In April 2026, Türkiye and Uzbekistan held the first round of negotiations on a social-security agreement intended to protect workers’ rights across the two systems.
Later that month, an Uzbek delegation met Türkiye’s international labour authorities alongside the Vocational Qualifications Authority, İŞKUR and the International Organization for Migration. That combination is unusually promising. Yet if the talks end with pension portability and more efficient recruitment, they will formalise movement without improving what moves: skills.
Türkiye and Uzbekistan should use this opening to negotiate a skills compact rather than a labour pipeline. It should combine common occupational credentials, pre-departure and workplace training, circular migration, enforceable employer duties and finance for productive return. Unmanaged mobility risks costing Uzbekistan trained workers while allowing Turkish firms to rely on low-wage, employer-dependent labour. The objective should not be to import people, but to organise circulation that raises productivity in both economies. It would also give Türkiye’s new ASEAN partnership practical content in a region confronting the same problem.
A 2025 World Bank assessment estimated that 113,800 Uzbek labour migrants were in Türkiye in 2023. It also found that many Uzbek migrants abroad work below their qualification level, face de-skilling and return with experience that domestic employers do not formally recognise. Remittances improve household welfare, but are often used for immediate consumption rather than investment, while sustained outflows can deepen shortages of capable workers. Migration produces income; it does not automatically produce development.
Türkiye faces the inverse danger. Uzbek authorities reported in July 2025 that Turkish officials had accepted proposals to regularise compatriots working informally in care and agriculture, while Uzbekistan’s migration agency now advertises formal construction placements in Türkiye. Legal channels are preferable to irregular work. But if those channels remain concentrated in jobs where qualifications are invisible and permits bind workers too tightly to one employer, firms acquire labour without acquiring an incentive to upgrade it. That can delay automation and domestic training while leaving migrants vulnerable to underpayment or unsafe work.
The compact should begin with a joint skills passport. Türkiye’s Vocational Qualifications Authority and Uzbekistan’s emerging National Qualifications Framework should map occupational standards and conduct recognised assessments before departure and after workplace training. Initial pilots could cover industrial electricians, welders, machine operators, refrigeration technicians, construction retrofit workers and care staff. A digital record should show prior learning, technical modules, language ability, safety training and tasks performed. A Turkish company would know what it was hiring; an Uzbek employer would understand what a returning worker had learnt.
Employers must then become co-producers of skill. Contracts of two or three years should include paid training time, wage progression linked to certification, equal social-insurance coverage, transparent deductions and a prohibition on charging workers recruitment fees. Every migrant should receive an end-of-employment certificate recording duties and competencies. Workers should also be able to move between accredited employers after an initial period, or immediately where abuse is established. Otherwise, “circular mobility” becomes a more orderly form of dependency.
Circularity also needs a credible landing place. A worker who comes home with a recognised credential, savings and a Turkish employer reference should gain access to a matched loan or guarantee, business mentoring and procurement opportunities from Turkish–Uzbek joint ventures. Support should target commercially plausible fields such as machinery repair, food processing, building-energy services or manufacturing. Credit should follow a tested business plan and a buyer or mentor. Lending indiscriminately to returnees would convert reintegration policy into household debt.
There are limits. Some migrants will wish to remain in Türkiye, and compulsory return is not circular migration. The compact should permit repeat contracts and leave settlement questions to national law. Employers may resist financing training that competitors can later benefit from. Skills partnerships often falter over cost sharing and because abilities gained abroad find too little recognised use at home. A sectoral fund, supported by employer levies and public contributions, can spread training costs while keeping qualifications portable. The worker’s new capability must belong to the worker, not to the company that sponsored the first permit.
This design matters beyond Central Asia. Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand are predominantly destination economies, while Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and Viet Nam are net origin countries, though real flows are more complicated than those labels imply. Their sectors, laws and development needs differ sharply. As a new ASEAN Dialogue Partner, Türkiye would have more credibility discussing skills mobility with Southeast Asian governments if it could demonstrate a working compact at home rather than offer another seminar.
Ankara and Tashkent should establish a joint Skills Mobility Council involving labour ministries, qualification bodies, employment agencies, employers, workers’ organisations and vocational schools. It should publish occupation lists based on shortages in both countries, suspend recruitment where Uzbek capacity is being depleted, disclose contract costs and track certification, wage progression, workplace injuries, employer changes and post-return employment. A two-year pilot in three sectors would reveal more than a broad agreement with no measurable obligations.
The next Türkiye–Uzbekistan labour deal should not be counted by visas issued or workers placed. It should be counted by qualifications recognised, wages raised, firms upgraded and viable businesses created after return. Labour mobility becomes strategic only when the same journey makes a Turkish workplace more productive and leaves Uzbekistan with more capability than it had before the worker departed.
Mehmet Enes Beşer, Analyst on Southeast Asia & the ASEAN Coordinator at Vatan Party (Türkiye)
