Where to live in Turkmenistan
We track 3 cities in Turkmenistan: Ashgabat, Daşoguz and Türkmenabat. Average temperatures run from 15°C to 19°C. We estimate a couple needs €2,088 to €2,205 a month to live centrally. For foreigners, long-term residency is hard to obtain.
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- Safety
- 59/100
- country-level estimate
- Healthcare
- 57/100
- country-level estimate
- Democracy
- 1.9/10
- estimated
Estimated from World Bank indicators and calibrated to the scales of our reference tables: safety from the Worldwide Governance Indicators Political Stability and Absence of Violence estimate (GOV_WGI_PV.EST, 2025) and life expectancy at birth (SP.DYN.LE00.IN, 2024), healthcare from the life expectancy at birth (SP.DYN.LE00.IN, 2024) and current health spending per person in US dollars (SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD, 2023), cost of living from the price level of GDP relative to the United States, from GDP per person in US dollars and at purchasing power parity (NY.GDP.PCAP.CD/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD, 2025) and democracy score from the Worldwide Governance Indicators Voice and Accountability estimate (GOV_WGI_VA.EST, 2025). Source: The World Bank (World Development Indicators, Worldwide Governance Indicators), CC BY 4.0.
Limited data for Turkmenistan. Figures for safety, healthcare, cost of living and political stability in Turkmenistan are country-level estimates from World Bank indicators, each named with its year. We have no tax, English, social openness or internet speed figures for Turkmenistan, so the quiz scores those factors conservatively and this page leaves them out.
The 3 cities we track
| City | Size | Setting | Avg temp | Rain a year | Est. cost a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ashgabat | large | inland | 19°C | 235 mm | €2,205 |
| Daşoguz | smaller | inland | 15°C | 92 mm | €2,088 |
| Türkmenabat | smaller | inland | 18°C | 126 mm | €2,099 |
Source: City size from GeoNames, temperature from the Open-Meteo archive (2019 to 2023 averages), rainfall from TerraClimate (1991 to 2020 normals), coast distance from Natural Earth. Cost is our model estimate for a couple living centrally, from the World Bank price level.
Residency and visas
Hard to obtain. Realistic long-term residency runs almost entirely through marriage or close-family ties, employer sponsorship, or a rare and discretionary investor route, all approved at the migration authorities' discretion in one of the world's most closed states.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Turkmenistan:
- Investment: about $500k (Turkmenistan investor residence permit, minimum USD 500,000 invested in the economy; as of June 2026)
For short visits, 198 need a visa in advance.
Source: OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed approximations researched against published immigration rules, figures as of June 2026. Not legal advice: check the official source before you apply. Short-stay entry from the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT).