Turkmenistan's Law No. 519-V "On Information About Private Life and Its Protection" (, in force ) applies to the operator, defined broadly to include state bodies and other legal or physical persons, and requires the subject's written consent for collection and processing except in the cases listed in Art. 9 (Art. 7). Art. 7(7) leaves the specifics of collecting and processing biometric information to other legislation of Turkmenistan.
Art. 12(2) requires personal information to be stored in a database located in Turkmenistan, and Art. 17 makes that domestic database a precondition for cross-border transfer rather than merely an alternative to it.
The cross-border restriction is moderate on the transfer article's own terms: Art. 17(3) supplies four fallback grounds for a destination that does not ensure protection (written consent, a ratified treaty, necessity under a law of Turkmenistan to protect the constitutional order, rights, health and morals, public order, defense or state security, or protection of life, health or other legitimate interests where consent cannot be obtained), although the domestic-database precondition applies throughout.
The Act has no dedicated regulator: Art. 28(2) gives the Cabinet of Ministers only a discretionary power ("вправе", "may"), not an obligation, to establish an authorized body for the protection of subjects' rights. Art. 29 gives state bodies, within their competence, the powers to adopt regulations, consider requests and take measures to hold violators liable, and Art. 30 charges the Prosecutor General of Turkmenistan and subordinate prosecutors with supervising compliance.
Art. 31 is a single sentence providing that a violation entails liability under the laws of Turkmenistan, and Art. 26(1)(8) gives the subject the right to protection of rights and legitimate interests, including compensation of moral and material harm. Secondary reporting describes practical enforcement of this Act as essentially nonexistent. The Act contains no breach-notification duty; Art. 24 requires measures that prevent unlawful access, detect it in time and minimize its consequences.
Law No. 519-V (), Arts. 1(1), 7(7), 11(2)official text, State News Agency of Turkmenistan portal (turkmenistan.gov.tm), Russian translation of the state-language text
In force since .Binds public and private bodies.
What this law does
Biometric information is outside the list of special categories in Article 21 and is governed by separate provisions. Article 1 defines biometric information as information characterizing the physiological and biological features of a person and allowing the identity of the person to be established, and gives no illustrative list.
Article 11 makes personal information held in electronic information resources, and biometric information, confidential and limits its collection and processing to the purposes for which it is collected. Article 7 provides that the features of collecting and processing biometric information are established by the legislation of Turkmenistan.
Article 27(2)(6) requires the operator to present proof that the subject consented to the collection and processing of the subject's personal data in the cases the legislation of Turkmenistan provides. The obligation to present that proof, and, for publicly available personal data, the obligation to prove that the data is publicly available, rests on the operator.
Article 24(1)(2) requires the operator and any third party to take the protection measures that ensure the timely detection of facts of unlawful access to personal data when such access could not be prevented.
Law 519-V regulates the collection, processing and protection of personal information carried out by operators. Article 1 defines the operator as a state body or another legal or physical person that collects, processes and protects personal information and determines the purposes and content of those actions. Article 3 does not apply the Law to collection, processing and protection of personal information by the subject for personal and family needs.
Article 3 also does not apply the Law to personal information classified as a state secret. Article 6 divides personal information by accessibility into publicly available information and restricted-access information. Article 7 requires the operator to collect and process personal information with the subject's written consent, except in the cases provided for by Article 9.
Article 7 sets the content of the subject's written consent, including its period of validity and the procedure for revoking it. Article 7 provides that the operator needs no license, certificate or other permit to collect and process personal information. Article 7 requires employees of operators to notify their supervisors before collection and processing begin. Article 7 bars the operator from concluding a contract that transfers to another person the performance of collection and processing.
Article 8 lets the subject give or withdraw consent in writing, as an electronic document, or by another method that uses protective measures permitted by the legislation of Turkmenistan. Article 8 provides that the subject cannot withdraw consent where that would conflict with the laws of Turkmenistan or where an obligation remains unperformed. Article 9 lists the cases in which personal information is collected and processed without the subject's consent.
Article 14 permits the operator and a third party to use personal information only for the purposes defined when it was collected.
