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title: "Turkmenistan: The World’s Wackiest Dictatorship?"
description: "\"How is amazing, the place Awaza. Caspian waves are bursting up-down. Life is so wonderful in motherland. My splendid and dazzling Turkmenistan.\"\n\nThey're poignant words, brought to us in the form of a rather funky rap number, and considering that they're rapped by none other than the then-president of Turkmenistan himself and his grandson, rapper name Lil' Sandal—well, they've got to be true, haven't they? Delivered alongside other important messages like \"Sport and the health is inspiration, makes body strong and strong all the nation,\" former president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov's pitch is a good one: his country, Turkmenistan, is a beautiful place, and everybody should want to live there.\n\nNow, if you, like a fair proportion of the world, had never heard of Turkmenistan before watching this video, then you might be inclined to take dear Gurbanguly's word for it—but if you *have* heard of Turkmenistan, then you've probably realized there's a catch. Behind the Turkmen President's rap videos, behind his public naughty-grandpa personality, and behind the veil of anonymity that Turkmenistan has enjoyed for decades, lies one of the world's most totalitarian regimes. It's Turkmenistan's ruthless overlords, their bizarre cult of personality, and the place, and people, that they crush underfoot, that we're going to be exploring today.\n\nWelcome to Turkmenistan.\n\n## The Land and Its History\n\nThe sovereign nation of Turkmenistan is one of the most out-of-the-way countries in the entire world. A landlocked territory on the shores of the Caspian Sea, which, itself, is also landlocked, Turkmenistan counts a total of four neighbors: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. But despite being at just about the exact center of Central Asia, Turkmenistan is far from a notable regional player. With territory covered mostly in desert, a total land area just barely smaller than France and Spain, and a population of a little over seven million people, Turkmenistan is instead a quiet, unassuming country on a quiet, unassuming stretch of habitable highlands, basically overseeing the empty sands at its core.\n\nThat's not to say that Turkmenistan has got *nothing* going for it. It's got the world's fifth-largest reserves of natural gas, it's got a long history of inter-reliance with its neighboring former-Soviet states, it's got a whole lot of oil and power for export, and it's got a long history of providing its citizens utilities like electricity and water for free, which we'll talk about more in just a bit. It doesn't tend to engage in wars, it doesn't tend to piss off any of its neighbors, and it's nestled happily under the political umbrella of the Russian Federation. In fact, to hear Turkmenistan's people tell it to foreign pollsters, or see them grinning and clapping along to one of former President Berdimuhamedov's jam sessions, you might think that it's one of the happiest places in the world.\n\nWith a name that many scholars translate as \"land of the pure Turks,\" Turkmenistan traces its ancient history to the Achaemenid Empire of ancient Iran, where federations of Oghuz tribesmen became the ancestors of modern ethnic Turkmens. Backed up against the natural barrier of the Caspian Sea, and at something of an intersection between the ancient empires of their time, the early Turkmen tribes passed from the dominion of the Seljuk Empire to the Mongols to the Uzbek khans, all the while building their own enclaves and settlements while some proportion of Turkmen continued to live as nomads. The Turkmen began practicing Islam in the late tenth century, a faith that's carried through to the modern day, and they became known throughout the region for a fierce reputation of resistance to all forms of external rule, even while lending their fighting men and military prowess to a range of regional partners. In the 19th century, the Turkmen gained notoriety as slave traders across Central Asia, and notched important victories into their belt against invaders from nearby Persia.\n\nBut the history of the state that would evolve into modern-day Turkmenistan can trace its history back to the same place as most of the other nations we now refer to as post-Soviet states: the expansion of Tsarist Russia into a wide range of Central Asian and Eastern European territories. Although the Turkmen tribes of the time did not go quietly, they were eventually annexed into the Russian Empire in 1881. After a few decades of consolidating Russian control, the Turkmens joined the rest of Central Asia in revolting against conscription orders from Moscow during World War I, but like the rest of Central Asia, they were eventually subsumed by Tsarist Russia's successor, the Soviet Union, after a few years of fierce but ultimately unsuccessful resistance. Evolving into the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, the Turkmen state and culture was reorganized into what was a common sight across Soviet Russia: an agricultural producer in line with the expectations of the Soviet state.\n\nIt was in this state of quiet subsistence that Turkmenistan would experience the next seventy years or so, insulated by the steppes and the Caspian Sea from the ravages of World War II or the independence movements of the late 1980s. When Turkmenistan declared its sovereignty in 1990, reading the writing on the wall just like every other country of the region, it was more a question of survival and avoiding economic exploitation than an issue of self-determination. The man who had been leading the Turkmen SSR, an ethnic Turkmen named Saparmurat Niyazov, continued as the first chief of state of Turkmenistan, making a clean pivot from communism to his own brand of authoritarian Turkmen nationalism.\n\nAnd when we say authoritarianism, we mean authoritarianism. We'll be diving way, *way* deeper into Mr. Niyazov and his successors in just a short while, but for now, suffice to say that the rise of the Niyazov administration very quickly became the rise of the Niyazov cult of personality. Within a few years, he used a rigged referendum to abolish the requirement for presidents to be re-elected, declared himself president for life, and set about a long series of social and cultural reforms to basically transform the country of Turkmenistan into the country of Saparmurat Niyazov. When Niyazov died after a couple of decades of rule and his deputy Prime Minister, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, took the reins, the cycle continued, and when he stepped down and passed the nation to his son Serdar in 2022, it continued yet again.\n\nBefore we get into the real political weirdness of modern-day Turkmenistan, we've got to dive in a bit deeper as to what exactly makes this country tick. Much like the other nations of the Central Asian steppes, Turkmenistan has a long history of nomadic living and interdependence with horses, and equestrian culture is just as important today in Turkmen culture as ever. Where a Brazilian youth plays football or an American youth plays—well, the other football, a Turkmen youth might learn the fine arts of grappling on horseback. So, too, does that nomadic legacy show itself in meat-and-dairy-heavy Turkmen cuisine, and the continued use of traditional attire and hand-knotted carpets. Turkmenistan has a long history of emphasis on poetry and intellectualism, although the area's years under Soviet authority provided a temporary blunting of such traditions, and the following regime has since repurposed Turkmen intellectual culture to its own benefit.\n\nIn an economic sense, the country is deeply reliant on its massive reserves of natural gas and oil, with a full ninety-two percent of its exports in 2019 being petroleum products. But with gas, comes some pretty massive revenues; Turkmenistan runs lucrative pipelines to Iran and China, with the latter nation being responsible for a majority of Turkmenistan's external revenue. Turkmenistan's gas reserves have also given it one of its most famous landmarks, the Darvaza gas crater, which has issued methane and burned continuously since the 1970s with no sign of stopping. Other than gas and oil, the biggest thing Turkmenistan's got going for it is its production of raw cotton, and it's got some level of tourism happening in its Awaza district, on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The country's income has been so completely buoyed by its gas revenues that for years, Turkmen citizens have enjoyed free allotments of water, gas, electricity, and salt for their utilities, although that's no longer the case.\n\n## The Silly Stuff\n\nTurkmenistan's got one of those ruling regimes that simply cannot help but lean into its megalomania, with all the crazy architecture, grandstanding, vanity projects, and strange laws that would befit an eccentric dictator. It's certainly true that that same megalomania has led to intense pain, all up and down Turkmen society, and we will absolutely be digging into the human costs of the Turkmen regime's rule—but first, we've got to explain just how weird Turkmenistan really is, and on some particular topics, we simply cannot do that with a straight face.\n\nAs we mentioned before, Turkmenistan's first modern dictator was a guy called Saparmurat Niyazov. He'd been a member of the Soviet Communist Party since the sixties, and was sitting at or near the top of the Turkmen SSR within a couple of decades, but when Turkmenistan gained its independence, Niyazov decided to unilaterally declare himself president. Since nobody argued, he got to enjoy the trappings of power for a bit before holding an election, in which, of course, he was the only candidate. When he won, he granted himself the title Turkmenbashi, or Leader of All Turkmen, and after a few more years, he declared himself President for Life.\n\nAfter Niyazov took power, Turkmenistan set about de-Russifying itself in a somewhat…different way than the other nations of the region. Of course, Niyazov did all the standard post-Soviet stuff: a campaign to eradicate the Russian language, an open door for Russians who wanted to leave the country, that sort of thing. But he also took it a step further. By example, universities weren't prohibited from accepting foreigners, exactly; they were prohibited from accepting anyone whose name doesn't sound Turkmen, which is a real problem if you happen to be a born-and-raised Turkmen native who just so happens to be called Steve.\n\nAfter Turkmenistan was sufficiently de-Russified for his liking, Niyazov set about making some other changes. Before long, he had shut down every Turkmen hospital outside the capital, forcing every Turkmen to come all the way to Ashgabat for their treatments. Libraries outside the capital faced the same fate. He issued bans on the circus, the opera, the use of lip-syncing in concerts, beards, and literal puppies. He banned gold teeth, and helpfully offered that people who want stronger teeth should chew on soup bones, which is, of course, not how that works. He made the second Sunday of August into a public holiday called Melon Day, and renamed schools, airports, and even entire Turkmen towns after himself. He invented a new alphabet, and insisted that portraits of himself be hung in every home in the nation, while also requiring that those homes all fly a Turkmen flag. And, naturally, he rewrote the national anthem, including in a chorus that refers to Turkmenistan as his own \"great creation.\"\n\nDuring the many years that Saparmurat Niyazov was dictator, news broadcasts were expected to begin with a pledge from the newscaster that their tongue would shrivel, if ever they presented a report that slandered the country, the flag, or Niyazov himself. But it wasn't just newscasters that would have to pay heed to Niyazov; in the capital, it was made illegal to hang clothes, install air conditioners, or even open windows on streets that Niyazov *might* use or otherwise be able to see—which, at least in a hypothetical sense, includes the entire city. When he was targeted in an assassination attempt in 2002, he responded by imprisoning literally thousands of people whom it had previously been inconvenient to imprison, and when, in another incident, some unknown Turkmen put up some posters that claimed Niyazov wasn't really all that, Niyazov responded by firing his entire Cabinet, the Chief of Police of Turkmenistan, and the Director of the Turkmen Police Academy—because, we suppose, they weren't omniscient enough to stop it.\n\nAmong the most notable of all his strange policies, though, was the Walk of Health, a concrete stairway that runs up alongside some of the mountains in two sections, at a length of forty-five kilometers in total. That's not the weird part, though; the weird part is that every year, Niyazov ordered all of his ministers, parliament members, and civil servants to hike the entirety of the walk's longer section, thirty-seven kilometers in total, while Niyazov watched from above in a helicopter. As it turns out, making people walk thirty-seven kilometers along the path, which was completely unshaded and usually pretty hot, tended to give people more health problems than it alleviated, but that didn't stop Niyazov.\n\nWe can say at least one good thing about him, though: the man sure did love his mother. In fact, he named a month after her, and bequeathed himself and several other friends and family with days of the week and months of the year too. Not special enough for dear old mum? Don't worry, he also renamed bread—the literal food—after her as well.\n\nBut if Niyazov's vanity was impressive on its own, then make way—often quite literally—for his successor, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov. In typical Turkmen-dictator fashion, Berdimuhamedov ordered that the central avenue of Ashgabat be torn apart after Niyazov's death in 2006, and bulldozed both that central avenue and several dozen surrounding houses in order to build his own personal palace. A dentist by trade, but a dictator by profession, he's known in Turkmenistan as Arkadag—The Protector, or The Patron, depending on which translation you like.\n\nWhen discussing Berdimuhamedov's particular brand of crackpot dictatorship, we've got to start at the capital city of Ashgabat—a name that translates literally to City of Love, but fits somewhat less aptly than the city's more informal name around the world: the White Marble City. Ashgabat holds the world record for including the most white marble of any city on Earth, by a long shot, enough to fully encase 543 buildings with a total surface area of 4.5 million square meters when it was first assessed in 2013. Ashgabat also owns a number of other world records: the world's largest indoor Ferris wheel, the world's largest fountain, and not the world's largest mural, but specifically, the world's largest mural of a star. Its airport, opened in 1994, required an entire village to be bulldozed in order to build it and was then rebuilt at a price of some $2.3 billion, but operates at about ten percent capacity. The National Press Building is built with a front façade in the shape of a gigantic book; there's a building that functions as a giant thermometer; and the marriage registry, called the Palace of Happiness, is adorned with an absolutely massive disco ball, for reasons we simply cannot explain.