There has been a lot of news coming out of Turkmenistan lately — the president’s heir-apparent son climbed up a few more rungs on the government ladder, a Taliban delegation visited Ashgabat and promised not to hinder the construction of a natural-gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghan territory, and a long dispute with Azerbaijan over ownership of a gas and oil field in the Caspian Sea was resolved.

On this week’s Majlis Podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on what has been happening in Turkmenistan recently and if any of these events signal a change in the country’s future.

This week’s guests are: from Glasgow, Luca Anceschi, professor of Central Asian Studies at Glasgow University and author of the book Turkmenistan’s Foreign Policy: Positive Neutrality And The Consolidation Of The Turkmen Regime; from Moscow, Stanislav Pritchin, an expert on the Caucasus region and Central Asia who is currently a senior research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Center for Post-Soviet Studies IMEMO (Institute of World Economy and International Studies); from Prague, Farruh Yusupov, the director of RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk; and from Prague, Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.