Law No. 519-V (), Arts. 12, 17official text, State News Agency of Turkmenistan portal (turkmenistan.gov.tm), Russian translation of the state-language text
In force since .Binds public and private bodies.
What this law does
Article 12 requires the operator and a third party to store personal information in a personal data database located on the territory of Turkmenistan, in a form that allows the subject to be identified, with no citizen-only qualifier and no sectoral limit. Article 17 defines cross-border transfer as the transfer of personal information to the territory of foreign states.
Article 17 provides that personal information is subject to cross-border transfer where it is contained in a database located on the territory of Turkmenistan. Article 17 provides that transfer to the territory of foreign states takes place only where those states ensure the protection of personal information. Where the destination state does not ensure protection, Article 17 permits transfer with the subject's written consent to the transfer of the subject's personal information.
Where the destination state does not ensure protection, Article 17 also permits transfer in the cases provided for by international treaties ratified by Turkmenistan. Where the destination state does not ensure protection, Article 17 also permits transfer in the cases provided for by the laws of Turkmenistan where it is necessary to protect the constitutional order, human rights and freedoms, health and morals, public order, national defense and state security.
Where the destination state does not ensure protection, Article 17 also permits transfer to protect the life, health or other legitimate interests of the subject or of other persons where the subject's consent cannot be obtained. Article 17 provides that cross-border transfer may be prohibited or restricted by the legislation of Turkmenistan. Secondary reporting describes practical enforcement of this Act generally as essentially nonexistent.
Article 28 gives the Cabinet of Ministers of Turkmenistan a power, not a duty, to establish an authorized body for the protection of the rights of subjects and to determine its status and powers. Article 29 gives state bodies, within their competence, the power to develop and approve regulations on personal information. Article 29 gives state bodies the power to consider requests from legal and physical persons on personal information and its protection.
Article 29 gives state bodies the power to take measures to hold persons who violate the legislation on personal information liable as the laws of Turkmenistan provide. Article 30 charges the Prosecutor General of Turkmenistan and the prosecutors subordinate to the Prosecutor General with supervising compliance with the Law.
Article 31 is a single sentence providing that a violation of the legislation of Turkmenistan on personal information entails liability in accordance with the laws of Turkmenistan, and it states no fine schedule and names no authority. Article 26 gives the subject the right to protection of the subject's rights and legitimate interests, including compensation of moral and material harm.
Article 32 provides that the actions of the subject, the operator or a third party in collecting, processing and protecting personal information may be appealed in the manner established by the legislation of Turkmenistan. Secondary reporting describes the Cabinet of Ministers and the Prosecutor General's Office as the de facto oversight bodies, with penalties described as very low and practical enforcement as essentially nonexistent.
Law No. 519-V (), Art. 21official text, State News Agency of Turkmenistan portal (turkmenistan.gov.tm), Russian translation of the state-language text
In force since .Binds public and private bodies.
What this law does
Article 21 prohibits the collection and processing of special categories of personal information concerning nationality, skin color, attitude toward religion, political convictions, state of health and intimate life, except in the cases listed in its second part. The second part permits collection and processing where the subject has given written consent. The second part permits collection and processing of personal information that is publicly available.
The second part permits collection and processing where health information is needed to protect the life, health or other vital interests of the subject or of other persons and the subject's consent cannot be obtained. The second part permits collection and processing for medical purposes by a health worker who is bound by the legislation of Turkmenistan to keep medical confidentiality.
The second part permits an association or a religious organization to collect and process the personal information of its members, provided it is not disseminated without their written consent. The second part permits collection and processing where it is necessary in connection with the administration of justice. The second part permits collection and processing in operational-search activity and in the enforcement of criminal punishments under the laws of Turkmenistan.
Collection and processing of special categories must stop immediately once the reasons for which they were carried out have been removed. Biometric information is not among the Article 21 categories and is governed by separate provisions.
Turkmenistan has no scraping-specific statute; the Criminal Code's computer-information chapter is the only law reaching a scraper's own conduct, and it turns on the information being protected by law rather than on a contract, a terms-of-service term, or a robots.txt directive being breached.
Article 373 punishes illegal access to information stored on electronic media, an information system, or an information-telecommunication network where the information is protected by law, with a higher tier where the target is a national information source or a critical information-communication infrastructure object.
Article 379 separately punishes creating, using, or distributing a program that disrupts the normal operation of a computer, subscriber device, or information system, or unlawfully destroying, blocking, reformatting, or copying legally protected information.
No Turkmen court decision, terms-of-service enforceability rule, text-and-data-mining exception, database right, personal-data reach over scraped public data, unfair-competition doctrine, or robots.txt-specific rule was found: the 2014 Law on Legal Regulation of the Development of the Internet and Rendering of Internet Services, the one further lead for this topic, shows only its definitions article in the free portion of its only available copy, a subscription legal database.
Article 379(1) punishes the unlawful destruction of legally protected information in an information system or passing through an information-telecommunication network, the creation of a computer program intended to disrupt the normal operation of a computer, a subscriber device, another computer program, an information system, or an information-telecommunication network, and, separately, the production of, or unauthorized alteration, blocking, reformatting, or copying of, such information or software, along with the deliberate use or distribution of a program built for that purpose.
Article 379(2) raises the penalty where the act targets a national information source, the national information system, or a critically important information-communication infrastructure object, or is committed using one's official position. Article 379(3) raises it further where the acts caused grave consequences or were committed by a group by prior conspiracy or an organized group.
Article 373(1) punishes illegal access to information stored on electronic media and protected by law, to an information system, or to an information-telecommunication network, where the access substantially violates the rights or legitimate interests of a person or the protected interests of society or the state.
Article 373(2) raises the penalty where the same acts target sources of national electronic information, the national information system, or important information-communication infrastructure objects. Article 373(3) raises it further where either act negligently caused grave consequences or was committed by a group by prior conspiracy or an organized group.
Two bare-title leads for this jurisdiction, a "Law on Cybersecurity" and a "Law on Legal Regulation of the Internet Development and Internet Services in Turkmenistan," were checked against the Mejlis (Parliament) of Turkmenistan's own official legislation database at mejlis.gov.tm, which serves a machine-readable list of 370 laws spanning 1990 through its most recent entry of and was searched for every plausible Russian-language rendering of "cybersecurity" (кибербезопасность, кибер, информационная безопасность, критическая инфраструктура) with no result.
No standalone Law on Cybersecurity was located, and the second title is this jurisdiction's Law No. 159-V "On the Legal Regulation of the Development of the Internet Network and the Provision of Internet Services in Turkmenistan" (, last amended ), which was located, read in full, and imposes no product- or system-security duty.
Its Art. 12(1)(4¹) duty for an internet-service operator to "ensure users of the internet network with an externally protected internet network" is undated, unspecific, and, given Turkmenistan's documented internet-filtering practice, at least as plausibly a content-control duty as a cybersecurity one, so it is named here rather than filed as an instrument.
Two other statutes, located and read in full through the same official source, do impose an operator-facing security duty and are filed below: the Law "On Information and Its Protection" (No. 72-V, ) requires the possessor of information and the operator of an information system, in cases set by other Turkmen legislation, to maintain six specific technical and organizational safeguards against unauthorized access (Art. 15(4)); and the Law "On Communications" (No. 93-IV, ) requires a communications operator to implement technical and organizational protection of communication networks and facilities (Art. 18(4)) and to safeguard the confidentiality and integrity of subscriber data during automated processing (Art. 43).
Neither statute sets a security standard a software product or connected device must meet before being placed on the market, and neither creates a reporting duty running to an authority or to users on any clock.
The Ministry of Communications' own enumerated competence includes licensing "activity in the field of communications and cybersecurity" (Communications Law Art. 8(1)(11)), which is affirmative evidence that Turkmenistan regulates cybersecurity as a licensed activity somewhere in its legislation, most plausibly by Cabinet of Ministers resolution rather than by a Mejlis-enacted Law; that implementing act was not located and is recorded as an open question rather than assumed.
The Criminal Code's unauthorized-access and malicious-program offenses, and the Internet Law's parallel liability provisions for a user's unauthorized intrusion into an information system (Art. 30(9)) or creation of malicious programs (Art. 30(11)), bind the intruder rather than the operator and belong to this jurisdiction's scraping-topic material, not repeated here.
Turkmenistan's comprehensive personal-information statute, the Law "On Information About Private Life and Its Protection" (No. 519-V, ), is this jurisdiction's privacy-topic instrument; no breach-notification duty was found in it, and any security-of-processing content it carries is documented there rather than here.
The Russian-language texts used for both instruments below are the Mejlis's own official Turkmen-to-Russian translations, published on its statutory-text pages rather than as an RTF file, which is why verbatim quotes are pinned below where the privacy-topic instruments for this jurisdiction, sourced to an unparsed RTF file, carry none.
Turkmenistan's Law on Virtual Assets requires a virtual asset service provider that offers storage to keep its clients' funds in cold wallets not connected to the Internet.
Law of Turkmenistan No. 93-IV "On Communications" (Vedomosti Mejlisa Turkmenistana 2010, No. 1, art. 17; as last amended by Law No. 184-VII of ), arts. 18, 43Official text, Mejlis (Parliament) of Turkmenistan
In force since .Binds public and private bodies.
What this law does
A communications operator (a category that under this Act may be a state entity or a legal or natural person) must implement technical and organizational methods to protect communication networks, telecommunications facilities, restricted-access information about the organization of communication networks, and information transmitted by those networks.
The operator must, together with law-enforcement bodies, protect communication facilities and structures from unauthorized access, and a developer building or reconstructing communication facilities must likewise provide for protection against unauthorized access. Separately, a communications operator must ensure and bear responsibility for the safekeeping of subscriber information obtained on contracting and about services rendered, including duration, content, and routing.
The operator must also protect that information during automated processing. The Ministry of Communications of Turkmenistan exercises general regulatory and licensing authority over the sector, including, by its own Art. 8(1)(11), licensing of activity in the field of communications and cybersecurity, though no separate implementing act setting cybersecurity licensing requirements was located.
Neither Art. 18 nor Art. 43 states a fixed penalty; a violation carries liability under other Turkmenistan legislation the Act does not itself quantify.
Article 29(6) of the Law on Virtual Assets requires a virtual asset service provider that offers storage of virtual assets to keep its clients' funds on electronic media not connected to the Internet, called cold wallets, in the manner a legal act of the authorized body sets. Article 29(5) requires custody, management and control of virtual assets to preserve the virtual assets or the instruments that control them.
Article 33(3) requires a crypto exchange acting as a virtual asset service provider to protect its clients' personal information and virtual assets. Article 31(9) provides that the protection of the specialized platforms, and of the personal data stored on them, follows Turkmenistan's legislation on information and cybersecurity.
Article 35(3) lets the authorized body respond to a violation with a prescription, a fine, a limit on some services, suspension of the licence or annulment of the licence. Article 43 brings the Law into force on .
Law of Turkmenistan No. 72-V "On Information and Its Protection" (Vedomosti Mejlisa Turkmenistana 2014, No. 2, art. 72; as amended by Laws No. 234-VI of , No. 390-VI of , and No. 445-VI of ), art. 15Official text, Mejlis (Parliament) of Turkmenistan
In force since .Binds public and private bodies.
What this law does
A possessor of information (defined to include the state and any natural or legal person of Turkmenistan) and an operator of an information system must, in cases established by Turkmenistan legislation, maintain safeguards that prevent unauthorized access to information and its transfer to a person without a right of access.
The same duty requires the possessor or operator to detect unauthorized access in a timely manner, prevent adverse consequences of a breach of access procedure, prevent disruption of the technical means that process the information, permit immediate restoration of information altered or destroyed through unauthorized access, and continuously monitor the level of the information's protection.
The Act does not itself identify which other legislation triggers this duty for a given information holder outside the state-information-system context it separately regulates. A person whose rights were violated by disclosure or other unlawful use of restricted-access information may sue for damages, moral-harm compensation, and vindication of honor and dignity, though that claim is barred against a plaintiff who did not itself meet its own confidentiality or protection obligations.
Violation of the Act's requirements carries liability under other Turkmenistan legislation, which this Act does not itself quantify.