\n\nFor his role in marble-ifying the city, Berdimuhamedov was granted the title of Distinguished Architect of Turkmenistan by the Turkmen parliament…because, well, of course he was. Berdimuhamedov's love of white marble, his love of weird architecture, and his love for breaking and setting niche and entirely unnecessary world records is well-documented, but nowhere is it on display more than in Ashgabat. Unfortunately for many ordinary Turkmen, the White Marble City came at the expense of their pensions, their previously free utilities, and the funding for their children's schools, but at least they got a gigantic monument to the Turkmen constitution for their trouble.\n\nAnd we have *got* to talk about the statues… so, so, *so many statues*. Turkmenistan features a wide range of gold statues depicting former president Niyazov, including one that rotates with the sun, and, naturally, Berdimuhamedov has since had many of his own constructed to match. There are also countless statues in Turkmenistan, gold and otherwise, depicting horses, ancient warriors, and dogs. Our favorite of the bunch is located in Ashgabat, and features the holy trinity of Things Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov Likes: a gold-leaf likeness of himself, a horse, also gold-leaf, and a rock outcropping constructed of white marble, all at a total height of over twenty meters.\n\nOf course, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov isn't just the Distinguished Architect of Turkmenistan; in fact, he's a man who wears many hats. During his time in office, Berdimuhamedov was a writer, and we'll sample one line from his book \"The Flight of the Celestial Racehorse,\" in which he describes the plight he personally faces: \"Riding on horse, driving plane steering wheel, sea liner, driving powerful [truck], Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov not just demonstrates wonderful physical shape and high professional skills in every business, he fixes in people's minds the image of modern [strongman], who has to do a lot. He must be well-educated, physically strong, and esthetically erudite.\"\n\nBold claims, to be sure, so let's go through each of them. He's most certainly proven that he's *very physically strong*, at one time lifting a golden barbell over his head whilst being applauded by his cabinet ministers. About a year later, he was filmed teaching a group of Turkmen police how to properly exercise, which must have gone well, since Turkmen state news website Orient.tm declared that Turkmenistan was lucky to have such a \"sports president\". He's also been seen at a firing range, playing basketball while riding a bicycle, practicing Taekwondo, throwing daggers, and doing his own Rocky-style training montages. Finally, he immortalized his dedication to sport in that same rap video we mentioned earlier, performed alongside his grandson, with the following, moving lyrics: \"Sport and the health is inspiration; Makes body strong and strong all the nation.\"\n\nHe's also, as he said, quite well-educated; after all, he's got three honorary doctorates and he's even an honorary professor at the Beijing Medical University. He's very good at \"driving powerful truck\"; he proved it in 2019, when he drove around Turkmenistan's gigantic and perpetually burning crater, Hell's Gate, in order to prove that he wasn't dead. He's also good at \"driving plane steering wheel\"; he's test-flown a supersonic military aircraft, according to Turkmen media. He's esthetically erudite; after all, just look at the man, his outfits clearly slay. And if all that wasn't enough, he's a DJ! Cool shit, Gurbanguly.\n\nSadly, we do have to dispute one claim—specifically, \"riding on horse\"—because although he's won plenty of horse races in his day, he did, in 2013, gain global meme status when he fell off his favorite horse, \"Stability\". We're devastated to report that Turkmenistan is, in fact, way ahead of us in disputing this claim; not only has the incident been scrubbed forcibly from all Turkmen media, but two years later, Berdimuhamedov was given a new title, the \"People's Horse Breeder\". What exactly that means, or where, precisely, he figures into the breeding process, we truly could not tell you, but he's also written several books on the most famous Turkmen breed of horses, the Akhal-Teke, and has since hosted horse beauty contests. On the legal side, he criminalized the act of changing an Akhal-Teke horse's name during its lifetime, a rule that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty helpfully summarized as such: \"For example, Kerwen (Caravan) cannot be renamed Melegush (Orange Bird) just because the owner changes his mind and decides he likes the new name better.\" He also made mandatory the act of giving every Akhal-Teke horse a proper burial, with an official present, in a designated area, despite the fact that no designated areas for horse burials existed in Turkmenistan at the time.\n\n## The Not-So-Silly Stuff\n\nBy now, we hope it's become abundantly clear that Turkmenistan's ruling regime is a bit of a clown show…but unfortunately, that's not the whole story. In fact, while we certainly wouldn't claim that Niyazov and Berdimuhamedov's eccentricities are manufactured just for show, it's important to know that they serve a real purpose. To understand what that purpose is, we'll ask you to participate in a simple thought exercise: Imagine you're a TV news producer, working on a three-minute spot about Turkmenistan. Are you going to talk about ugly, unpalatable human rights abuses? Or are you going to talk about the deejay dictator who does donuts around a literal pit of death? Alas, it's time that we strip away all the buffoonery of Turkmenistan, and look instead at the deeply troubling reality hidden underneath.\n\nWe've already touched briefly on the Turkmen regime's willingness to pervert and overwrite the country's culture and history for its own aims, but the practice goes shockingly deep. Every historical structure in the country, be it ancient ruins or iconic infrastructure, is liable to be bulldozed if the regime wishes it. Turkmen cultural rituals of dress and personal grooming have been legislated over, while at the same time, being co-opted for photo shoots and publicly broadcasted events where Turkmen attendees are compelled to dress as if they've all just time-traveled from Turkmenistan's eighteenth century. So, too, is Turkmen money largely treated as the regime's own personal slush fund; during the later years of his administration, former president Niyazov funneled over half of the country's GDP into his own projects, and today, the Berdimuhamedov dynasty continues to siphon additional funds from their ailing poor.\n\nIn Ashgabat, that city of marble we mentioned before was built after the demolition of many historical monuments, most of the city's trees, and a series of canals that had defined it for many decades. It was, very obviously, built to be more of a display of power and wealth than a livable city, but in practice, that means a capital where many neighborhoods lack reliable electrical and water infrastructure, while in the districts that are deemed important, empty city streets stay brightly lit and water keeps flowing to elaborate, but profoundly unnecessary fountains. In fact, quality of life in the city has only gotten worse with time; store shelves may be well-stocked, but goods are prohibitively expensive, and with air conditioning and open windows banned in many districts, it can become too suffocatingly hot to live for much of the year. Lines of ordinary Turkmen waiting for rations or for ATMs to be refilled are kept out of sight, sent to back alleys and parking lots in order to not intrude on visible street facades. Functionally speaking, many of the people who do have to live there are display pieces, both for the dictator and his party elites, and for any foreigners who've found themselves within the Ashgabat city limits—and any failure to display oneself properly, is likely to be punished.\n\nAlthough the country's situation isn't quite so dire as, say, North Korea, there's a lot of distance between being happy and healthy, and living under the rule of one Kim Jong-Un…and for most Turkmen, everyday life looks a lot more like the North Korea option than the nicer alternative. The distribution of bread, by example, is tightly controlled, with Turkmen families limited to the purchase of two to three loaves daily despite the country's agricultural potential, which is instead leveraged to harvest well over a hundred million tons of cotton annually. Food shortages go far beyond bread, with an ongoing crisis that's only gotten worse since 2015, and often sees Turkmen citizens waiting for hours in line for rations only to be turned away when they run out. The country deals with some incredible inflation rates, far worsening food prices, to the point that many Turkmen who do have the chance to speak to Western sources report spending over three-quarters of their family income on just getting food.\n\nAlongside the inflation, there's the unemployment, which, officially in Turkmenistan, hovers somewhere around four to five percent, but in reality, is believed to impact up to half of the national workforce. This has pushed countless families into poverty even as the government continues its lavish spending on construction projects, and for people who are lucky enough to have jobs, usually with the state, things aren't much better. State workers are often ordered to perform cleanup of city streets, make financial contributions toward government projects, or even donate up to half of their salaries each month for whatever the regime dreams up on a given day, on penalty of resignation. Forced to choose between either paying the fees or entering a functionally nonexistent job market in the private sector, Turkmen state employees have no choice but to pay up. In the summers, they're forced to buy holiday packages to go vacationing in Turkmenistan's resort town of Awaza, and they're mandated to pay subscription fees to receive state media publications—which, in the case of print media, they often don't even receive. On occasion, even unemployed recipients of state money have been forced to contribute, including one case in 2021, where school officials in the southeastern province of Mary forced literal orphans to donate a quarter of their already-minimal financial support in order to help pay for a school renovation.\n\nThen, there's academia. In Turkmen schools and universities, many potentially controversial or sensitive subjects are banned from discussion outright, while curricula are tightly controlled and prescribed in detail for local educators. The country refuses to recognize degrees granted by foreign institutions, making study abroad all but meaningless for Turkmen students who don't want to leave their country permanently. Turkmenistan suffers from some incredible brain drain, a phenomenon in which people from an undeveloped country who travel abroad for an education, choose to stay abroad rather than bringing their knowledge back home. That lack of expertise translates to a lack of ability to educate young Turkmen who choose to pursue studies in their own country, and that, in turn, means that there are very few qualified people in Turkmenistan to do everyday things like keeping the lights on, or building new infrastructure that might actually help people. Not only are those people unable to make their voices heard in Turkmenistan's totalitarian government, but they likely aren't present in Turkmenistan at all.\n\nBut young students aren't the only people who want to leave Turkmenistan. With the country's population in stark decline, government officials have recently taken steps to confiscate travel passports that belong to Turkmen employees of the state, and can outright refuse the right to leave to any Turkmen for any reason. Turkmen have been pulled off flights, restricted from international travel before they reach a certain age, and detained at border crossings. This rule is applied with particular force against Turkmenistan's Baloch minority, a group whose language, customs, and culture are forbidden from being taught or spread within Turkmenistan. Luckily for the Turkmen public, some sources suggest that over two million people have left the country since the turn of the millennium, but that does very little for the people still stuck there.\n\nAnd let's go back to the media pledge we mentioned before, as announced by newscasters at the start of their broadcasts under Turkmenistan's first President, Niyazov: that the newscaster's tongue would shrivel if ever they made a report slandering the country, the flag, or Niyazov. On the one hand, we've got to point out here that the Turkmen regime does not have the same definition of slander that we do, but instead a much broader one that includes basically anything negative about the country, flag, or president. Pointing out that the Turkmen population's got a little bit of a drug problem, is slander; pointing out that a whole lot of citizens are living in poverty, is slander. Pointing out that a whole lot of Turkmen are dying of AIDS, which has been true for a lot of the country's modern history, is slander—and while the expectation isn't that a newscaster's punishment will be a literal shriveling of their tongue, they might face a couple of decades in prison for their trouble.\n\nIn fact, when it comes to press freedoms overall, Turkmenistan is ranked third-to-last in the entire world, staying in front of only North Korea and Eritrea. Independent and non-state-affiliated journalists have long been subject to harassment by authorities, criminal prosecution, imprisonment, and even physical abuse, and the families of Turkmen journalists have been harassed even when those journalists are working abroad. Employees of the Turkmen-language branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty are subject to the worst treatment overall, since that organization draws a large share of its financial support from the US government. Even the rare non-state media organizations that do manage to survive, primarily Russian ones, are subject to the same intense regulations in order to survive in the country. Bloggers, Instagrammers, and YouTubers living in Turkmenistan are instructed by state officials to propagate the regime's narrative of their country as a \"happy and prosperous\" nation, and threatened with detention as penalty for even liking or commenting online content that runs against that narrative. When a Turkmen reporter commits the ultimate cardinal sin, attempting to tell the world about the realities of life in their country, they're liable to be disappeared, with no way to track them once they enter the country's murky penal system.\n\nNearly all broadcast and print media distributed in Turkmenistan is under direct state control, and the country's Internet blackouts include all independent or foreign news outlets. For decades, satellite receivers have been outlawed in Turkmenistan—which, ironically enough, was a decision made in the same year that the country launched its own first satellite into space. As a result, any Turkmen following the law will be unable to receive any satellite broadcast, while anyone found with a receiver faces their own harsh penalties. VPNs have been criminalized across Turkmenistan, and we'd like to quickly wave hello to our Turkmen viewers using said VPNs to watch this video on YouTube, which is also blocked. In fact, some 122,000 websites have been blocked there, and its internet speeds, even for allowed sites, are incredibly slow, with one reporter's attempt to download a five-gigabyte file taking nearly an entire day. And in a telling indicator of just how willing Turkmen officials are to probe into their citizens' lives, all messaging services that encrypt communications are banned too.\n\nThen, there's the question of religion, which, unsurprisingly, is handled with a similarly tight fist. Religious minorities in Turkmenistan, predominantly Christians, are subject to intense restrictions on when and where they practice their religion, if they're allowed to at all. In recent decades, violators have been met with imprisonment, had their religious materials confiscated, been prevented from leaving the country, or even been tortured while in detention. Former president Niyazov's own religious text, authored in two volumes under the name Ruhnama, is taught in schools alongside the Qur'an, with quotes from the Ruhnama, or \"book of the soul\", inscribed in mosques, and knowledge of the text being required in order to obtain a driver's license. And even for Muslims, practicing the dominant and state-supported religion of Turkmenistan, failure to follow regime-approved worship practices can be grounds for imprisonment even if those regime practices conflict directly with common or fundamental interpretations of Islam.\n\nIn recent years, restrictions on individual freedoms have become even more severe. The Berdimuhamedov administration has begun to regulate around the use of plastic surgery, the use of makeup, the range of permissible clothing, and the use of hair dye. Women have found themselves disproportionately targeted in the enforcement of these laws, and have been subject to additional restrictions on their travel outside the home when not being chaperoned by a male relative. Children's summer camps are now expected to facilitate the picking of cotton, for which children are not compensated, and those same children have only minimal protections from abuse inside their own home. Even animals haven't been spared Berdimuhamedov's wrath; in Ashgabat, stray animals and household pets are deliberately killed by authorities, while the few animal-rights activists who risk speaking up, have been charged in criminal courts and had their limited Internet access shut down.\n\nBut despite the Turkmen government's intense interest in controlling every aspect of its people's lives, they don't seem particularly interested in keeping those same people safe. As we've mentioned before, Turkmen state workers are often mandated to join in picking cotton for the harvest season, but this practice goes much further, with large proportions of the Turkmen public mobilized every year for what is essentially forced labor. Children are expected to work alongside adults, and the practice has gone utterly unchallenged by Turkmenistan's own judicial authorities. Turkmens live life at high risk of being trafficked and exploited by criminal organizations, both at home and abroad, and the country is a major transit point for opiate products made in Afghanistan, a shipping process that Turkmen citizens are often made to unwillingly participate in. Rape and domestic violence typically go unreported, and people who are charged with crimes are deprived of all forms of due process if the government decides to withhold it. The Turkmen penal system is an incredibly dangerous place to be, with sadistic forms of torture being commonplace, and conditions nigh-on-inhospitable between a lack of climate control, inadequate food and medicine, and no mechanism to contact the outside world.\n\nAnd all the while, as Turkmen citizens get poorer and poorer, high government officials get richer and richer. The country's construction industry, in particular, is known to be incredibly corrupt, with contractors regularly making bribes to Turkmen officials in order to do their work. Whether the country's entire construction sector, especially things like the White Marble City, might themselves be a front for large-scale money laundering, we can't say for sure…but we're certainly curious. International businesses are barred from large portions of the country until, and unless, they agree to grease the palms of the Turkmen government, and any large projects must be authorized by presidential decree, which is an entirely arbitrary process that enriches just about everyone in the Turkmen government, and disincentivizes them from ever bringing worse forms of corruption to light. On a local level, Turkmenistan deals with a longstanding issue around the illegal adoption of abandoned babies, which is facilitated by state adoption officials who accept bribes to expedite the process for richer families. Overall, Turkmenistan is ranked 167th of 180 nations for its handling of corruption by Transparency International, a score that easily puts it alongside the worst of the worst in this regard.\n\nNow, alongside all the state-sponsored nastiness, we've also got to talk about another facet to the Turkmen regime: its tendency to avoid the spotlight internationally, at almost any cost. Turkmenistan keeps an unusually low profile around the world, not just because they've got a lower population and might have a harder time making their voice heard, but because they have intentionally withdrawn from the international community.\n\nThe country has insisted on a state of neutrality since it first gained its independence, becoming a member state of what its rulers at the time likely perceived to be non-optional collectives like the UN and the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States. But even in these organizations, it's barely ever heard from; in the UN, Turkmen personnel sit mostly to the sidelines, and it's downgraded its membership intentionally in the Russia-centric Commonwealth of Independent States to associate status. It's the only Central Asian nation to have stayed out of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a political, economic, and defensive pact established by Russia and China, and it's similarly avoided the Collective Security Treaty Organization between Russia and several Central and West Asian states.\n\nWith its neighbors, Turkmenistan has kept a very friendly face despite many political ups and downs in the region. Turkmenistan supplies natural gas to some nearby nations, but has avoided building pipelines through others, even when building those pipelines would have opened up lucrative pathways for Turkmen gas to reach Europe. Turkmenistan has got on fine with both Afghanistan's civilian administration and the Taliban, and they've happily accepted a designation of permanent neutrality from the United Nations, enshrining that same neutrality principle in its own Constitution. While remaining engaged with its foreign partners at a superficial level, Turkmenistan has largely stayed away from taking stances on potentially thorny issues.\n\nAll this is helped by Turkmenistan's physical location at the heart of Central Asia, which could have very easily made it into a pawn in geopolitical games by its neighbors, but instead has helped it to appear valuable to those same neighbors as a buffer zone between potentially hostile actors. Acting as the functional equivalent of the stoner at a frat party, telling the football and the baseball players to \"calm down, bro\" before they break out into a brawl, Turkmenistan is the definition of a low-key, unintrusive neighbor. Even when the country has been struck by devastating natural disasters, it's declined offers for foreign aid and refrained from issuing calls for help. The country doesn't host any substantial numbers of American troops, it's allowed a much-publicized pipeline across the Caspian Sea to stall rather than pissing off any country that pipeline would have to traverse, and it's quite happy to aid its neighbors with the detention and torture of any dissidents foolish enough to flee from their own countries *into* Turkmenistan.\n\nThe reason why we emphasize Turkmenistan's avoidance of the international order, is to emphasize what exactly it does for Turkmenistan's leaders to keep themselves out of sight. Since the country established its sovereignty at the end of the Cold War, the elites of Turkmenistan have understood that the less scrutiny they face from abroad, the more authority they can exert at home. As such, they've done all the things we've already mentioned—avoiding economic projects that might piss off another nation, disengaging from international diplomacy, that sort of thing. But Turkmenistan's regime also understands that after decades of personality cults and totalitarian rule, anybody who comes sniffing around *today* is going to find some weird shit—and rather than change any of that weird shit, Turkmenistan's answer has been to ensure that nobody has any reason to come looking around.\n\nIt's by understanding that sort of obfuscation, that people like Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov start to make a lot more sense. His strange behavior in public has its benefits in domestic politics; so did those of Saparmurat Niyazov. But their conduct also ensures that when a foreigner takes a cursory look at Turkmenistan for the first time on, say, YouTube, they're not going to find an expose about what really goes on there. Instead, they're going to see viral, highly memeable videos of a kindly, clueless-looking old dude lifting a gold bar above his head and, at worst, falling off his horse. The vibe is much less, \"totalitarian dictator exploiting his people,\" and much more, \"I bet that guy's a lot of fun at a party.\"\n\nAnd we can extrapolate that to the grandiose monuments and statues, the strange architecture of the Turkmen capital city, and all the work Turkmen elites do behind the scenes, not to ensure that nothing bad happens in their country, but to ensure that the word never gets out. It's an admittedly savvy strategy in the social-media age: saturate the online Turkmenistan space, if you will, with a caricatured version of the dictator-du-jour as a silly, goofy guy, so that when somebody somewhere makes a piece like…well…this one, it's likely to get lost in the noise. As strange as it is to say, it really does apply: If you want to stick it to Turkmenistan, then like, comment, and subscribe.\n\n## Turkmenistan After Gurbanguly\n\nAfter the \"President for life\" example set by Turkmenistan's first modern leader, most international observers expected that Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov would follow suit, ruling until he eventually dropped dead and letting whichever successor he had named, if he'd named one at all, take over in the aftermath. So it was a shock to the world when in the early 2020s, after continued speculation over Berdimuhamedov's health, the dictator named his successor. Meet Serdar Berdimuhamedov, son of Gurbanguly, who had long been known to people who were paying attention to the intricacies of Turkmen life, but who was largely unknown on an international stage.\n\nIn a snap election that was, like all other elections in Turkmenistan, neither free nor fair, Serdar was elected with just about 73% of the national vote. His father had prefaced the election by telling his country that he believed Turkmenistan should be run by younger people, and emphasizing that his son, who had previously served in a long list of government posts before rising to the stature of Deputy Prime Minister, was a rightful choice to lead. Serdar's own pitch to his country emphasized his willingness to continue Turkmenistan's prior development goals, and keep the policies of positive neutrality that have defined Turkmen politics for decades. All the while, his father would continue just…being Gurbangaly, at the head of the Turkmen upper house of parliament.\n\nEarly on, it almost appeared that life under Serdar might actually improve things in Turkmenistan. Although he continued his father's long, slow process to accrue more and more power, he also took meaningful steps against corruption at the government's highest level, including even members of his own family. Before long, word spread in the international community that there might be trouble in paradise; Papa Berdimuhamedov was setting to work in unifying the Turkmen upper and lower parliaments into one body, which would be granted basically unlimited powers. In a situation where the elder Berdimuhamedov's continued presence in parliament had already caused confusion around who exactly the rest of the government was supposed to listen to, the move appeared as if it was an attempt to take the reins back from his son.\n\nBy that time, just a few months into Serdar's rule, Turkmen civilians had already begun to protest in public—a previously unheard-of phenomenon to be happening en masse. Unemployment, according to unofficial sources, had climbed as high as sixty percent, and inflation, even by the Turkmen government's own count, was rising by fourteen percent annually at a minimum. Rising tensions in all corners might well have spelled doom for Serdar's rule almost as soon as it began…but he caught a lucky break, at what may have been his personal eleventh hour.\n\nTo be specific…he got a war in Ukraine, one that took Russian oil and gas off large sections of the international market. This very quickly turned into an economic windfall for Turkmenistan, with government officials suddenly being courted by Westerners who needed any gas supplier not named Vladimir Putin. Over in nearby China, an economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic led to increased needs for gas imports of their own, rocketing Turkmenistan's export revenues to levels never seen before. Moscow, too, panicked at the prospect of letting Turkmenistan ice them out of the Western market in the long term—and remember, this is still back in the days when Russia thought they'd steamroll Ukraine and go back to business as usual.\n\nWith so many potential business partners, Serdar immediately became the man of the hour in Turkmenistan, largely because he, not his father, was expected to act as the lead negotiator in all foreign deals. Serdar got to travel to China, Russia, Qatar, and elsewhere, while Gurbanguly was left at home and forced to ask nicely for even the most basic news about what Serdar was achieving. Gurbanguly attempted to counter his son with his own international tour, but still seemed to believe that nobody else in Turkmenistan had caught on to his power struggle. Because Serdar had no reason to hand his father power, and Gurbanguly perhaps didn't want all the baggage to admit that he was launching a quiet coup against his own son, Turkmen officials were left in a lurch between the two Berdimuhamedovs.\n\nWith Serdar so clearly gaining the upper hand, Gurbanguly appeared to get nervous that he might be next on his own son's chopping block. The thing that spooked him the most, was Serdar's appointment of a new Prosecutor General, one who would almost certainly have the power—if perhaps not the will—to investigate the elder Berdimuhamedov directly. With such clear impetus to act, Gurbanguly fused together Turkmenistan's two legislative houses as he had intended. Gurbanguly himself, sitting at the head of the People's Council of Turkmenistan, regained his control over Turkmenistan's constitution, its foreign and domestic politics and development projects, and his basically unchallenged authority over the Turkmen state itself. Serdar, however, was functionally demoted; he still holds the title of President, and will probably regain some of his authority when his dad finally kicks the bucket, but at present, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov is just as much Turkmenistan's leader as ever. In fact, Serdar even gave him the title to match: National Leader of the Turkmen People.\n\nAs of now, life in Turkmenistan is still firmly under the control of Gurbanguly. He won foreign awards from Russia and Kazakhstan in 2022, he opened up a new youth-focused magazine to extend his personality cult in 2023, and just a few days before this video was written, he passed a law creating a state award called the Arkadag medal—Arkadag, again, meaning \"the Protector,\" and referring to Berdimuhamedov himself. How long this will continue, and just how many meme-worthy videos and stunts the dictator will pull in the future, we simply can't say, but with power reconsolidated in his iron fist, it's the Turkmen people who seem more thoroughly subjugated today than they've ever been.\n\nInternationally, there are next to no calls for Gurbanguly to step down; in fact, much of the global media seems to have missed the part where he turned his own son into a figurehead president, and took back power for himself. But then, that's always been the intent with the dictators of Turkmenistan: simply don't give the wider world reason to take notice. Don't cause chaos, don't step out of the shadow of Russia or China or Iran, and when a Westerner does come looking, make sure they see dear old granddad Gurbanguly dropping some zesty bars with his grandson. It's that inexplicably goofy, outwardly harmless, and incredibly weird façade that allows the Turkmen regime to crush its own people, as it always has…and until more people around the world take notice, that's how things are likely to stay.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- Turkmenistan is a totalitarian regime with a history of authoritarian leaders.\n- The country's leaders use eccentric behavior and grand projects to distract from human rights abuses.\n- Turkmenistan's economy relies heavily on natural gas and oil exports, particularly to China.\n- The regime tightly controls media, religion, and personal freedoms, leading to widespread poverty and unrest.\n- Despite international scrutiny, Turkmenistan maintains a low profile to avoid external interference.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What is Turkmenistan known for in terms of natural resources?\n\nTurkmenistan is known for having the world's fifth-largest reserves of natural gas and significant oil reserves. These resources are crucial for its economy, with a majority of its exports being petroleum products.\n\n### Who was the first president of independent Turkmenistan?\n\nThe first president of independent Turkmenistan was Saparmurat Niyazov, who continued as the chief of state after the country declared its sovereignty in 1990.\n\n### What is the significance of the Darvaza gas crater in Turkmenistan?\n\nThe Darvaza gas crater is one of Turkmenistan's most famous landmarks. It has been burning continuously since the 1970s and is a result of the country's massive natural gas reserves.\n\n### How did Saparmurat Niyazov consolidate his power in Turkmenistan?\n\nSaparmurat Niyazov consolidated his power by declaring himself president for life, abolishing term limits through a rigged referendum, and transforming the country into a cult of personality centered around himself.\n\n### What are some of the bizarre laws and policies implemented by Turkmenistan's leaders?\n\nSome of the bizarre laws and policies include banning lip-syncing in concerts, gold teeth, beards, and puppies. Former president Niyazov also mandated that all homes fly a Turkmen flag and hang his portrait, and renamed schools, airports, and towns after himself.\n\n### What is the 'Walk of Health' in Turkmenistan?\n\nThe 'Walk of Health' is a 45-kilometer concrete stairway that former president Niyazov ordered all ministers, parliament members, and civil servants to hike annually while he watched from a helicopter.\n\n### How does the Turkmen government control the media and information?\n\nThe Turkmen government controls the media by banning independent and non-state-affiliated journalists, criminalizing VPNs, and blocking a vast number of websites. All broadcast and print media are under direct state control, and internet speeds are incredibly slow.\n\n### What is the current political situation in Turkmenistan under Serdar Berdimuhamedov?\n\nSerdar Berdimuhamedov, the son of former president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, is the current president. However, his father retains significant power, having consolidated authority by merging the legislative houses and regaining control over the constitution and foreign policy.\n\n### How does Turkmenistan maintain a low international profile?\n\nTurkmenistan maintains a low international profile by avoiding economic projects that might upset other nations, disengaging from international diplomacy, and ensuring that any foreign attention is focused on the eccentricities of its leaders rather than its human rights abuses.\n\n### What are some of the human rights issues faced by the people of Turkmenistan?\n\nHuman rights issues in Turkmenistan include forced labor, severe restrictions on freedom of speech and religion, arbitrary detention, torture, and a lack of due process. The government also controls the distribution of basic necessities like bread and water.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original Places video: Turkmenistan: The World’s Wackiest Dictatorship?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URxwfX9pwNM)\n- [https://1997-2001.state.gov/background_notes/turkmenistan_0101_bgn.html](https://1997-2001.state.gov/background_notes/turkmenistan_0101_bgn.html)\n- [https://www.metmuseum.org/learn/educators/curriculum-resources/art-of-the-islamic-world/unit-six/chapter-three/who-are-the-turkmen](https://www.metmuseum.org/learn/educators/curriculum-resources/art-of-the-islamic-world/unit-six/chapter-three/who-are-the-turkmen)\n- [https://www.thoughtco.com/turkmenistan-facts-and-history-195771](https://www.thoughtco.com/turkmenistan-facts-and-history-195771)\n- [https://www.unaids.org/en/regionscountries/countries/turkmenistan](https://www.unaids.org/en/regionscountries/countries/turkmenistan)\n- [https://cpj.org/reports/2006/05/10-most-censored-countries/](https://cpj.org/reports/2006/05/10-most-censored-countries/)\n- [https://www.britannica.com/place/Turkmenistan/Cultural-life](https://www.britannica.com/place/Turkmenistan/Cultural-life)\n- [https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/oct/16/people-afraid-inside-ashgabat-turkmenistan-closed-city](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/oct/16/people-afraid-inside-ashgabat-turkmenistan-closed-city)\n- [https://www.rferl.org/a/turkmenistan-marble-record-architecture/24998685.html](https://www.rferl.org/a/turkmenistan-marble-record-architecture/24998685.html)\n- [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/02/turkmenistans-president-lifts-golden-weight-bar/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/02/turkmenistans-president-lifts-golden-weight-bar/)\n- [https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-50808126](https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-50808126)\n- [https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-50808126](https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-50808126)\n- [https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/02/turkmenistan-commando-propaganda-berdymukhamedov-video/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/02/turkmenistan-commando-propaganda-berdymukhamedov-video/)\n- [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/27/turkmenistan-president-named-peoples-horse-breeder](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/27/turkmenistan-president-named-peoples-horse-breeder)\n- [https://www.rferl.org/a/turkmenistan-dont-change-horse-names/27438392.html](https://www.rferl.org/a/turkmenistan-dont-change-horse-names/27438392.html)\n- [https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/walk-of-health](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/walk-of-health)\n- [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/horse-turkmenistan-president-statute-berdymukhamedov](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/horse-turkmenistan-president-statute-berdymukhamedov)\n- [https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/06/the-city-of-white-marble-ashgabat-turkmenistan/100528/](https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/06/the-city-of-white-marble-ashgabat-turkmenistan/100528/)\n- [https://medium.com/interesting-histories/interesting-histories-saparmurat-niyazov-the-real-general-aladeen-552c12a1e4e2](https://medium.com/interesting-histories/interesting-histories-saparmurat-niyazov-the-real-general-aladeen-552c12a1e4e2)\n- [https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5bq77/into-the-weird-opulent-world-of-turkmenistans-dentist-dj-dictator](https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5bq77/into-the-weird-opulent-world-of-turkmenistans-dentist-dj-dictator)\n- [https://www.britannica.com/place/Turkmenistan/Turkmen-tribes-and-Russian-invasion](https://www.britannica.com/place/Turkmenistan/Turkmen-tribes-and-Russian-invasion)\n- [https://www.rferl.org/a/turkmenistan-bloggers-happy-prosperous-pressure/32453257.html](https://www.rferl.org/a/turkmenistan-bloggers-happy-prosperous-pressure/32453257.html)\n- [https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/23/turkmenistan-denial-inaction-worsen-food-crisis](https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/23/turkmenistan-denial-inaction-worsen-food-crisis)\n- [https://www.rferl.org/a/turkmenistan-workers-forced-donate-money-volunteer/32284714.html](https://www.rferl.org/a/turkmenistan-workers-forced-donate-money-volunteer/32284714.html)\n- [https://www.rferl.org/a/escape-from-turkmenistan-almost-2-million-have-fled-but-the-president-won-t-hear-of-it/29987972.html](https://www.rferl.org/a/escape-from-turkmenistan-almost-2-million-have-fled-but-the-president-won-t-hear-of-it/29987972.html)\n- [https://freedomhouse.org/country/turkmenistan/freedom-world/2023](https://freedomhouse.org/country/turkmenistan/freedom-world/2023)\n- [https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/turkmenistan/](https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/turkmenistan/)\n- [https://provetheyarealive.org/ovadan-depe-medieval-torture-in-modern-turkmenistan/](https://provetheyarealive.org/ovadan-depe-medieval-torture-in-modern-turkmenistan/)\n- [https://www.transparency.org/en/countries/turkmenistan](https://www.transparency.org/en/countries/turkmenistan)\n- [https://www.ganintegrity.com/country-profiles/turkmenistan/](https://www.ganintegrity.com/country-profiles/turkmenistan/)\n- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ5wX1aIW6Y&ab_channel=RadioFreeEurope%2FRadioLiberty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ5wX1aIW6Y&ab_channel=RadioFreeEurope%2FRadioLiberty)\n- [https://www.hrw.org/europe/central-asia/turkmenistan](https://www.hrw.org/europe/central-asia/turkmenistan)\n- [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-16094646](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-16094646)\n- [https://www.state.gov/countries-areas/turkmenistan/](https://www.state.gov/countries-areas/turkmenistan/)\n- [https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/turkmenistan](https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/turkmenistan)\n- [https://freedomhouse.org/country/turkmenistan](https://freedomhouse.org/country/turkmenistan)\n- [https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/europe-and-central-asia/turkmenistan/](https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/europe-and-central-asia/turkmenistan/)\n- [https://www.idsa.in/issuebrief/Turkmenistan-Neutrality-Based-Foreign-Policy-jwahlang-200722](https://www.idsa.in/issuebrief/Turkmenistan-Neutrality-Based-Foreign-Policy-jwahlang-200722)\n- [https://apnews.com/article/central-asia-asia-turkmenistan-presidential-elections-elections-3d13e95fe055bf53525141c351708488](https://apnews.com/article/central-asia-asia-turkmenistan-presidential-elections-elections-3d13e95fe055bf53525141c351708488)\n- [https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/89679](https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/89679)\n- [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Vladimir_Putin_and_Serdar_Berdimuhamedow_%282022-06-10%29_01.jpg) by Presidential Executive Office of Russia / openverse, by.\n\n## Related Coverage"
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"How is amazing, the place Awaza. Caspian waves are bursting up-down. Life is so wonderful in motherland. My splendid and dazzling Turkmenistan."

