Service. Transit cargo alone exceeded seven million tonnes, a 28 percent year-on-year increase, with freight flows spanning 108 countries. The modal breakdown puts airfreight at two percent of total cargo volume, with road transport at 43 percent, maritime at 28 percent and rail at 27 percent. That air figure is small in percentage terms but sits within a market growing rapidly across every mode. As overall volumes expand, a two percent share of 20 million tonnes represents a meaningful and growing absolute number, and the trajectory is pointing in one direction.

The geopolitical context is central to understanding why this matters now. As the Russia-Ukraine war has forced a fundamental rerouting of Eurasian freight flows, Central Asia has shifted from the margins of global logistics thinking to its centre. Countries that once sat on secondary corridors are finding themselves on primary ones. Turkmenistan, bordering Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to the north and east and Iran and Afghanistan to the south, occupies geography that is becoming structurally more valuable with each passing year of continued airspace and sanctions disruption elsewhere.

The country has been moving in response. Turkmenistan recently joined Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Georgia in expanding rail cooperation along the Middle Corridor, the route connecting China to Europe via Central Asia and the Caucasus, with a focus on increasing freight volumes and digitalising transit processes. It has also advanced bilateral trade infrastructure through the Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan Free Trade Zone, which has opened retail property leasing to support cross-border commerce.

The State Customs Service has signalled parallel efforts to optimise customs procedures, introduce digital technologies and develop checkpoint infrastructure. These are not headline-grabbing initiatives, but dwell times, clearance predictability and documentation standards are precisely the factors freight forwarders weigh when deciding whether to route through a country or around it.

For airfreight specifically, Turkmenistan’s growth trajectory and geographic neutrality position it well to benefit from the same structural dynamics lifting Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The question is whether the country invests quickly enough in dedicated cargo infrastructure and carrier relationships to convert transit momentum into sustained airfreight growth. The 2025 figures suggest the underlying demand is building. What follows will depend on how deliberately Turkmenistan chooses to pursue it.

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