Turkmenistan has no press-publisher neighbouring right and no mandatory platform-to-publisher bargaining code; the general copyright framework of Law No. 257-IV of , on Copyright and Related Rights, is the only law reaching an aggregator's reproduction of news content. Article 7 excludes “reports of events and facts of an informational character” from copyright protection outright, so a bare news item is never a protected work regardless of who first published it.
Article 19 separately permits, without the rightholder's consent or payment, quoting lawfully published works for informational purposes including press-review excerpts of newspaper and magazine articles (para. 1), and reproducing or broadcasting lawfully published newspaper and magazine articles on current economic, political, social, and religious topics unless the author or rightholder has specifically prohibited that reproduction (para. 3).
Neighbouring rights under the Act protect performers, phonogram producers, and broadcasting organisations rather than news publishers, so there is no publisher-side right of the kind the European Union's Digital Single Market Directive Article 15 creates, no hot-news or misappropriation doctrine distinct from ordinary copyright, and no machine-readable text-and-data-mining opt-out mechanism; database compilations are protected only as copyrightable compilations under Articles 6 and 21, with no separate sui generis database right; no reported Turkmen decision applies either free-use provision to a systematic online news aggregator as opposed to a traditional press review.
Article 7 lists reports of events and facts of an informational character among the categories not protected by copyright, alongside official documents, state symbols, and folklore, so news of the day as such is never a protected work under Turkmenistan's law.
Article 19(1) permits quotation in the original or in translation from lawfully published works for scientific, research, polemical, critical, and informational purposes, to the extent justified by the purpose of the quotation, and expressly includes reproducing excerpts from newspaper and magazine articles in the form of press reviews; the exception carries no headline-length or short-extract cap distinct from that purpose test.
Article 19(3) separately permits reproducing, in periodicals, or communicating by broadcast or cable, lawfully published newspaper and magazine articles on current economic, political, social, or religious topics, or broadcast works of a similar character, unless the author or other rightholder has specifically prohibited that reproduction or communication; this reservation right is the closest Turkmenistan's law comes to a publisher opt-out, and it attaches to the author or rightholder rather than to a press-industry body.
Article 46 brings the Law into force upon its official publication, and no source located states the day of that publication.
These areas of law were researched here and no instrument was recorded. Each finding says what the research checked, as of the date under it. It describes our search, not a guarantee that no such law exists.
AI law
Turkmenistan has no law creating an artificial-intelligence transparency or output-labeling duty as of . In January 2026 the Cabinet of Ministers, at a meeting on the digital system, directed the development of rules for the use of AI technologies, the responsibilities of the parties involved, the powers and responsibilities of government agencies dealing with AI, and national standards and technical regulations for AI-based products.
The Ministry of Communications and the UNDP ran strategy sessions in Ashgabat in March and May 2026 toward a national AI strategy. No strategy text or law implementing one has been adopted, and the January 2026 directive itself creates no disclosure, output-labeling, or bot-identification duty binding any person.
As of .
Age gating law
Turkmenistan has no adult-content age-verification law, social-media minor-access restriction, app-store age-verification requirement, or age-appropriate design code as of .
The Law on State Guarantees of the Rights of the Child (2014) bars the production, distribution, or advertising of pornographic printed matter, films, or other pornographic items, and separately bars showing, renting, selling, gifting, or reproducing toys, computer games, films, sound or video recordings, books, newspapers, magazines, or other printed matter that directly encourages or propagates war, cruel treatment, violence, or discrimination based on sex or age, for children.
Neither provision conditions its prohibition on an age-verification step, and neither is addressed to an online service, an app store, or a platform as such. The Law on Mass Media (2012) is also on the books; the only available copy is an RTF file whose text renders as its own formatting codes rather than as legible Cyrillic, so its provisions are not described here.
As of .
Case law
No current case law for Turkmenistan AI law
No current case law for Turkmenistan privacy law
No current case law for Turkmenistan scraping law
No current case law for Turkmenistan cybersecurity law
No current case law for Turkmenistan communications law
No current case law for Turkmenistan content moderation law
No current case law for Turkmenistan product and AI liability law
No current case law for Turkmenistan digital accessibility law
No current case law for Turkmenistan age gating law
No current case law for Turkmenistan reuse law
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