They're poignant words, brought to us in the form of a rather funky rap number, and considering that they're rapped by none other than the then-president of Turkmenistan himself and his grandson, rapper name Lil' Sandal—well, they've got to be true, haven't they? Delivered alongside other important messages like "Sport and the health is inspiration, makes body strong and strong all the nation," former president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov's pitch is a good one: his country, Turkmenistan, is a beautiful place, and everybody should want to live there.

Now, if you, like a fair proportion of the world, had never heard of Turkmenistan before watching this video, then you might be inclined to take dear Gurbanguly's word for it—but if you *have* heard of Turkmenistan, then you've probably realized there's a catch. Behind the Turkmen President's rap videos, behind his public naughty-grandpa personality, and behind the veil of anonymity that Turkmenistan has enjoyed for decades, lies one of the world's most totalitarian regimes. It's Turkmenistan's ruthless overlords, their bizarre cult of personality, and the place, and people, that they crush underfoot, that we're going to be exploring today.

Welcome to Turkmenistan.

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## The Land and Its History

The sovereign nation of Turkmenistan is one of the most out-of-the-way countries in the entire world. A landlocked territory on the shores of the Caspian Sea, which, itself, is also landlocked, Turkmenistan counts a total of four neighbors: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. But despite being at just about the exact center of Central Asia, Turkmenistan is far from a notable regional player. With territory covered mostly in desert, a total land area just barely smaller than France and Spain, and a population of a little over seven million people, Turkmenistan is instead a quiet, unassuming country on a quiet, unassuming stretch of habitable highlands, basically overseeing the empty sands at its core.

