Guard, Gendarmerie

Military manpower - military age: 20 years of age

Military manpower - availability:
males age 15-49: 17,352,876 (1997 est.)

Military manpower - fit for military service:
males: 10,553,157 (1997 est.)

Military manpower - reaching military age annually:
males: 649,336 (1997 est.)

Military expenditures - dollar figure: $4.3 billion (1996); note -
figures do not include about $7 billion for the government's
counterinsurgency effort

Military expenditures - percent of GDP: 3.5% (1996)

Transnational Issues

Disputes - international: complex maritime, air and territorial
disputes with Greece in Aegean Sea; Cyprus question with Greece; Hatay
question with Syria; dispute with downstream riparians (Syria and
Iraq) over water development plans for the Tigris and Euphrates
Rivers; traditional demands on former Armenian lands in Turkey have
subsided

Illicit drugs: major transit route for Southwest Asian heroin and
hashish to Western Europe and the US via air, land, and sea routes;
major Turkish, Iranian, and other international trafficking
organizations operate out of Istanbul; laboratories to convert
imported morphine base into heroin are in remote regions of Turkey as
well as near Istanbul; government maintains strict controls over areas
of legal opium poppy cultivation and output of poppy straw concentrate
______________________________________________________________________

TURKMENISTAN

@Turkmenistan:Geography

Location: Central Asia, bordering the Caspian Sea, between Iran and
Kazakstan

Geographic coordinates: 40 00 N, 60 00 E

Map references: Commonwealth of Independent States

Area:
total : 488,100 sq km
land: 488,100 sq km
water: 0 sq km

Area - comparative: slightly larger than California

Land boundaries:
total: 3,736 km
border countries: Afghanistan 744 km, Iran 992 km, Kazakstan 379 km,
Uzbekistan 1,621 km

Coastline: 0 km
note: Turkmenistan borders the Caspian Sea (1,768 km)

Maritime claims: none (landlocked)

Climate: subtropical desert

Terrain: flat-to-rolling sandy desert with dunes rising to mountains
in the south; low mountains along border with Iran; borders Caspian
Sea in west

Elevation extremes:
lowest point: Sarygamysh Koli -110 m
highest point: Ayrybaba 3,139 m

Natural resources: petroleum, natural gas, coal, sulfur, salt

Land use:
arable land: 3%
permanent crops: 0%
permanent pastures: 63%
forests and woodland: 8%
other: 26% (1993