Tightly-controlled Turkmen media quoted a terse official statement from the foreign ministry saying only that police had "neutralized" a criminal group involved in the illegal drugs trade in a raid in the capital Ashgabat.
But Central Asia expert Arkady Dubnov said: "The real reason for the latest armed clashes could be infighting between different clans" in the security forces involved in the lucrative drugs trade from neighboring Afghanistan.
Turkmen officials were now trying to "hush up information that could undermine the myth of stability" under President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, who took power in 2006, Dubnov wrote in Russia's Vremya Novostei daily.
"The situation in Turkmenistan has become more criminalized and there is an active redistribution of assets" among ruling elites, Viktoria Panfilova, a Central Asia specialist, wrote in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper.
Berdymukhamedov became president following the death of longtime dictator Saparmurat Niyazov, who ruled the country as his personal fiefdom for 21 years, imposing a lavish personality cult and allowing no opposition to his rule.
His successor has opened up Turkmenistan more to foreign investment in the gas sector and has rolled back some of the bizarre excesses of Niyazov's rule, such as the naming of the months of the year after himself and his family.
But Turkmenistan remains a dictatorial state where no opposition is allowed.
Web sites for the exiled opposition and a human rights group in this mainly Muslim state quoted their own sources as saying the weekend firefight in fact involved Islamist militants and that there had been casualties.
The Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights quoted a police major on its Web site saying nine police officers were killed and there had been "many victims" among civilians in and around the water bottling plant where the gunfight erupted.
The Web site reported the gunfight had involved two 'Wahhabi' Islamist fundamentalists and that security services had been unable to counter them, having to call in Russian secret service officers to help in the raid.
A Web site for Turkmenistan's exiled opposition, Gundogar.org, earlier said 20 police officers had been killed in the firefight and cited witnesses saying streets in the area were patrolled by armored personnel carriers.
An AFP journalist in Ashgabat heard automatic weapon fire and intermittent blasts over a roughly 12-hour period overnight Friday to Saturday.
The neighborhood in Ashgabat's northern suburbs where the fighting took place was sealed off until Sunday