That's not to say that Turkmenistan has got *nothing* going for it. It's got the world's fifth-largest reserves of natural gas, it's got a long history of inter-reliance with its neighboring former-Soviet states, it's got a whole lot of oil and power for export, and it's got a long history of providing its citizens utilities like electricity and water for free, which we'll talk about more in just a bit. It doesn't tend to engage in wars, it doesn't tend to piss off any of its neighbors, and it's nestled happily under the political umbrella of the Russian Federation. In fact, to hear Turkmenistan's people tell it to foreign pollsters, or see them grinning and clapping along to one of former President Berdimuhamedov's jam sessions, you might think that it's one of the happiest places in the world.

With a name that many scholars translate as "land of the pure Turks," Turkmenistan traces its ancient history to the Achaemenid Empire of ancient Iran, where federations of Oghuz tribesmen became the ancestors of modern ethnic Turkmens. Backed up against the natural barrier of the Caspian Sea, and at something of an intersection between the ancient empires of their time, the early Turkmen tribes passed from the dominion of the Seljuk Empire to the Mongols to the Uzbek khans, all the while building their own enclaves and settlements while some proportion of Turkmen continued to live as nomads. The Turkmen began practicing Islam in the late tenth century, a faith that's carried through to the modern day, and they became known throughout the region for a fierce reputation of resistance to all forms of external rule, even while lending their fighting men and military prowess to a range of regional partners. In the 19th century, the Turkmen gained notoriety as slave traders across Central Asia, and notched important victories into their belt against invaders from nearby Persia.

But the history of the state that would evolve into modern-day Turkmenistan can trace its history back to the same place as most of the other nations we now refer to as post-Soviet states: the expansion of Tsarist Russia into a wide range of Central Asian and Eastern European territories. Although the Turkmen tribes of the time did not go quietly, they were eventually annexed into the Russian Empire in 1881. After a few decades of consolidating Russian control, the Turkmens joined the rest of Central Asia in revolting against conscription orders from Moscow during World War I, but like the rest of Central Asia, they were eventually subsumed by Tsarist Russia's successor, the Soviet Union, after a few years of fierce but ultimately unsuccessful resistance. Evolving into the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, the Turkmen state and culture was reorganized into what was a common sight across Soviet Russia: an agricultural producer in line with the expectations of the Soviet state.

It was in this state of quiet subsistence that Turkmenistan would experience the next seventy years or so, insulated by the steppes and the Caspian Sea from the ravages of World War II or the independence movements of the late 1980s. When Turkmenistan declared its sovereignty in 1990, reading the writing on the wall just like every other country of the region, it was more a question of survival and avoiding economic exploitation than an issue of self-determination. The man who had been leading the Turkmen SSR, an ethnic Turkmen named Saparmurat Niyazov, continued as the first chief of state of Turkmenistan, making a clean pivot from communism to his own brand of authoritarian Turkmen nationalism.

And when we say authoritarianism, we mean authoritarianism. We'll be diving way, *way* deeper into Mr. Niyazov and his successors in just a short while, but for now, suffice to say that the rise of the Niyazov administration very quickly became the rise of the Niyazov cult of personality. Within a few years, he used a rigged referendum to abolish the requirement for presidents to be re-elected, declared himself president for life, and set about a long series of social and cultural reforms to basically transform the country of Turkmenistan into the country of Saparmurat Niyazov. When Niyazov died after a couple of decades of rule and his deputy Prime Minister, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, took the reins, the cycle continued, and when he stepped down and passed the nation to his son Serdar in 2022, it continued yet again.

Before we get into the real political weirdness of modern-day Turkmenistan, we've got to dive in a bit deeper as to what exactly makes this country tick. Much like the other nations of the Central Asian steppes, Turkmenistan has a long history of nomadic living and interdependence with horses, and equestrian culture is just as important today in Turkmen culture as ever. Where a Brazilian youth plays football or an American youth plays—well, the other football, a Turkmen youth might learn the fine arts of grappling on horseback. So, too, does that nomadic legacy show itself in meat-and-dairy-heavy Turkmen cuisine, and the continued use of traditional attire and hand-knotted carpets. Turkmenistan has a long history of emphasis on poetry and intellectualism, although the area's years under Soviet authority provided a temporary blunting of such traditions, and the following regime has since repurposed Turkmen intellectual culture to its own benefit.

In an economic sense, the country is deeply reliant on its massive reserves of natural gas and oil, with a full ninety-two percent of its exports in 2019 being petroleum products. But with gas, comes some pretty massive revenues; Turkmenistan runs lucrative pipelines to Iran and China, with the latter nation being responsible for a majority of Turkmenistan's external revenue. Turkmenistan's gas reserves have also given it one of its most famous landmarks, the Darvaza gas crater, which has issued methane and burned continuously since the 1970s with no sign of stopping. Other than gas and oil, the biggest thing Turkmenistan's got going for it is its production of raw cotton, and it's got some level of tourism happening in its Awaza district, on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The country's income has been so completely buoyed by its gas revenues that for years, Turkmen citizens have enjoyed free allotments of water, gas, electricity, and salt for their utilities, although that's no longer the case.

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<!-- aeo:section start="the-silly-stuff" -->
## The Silly Stuff

Turkmenistan's got one of those ruling regimes that simply cannot help but lean into its megalomania, with all the crazy architecture, grandstanding, vanity projects, and strange laws that would befit an eccentric dictator. It's certainly true that that same megalomania has led to intense pain, all up and down Turkmen society, and we will absolutely be digging into the human costs of the Turkmen regime's rule—but first, we've got to explain just how weird Turkmenistan really is, and on some particular topics, we simply cannot do that with a straight face.

As we mentioned before, Turkmenistan's first modern dictator was a guy called Saparmurat Niyazov. He'd been a member of the Soviet Communist Party since the sixties, and was sitting at or near the top of the Turkmen SSR within a couple of decades, but when Turkmenistan gained its independence, Niyazov decided to unilaterally declare himself president. Since nobody argued, he got to enjoy the trappings of power for a bit before holding an election, in which, of course, he was the only candidate. When he won, he granted himself the title Turkmenbashi, or Leader of All Turkmen, and after a few more years, he declared himself President for Life.

After Niyazov took power, Turkmenistan set about de-Russifying itself in a somewhat…different way than the other nations of the region. Of course, Niyazov did all the standard post-Soviet stuff: a campaign to eradicate the Russian language, an open door for Russians who wanted to leave the country, that sort of thing. But he also took it a step further. By example, universities weren't prohibited from accepting foreigners, exactly; they were prohibited from accepting anyone whose name doesn't sound Turkmen, which is a real problem if you happen to be a born-and-raised Turkmen native who just so happens to be called Steve.

After Turkmenistan was sufficiently de-Russified for his liking, Niyazov set about making some other changes. Before long, he had shut down every Turkmen hospital outside the capital, forcing every Turkmen to come all the way to Ashgabat for their treatments. Libraries outside the capital faced the same fate. He issued bans on the circus, the opera, the use of lip-syncing in concerts, beards, and literal puppies. He banned gold teeth, and helpfully offered that people who want stronger teeth should chew on soup bones, which is, of course, not how that works. He made the second Sunday of August into a public holiday called Melon Day, and renamed schools, airports, and even entire Turkmen towns after himself. He invented a new alphabet, and insisted that portraits of himself be hung in every home in the nation, while also requiring that those homes all fly a Turkmen flag. And, naturally, he rewrote the national anthem, including in a chorus that refers to Turkmenistan as his own "great creation."

During the many years that Saparmurat Niyazov was dictator, news broadcasts were expected to begin with a pledge from the newscaster that their tongue would shrivel, if ever they presented a report that slandered the country, the flag, or Niyazov himself. But it wasn't just newscasters that would have to pay heed to Niyazov; in the capital, it was made illegal to hang clothes, install air conditioners, or even open windows on streets that Niyazov *might* use or otherwise be able to see—which, at least in a hypothetical sense, includes the entire city. When he was targeted in an assassination attempt in 2002, he responded by imprisoning literally thousands of people whom it had previously been inconvenient to imprison, and when, in another incident, some unknown Turkmen put up some posters that claimed Niyazov wasn't really all that, Niyazov responded by firing his entire Cabinet, the Chief of Police of Turkmenistan, and the Director of the Turkmen Police Academy—because, we suppose, they weren't omniscient enough to stop it.

Among the most notable of all his strange policies, though, was the Walk of Health, a concrete stairway that runs up alongside some of the mountains in two sections, at a length of forty-five kilometers in total. That's not the weird part, though; the weird part is that every year, Niyazov ordered all of his ministers, parliament members, and civil servants to hike the entirety of the walk's longer section, thirty-seven kilometers in total, while Niyazov watched from above in a helicopter. As it turns out, making people walk thirty-seven kilometers along the path, which was completely unshaded and usually pretty hot, tended to give people more health problems than it alleviated, but that didn't stop Niyazov.

We can say at least one good thing about him, though: the man sure did love his mother. In fact, he named a month after her, and bequeathed himself and several other friends and family with days of the week and months of the year too. Not special enough for dear old mum? Don't worry, he also renamed bread—the literal food—after her as well.

But if Niyazov's vanity was impressive on its own, then make way—often quite literally—for his successor, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov. In typical Turkmen-dictator fashion, Berdimuhamedov ordered that the central avenue of Ashgabat be torn apart after Niyazov's death in 2006, and bulldozed both that central avenue and several dozen surrounding houses in order to build his own personal palace. A dentist by trade, but a dictator by profession, he's known in Turkmenistan as Arkadag—The Protector, or The Patron, depending on which translation you like.

When discussing Berdimuhamedov's particular brand of crackpot dictatorship, we've got to start at the capital city of Ashgabat—a name that translates literally to City of Love, but fits somewhat less aptly than the city's more informal name around the world: the White Marble City. Ashgabat holds the world record for including the most white marble of any city on Earth, by a long shot, enough to fully encase 543 buildings with a total surface area of 4.5 million square meters when it was first assessed in 2013. Ashgabat also owns a number of other world records: the world's largest indoor Ferris wheel, the world's largest fountain, and not the world's largest mural, but specifically, the world's largest mural of a star. Its airport, opened in 1994, required an entire village to be bulldozed in order to build it and was then rebuilt at a price of some $2.3 billion, but operates at about ten percent capacity. The National Press Building is built with a front façade in the shape of a gigantic book; there's a building that functions as a giant thermometer; and the marriage registry, called the Palace of Happiness, is adorned with an absolutely massive disco ball, for reasons we simply cannot explain.

For his role in marble-ifying the city, Berdimuhamedov was granted the title of Distinguished Architect of Turkmenistan by the Turkmen parliament…because, well, of course he was. Berdimuhamedov's love of white marble, his love of weird architecture, and his love for breaking and setting niche and entirely unnecessary world records is well-documented, but nowhere is it on display more than in Ashgabat. Unfortunately for many ordinary Turkmen, the White Marble City came at the expense of their pensions, their previously free utilities, and the funding for their children's schools, but at least they got a gigantic monument to the Turkmen constitution for their trouble.

And we have *got* to talk about the statues… so, so, *so many statues*. Turkmenistan features a wide range of gold statues depicting former president Niyazov, including one that rotates with the sun, and, naturally, Berdimuhamedov has since had many of his own constructed to match. There are also countless statues in Turkmenistan, gold and otherwise, depicting horses, ancient warriors, and dogs. Our favorite of the bunch is located in Ashgabat, and features the holy trinity of Things Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov Likes: a gold-leaf likeness of himself, a horse, also gold-leaf, and a rock outcropping constructed of white marble, all at a total height of over twenty meters.

Of course, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov isn't just the Distinguished Architect of Turkmenistan; in fact, he's a man who wears many hats. During his time in office, Berdimuhamedov was a writer, and we'll sample one line from his book "The Flight of the Celestial Racehorse," in which he describes the plight he personally faces: "Riding on horse, driving plane steering wheel, sea liner, driving powerful [truck], Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov not just demonstrates wonderful physical shape and high professional skills in every business, he fixes in people's minds the image of modern [strongman], who has to do a lot. He must be well-educated, physically strong, and esthetically erudite."

Bold claims, to be sure, so let's go through each of them. He's most certainly proven that he's *very physically strong*, at one time lifting a golden barbell over his head whilst being applauded by his cabinet ministers. About a year later, he was filmed teaching a group of Turkmen police how to properly exercise, which must have gone well, since Turkmen state news website Orient.tm declared that Turkmenistan was lucky to have such a "sports president". He's also been seen at a firing range, playing basketball while riding a bicycle, practicing Taekwondo, throwing daggers, and doing his own Rocky-style training montages. Finally, he immortalized his dedication to sport in that same rap video we mentioned earlier, performed alongside his grandson, with the following, moving lyrics: "Sport and the health is inspiration; Makes body strong and strong all the nation."

He's also, as he said, quite well-educated; after all, he's got three honorary doctorates and he's even an honorary professor at the Beijing Medical University. He's very good at "driving powerful truck"; he proved it in 2019, when he drove around Turkmenistan's gigantic and perpetually burning crater, Hell's Gate, in order to prove that he wasn't dead. He's also good at "driving plane steering wheel"; he's test-flown a supersonic military aircraft, according to Turkmen media. He's esthetically erudite; after all, just look at the man, his outfits clearly slay. And if all that wasn't enough, he's a DJ! Cool shit, Gurbanguly.

Sadly, we do have to dispute one claim—specifically, "riding on horse"—because although he's won plenty of horse races in his day, he did, in 2013, gain global meme status when he fell off his favorite horse, "Stability". We're devastated to report that Turkmenistan is, in fact, way ahead of us in disputing this claim; not only has the incident been scrubbed forcibly from all Turkmen media, but two years later, Berdimuhamedov was given a new title, the "People's Horse Breeder". What exactly that means, or where, precisely, he figures into the breeding process, we truly could not tell you, but he's also written several books on the most famous Turkmen breed of horses, the Akhal-Teke, and has since hosted horse beauty contests. On the legal side, he criminalized the act of changing an Akhal-Teke horse's name during its lifetime, a rule that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty helpfully summarized as such: "For example, Kerwen (Caravan) cannot be renamed Melegush (Orange Bird) just because the owner changes his mind and decides he likes the new name better." He also made mandatory the act of giving every Akhal-Teke horse a proper burial, with an official present, in a designated area, despite the fact that no designated areas for horse burials existed in Turkmenistan at the time.

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<!-- aeo:section start="the-not-so-silly-stuff" -->
## The Not-So-Silly Stuff

By now, we hope it's become abundantly clear that Turkmenistan's ruling regime is a bit of a clown show…but unfortunately, that's not the whole story. In fact, while we certainly wouldn't claim that Niyazov and Berdimuhamedov's eccentricities are manufactured just for show, it's important to know that they serve a real purpose. To understand what that purpose is, we'll ask you to participate in a simple thought exercise: Imagine you're a TV news producer, working on a three-minute spot about Turkmenistan. Are you going to talk about ugly, unpalatable human rights abuses? Or are you going to talk about the deejay dictator who does donuts around a literal pit of death? Alas, it's time that we strip away all the buffoonery of Turkmenistan, and look instead at the deeply troubling reality hidden underneath.

We've already touched briefly on the Turkmen regime's willingness to pervert and overwrite the country's culture and history for its own aims, but the practice goes shockingly deep. Every historical structure in the country, be it ancient ruins or iconic infrastructure, is liable to be bulldozed if the regime wishes it. Turkmen cultural rituals of dress and personal grooming have been legislated over, while at the same time, being co-opted for photo shoots and publicly broadcasted events where Turkmen attendees are compelled to dress as if they've all just time-traveled from Turkmenistan's eighteenth century. So, too, is Turkmen money largely treated as the regime's own personal slush fund; during the later years of his administration, former president Niyazov funneled over half of the country's GDP into his own projects, and today, the Berdimuhamedov dynasty continues to siphon additional funds from their ailing poor.

In Ashgabat, that city of marble we mentioned before was built after the demolition of many historical monuments, most of the city's trees, and a series of canals that had defined it for many decades. It was, very obviously, built to be more of a display of power and wealth than a livable city, but in practice, that means a capital where many neighborhoods lack reliable electrical and water infrastructure, while in the districts that are deemed important, empty city streets stay brightly lit and water keeps flowing to elaborate, but profoundly unnecessary fountains. In fact, quality of life in the city has only gotten worse with time; store shelves may be well-stocked, but goods are prohibitively expensive, and with air conditioning and open windows banned in many districts, it can become too suffocatingly hot to live for much of the year. Lines of ordinary Turkmen waiting for rations or for ATMs to be refilled are kept out of sight, sent to back alleys and parking lots in order to not intrude on visible street facades. Functionally speaking, many of the people who do have to live there are display pieces, both for the dictator and his party elites, and for any foreigners who've found themselves within the Ashgabat city limits—and any failure to display oneself properly, is likely to be punished.

Although the country's situation isn't quite so dire as, say, North Korea, there's a lot of distance between being happy and healthy, and living under the rule of one Kim Jong-Un…and for most Turkmen, everyday life looks a lot more like the North Korea option than the nicer alternative. The distribution of bread, by example, is tightly controlled, with Turkmen families limited to the purchase of two to three loaves daily despite the country's agricultural potential, which is instead leveraged to harvest well over a hundred million tons of cotton annually. Food shortages go far beyond bread, with an ongoing crisis that's only gotten worse since 2015, and often sees Turkmen citizens waiting for hours in line for rations only to be turned away when they run out. The country deals with some incredible inflation rates, far worsening food prices, to the point that many Turkmen who do have the chance to speak to Western sources report spending over three-quarters of their family income on just getting food.

Alongside the inflation, there's the unemployment, which, officially in Turkmenistan, hovers somewhere around four to five percent, but in reality, is believed to impact up to half of the national workforce. This has pushed countless families into poverty even as the government continues its lavish spending on construction projects, and for people who are lucky enough to have jobs, usually with the state, things aren't much better. State workers are often ordered to perform cleanup of city streets, make financial contributions toward government projects, or even donate up to half of their salaries each month for whatever the regime dreams up on a given day, on penalty of resignation. Forced to choose between either paying the fees or entering a functionally nonexistent job market in the private sector, Turkmen state employees have no choice but to pay up. In the summers, they're forced to buy holiday packages to go vacationing in Turkmenistan's resort town of Awaza, and they're mandated to pay subscription fees to receive state media publications—which, in the case of print media, they often don't even receive. On occasion, even unemployed recipients of state money have been forced to contribute, including one case in 2021, where school officials in the southeastern province of Mary forced literal orphans to donate a quarter of their already-minimal financial support in order to help pay for a school renovation.

Then, there's academia. In Turkmen schools and universities, many potentially controversial or sensitive subjects are banned from discussion outright, while curricula are tightly controlled and prescribed in detail for local educators. The country refuses to recognize degrees granted by foreign institutions, making study abroad all but meaningless for Turkmen students who don't want to leave their country permanently. Turkmenistan suffers from some incredible brain drain, a phenomenon in which people from an undeveloped country who travel abroad for an education, choose to stay abroad rather than bringing their knowledge back home. That lack of expertise translates to a lack of ability to educate young Turkmen who choose to pursue studies in their own country, and that, in turn, means that there are very few qualified people in Turkmenistan to do everyday things like keeping the lights on, or building new infrastructure that might actually help people. Not only are those people unable to make their voices heard in Turkmenistan's totalitarian government, but they likely aren't present in Turkmenistan at all.

But young students aren't the only people who want to leave Turkmenistan. With the country's population in stark decline, government officials have recently taken steps to confiscate travel passports that belong to Turkmen employees of the state, and can outright refuse the right to leave to any Turkmen for any reason. Turkmen have been pulled off flights, restricted from international travel before they reach a certain age, and detained at border crossings. This rule is applied with particular force against Turkmenistan's Baloch minority, a group whose language, customs, and culture are forbidden from being taught or spread within Turkmenistan. Luckily for the Turkmen public, some sources suggest that over two million people have left the country since the turn of the millennium, but that does very little for the people still stuck there.

And let's go back to the media pledge we mentioned before, as announced by newscasters at the start of their broadcasts under Turkmenistan's first President, Niyazov: that the newscaster's tongue would shrivel if ever they made a report slandering the country, the flag, or Niyazov. On the one hand, we've got to point out here that the Turkmen regime does not have the same definition of slander that we do, but instead a much broader one that includes basically anything negative about the country, flag, or president. Pointing out that the Turkmen population's got a little bit of a drug problem, is slander; pointing out that a whole lot of citizens are living in poverty, is slander. Pointing out that a whole lot of Turkmen are dying of AIDS, which has been true for a lot of the country's modern history, is slander—and while the expectation isn't that a newscaster's punishment will be a literal shriveling of their tongue, they might face a couple of decades in prison for their trouble.

In fact, when it comes to press freedoms overall, Turkmenistan is ranked third-to-last in the entire world, staying in front of only North Korea and Eritrea. Independent and non-state-affiliated journalists have long been subject to harassment by authorities, criminal prosecution, imprisonment, and even physical abuse, and the families of Turkmen journalists have been harassed even when those journalists are working abroad. Employees of the Turkmen-language branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty are subject to the worst treatment overall, since that organization draws a large share of its financial support from the US government. Even the rare non-state media organizations that do manage to survive, primarily Russian ones, are subject to the same intense regulations in order to survive in the country. Bloggers, Instagrammers, and YouTubers living in Turkmenistan are instructed by state officials to propagate the regime's narrative of their country as a "happy and prosperous" nation, and threatened with detention as penalty for even liking or commenting online content that runs against that narrative. When a Turkmen reporter commits the ultimate cardinal sin, attempting to tell the world about the realities of life in their country, they're liable to be disappeared, with no way to track them once they enter the country's murky penal system.

Nearly all broadcast and print media distributed in Turkmenistan is under direct state control, and the country's Internet blackouts include all independent or foreign news outlets. For decades, satellite receivers have been outlawed in Turkmenistan—which, ironically enough, was a decision made in the same year that the country launched its own first satellite into space. As a result, any Turkmen following the law will be unable to receive any satellite broadcast, while anyone found with a receiver faces their own harsh penalties. VPNs have been criminalized across Turkmenistan, and we'd like to quickly wave hello to our Turkmen viewers using said VPNs to watch this video on YouTube, which is also blocked. In fact, some 122,000 websites have been blocked there, and its internet speeds, even for allowed sites, are incredibly slow, with one reporter's attempt to download a five-gigabyte file taking nearly an entire day. And in a telling indicator of just how willing Turkmen officials are to probe into their citizens' lives, all messaging services that encrypt communications are banned too.

Then, there's the question of religion, which, unsurprisingly, is handled with a similarly tight fist. Religious minorities in Turkmenistan, predominantly Christians, are subject to intense restrictions on when and where they practice their religion, if they're allowed to at all. In recent decades, violators have been met with imprisonment, had their religious materials confiscated, been prevented from leaving the country, or even been tortured while in detention. Former president Niyazov's own religious text, authored in two volumes under the name Ruhnama, is taught in schools alongside the Qur'an, with quotes from the Ruhnama, or "book of the soul", inscribed in mosques, and knowledge of the text being required in order to obtain a driver's license. And even for Muslims, practicing the dominant and state-supported religion of Turkmenistan, failure to follow regime-approved worship practices can be grounds for imprisonment even if those regime practices conflict directly with common or fundamental interpretations of Islam.

In recent years, restrictions on individual freedoms have become even more severe. The Berdimuhamedov administration has begun to regulate around the use of plastic surgery, the use of makeup, the range of permissible clothing, and the use of hair dye. Women have found themselves disproportionately targeted in the enforcement of these laws, and have been subject to additional restrictions on their travel outside the home when not being chaperoned by a male relative. Children's summer camps are now expected to facilitate the picking of cotton, for which children are not compensated, and those same children have only minimal protections from abuse inside their own home. Even animals haven't been spared Berdimuhamedov's wrath; in Ashgabat, stray animals and household pets are deliberately killed by authorities, while the few animal-rights activists who risk speaking up, have been charged in criminal courts and had their limited Internet access shut down.

But despite the Turkmen government's intense interest in controlling every aspect of its people's lives, they don't seem particularly interested in keeping those same people safe. As we've mentioned before, Turkmen state workers are often mandated to join in picking cotton for the harvest season, but this practice goes much further, with large proportions of the Turkmen public mobilized every year for what is essentially forced labor. Children are expected to work alongside adults, and the practice has gone utterly unchallenged by Turkmenistan's own judicial authorities. Turkmens live life at high risk of being trafficked and exploited by criminal organizations, both at home and abroad, and the country is a major transit point for opiate products made in Afghanistan, a shipping process that Turkmen citizens are often made to unwillingly participate in. Rape and domestic violence typically go unreported, and people who are charged with crimes are deprived of all forms of due process if the government decides to withhold it. The Turkmen penal system is an incredibly dangerous place to be, with sadistic forms of torture being commonplace, and conditions nigh-on-inhospitable between a lack of climate control, inadequate food and medicine, and no mechanism to contact the outside world.

And all the while, as Turkmen citizens get poorer and poorer, high government officials get richer and richer. The country's construction industry, in particular, is known to be incredibly corrupt, with contractors regularly making bribes to Turkmen officials in order to do their work. Whether the country's entire construction sector, especially things like the White Marble City, might themselves be a front for large-scale money laundering, we can't say for sure…but we're certainly curious. International businesses are barred from large portions of the country until, and unless, they agree to grease the palms of the Turkmen government, and any large projects must be authorized by presidential decree, which is an entirely arbitrary process that enriches just about everyone in the Turkmen government, and disincentivizes them from ever bringing worse forms of corruption to light. On a local level, Turkmenistan deals with a longstanding issue around the illegal adoption of abandoned babies, which is facilitated by state adoption officials who accept bribes to expedite the process for richer families. Overall, Turkmenistan is ranked 167th of 180 nations for its handling of corruption by Transparency International, a score that easily puts it alongside the worst of the worst in this regard.

Now, alongside all the state-sponsored nastiness, we've also got to talk about another facet to the Turkmen regime: its tendency to avoid the spotlight internationally, at almost any cost. Turkmenistan keeps an unusually low profile around the world, not just because they've got a lower population and might have a harder time making their voice heard, but because they have intentionally withdrawn from the international community.

The country has insisted on a state of neutrality since it first gained its independence, becoming a member state of what its rulers at the time likely perceived to be non-optional collectives like the UN and the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States. But even in these organizations, it's barely ever heard from; in the UN, Turkmen personnel sit mostly to the sidelines, and it's downgraded its membership intentionally in the Russia-centric Commonwealth of Independent States to associate status. It's the only Central Asian nation to have stayed out of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a political, economic, and defensive pact established by Russia and China, and it's similarly avoided the Collective Security Treaty Organization between Russia and several Central and West Asian states.

With its neighbors, Turkmenistan has kept a very friendly face despite many political ups and downs in the region. Turkmenistan supplies natural gas to some nearby nations, but has avoided building pipelines through others, even when building those pipelines would have opened up lucrative pathways for Turkmen gas to reach Europe. Turkmenistan has got on fine with both Afghanistan's civilian administration and the Taliban, and they've happily accepted a designation of permanent neutrality from the United Nations, enshrining that same neutrality principle in its own Constitution. While remaining engaged with its foreign partners at a superficial level, Turkmenistan has largely stayed away from taking stances on potentially thorny issues.

All this is helped by Turkmenistan's physical location at the heart of Central Asia, which could have very easily made it into a pawn in geopolitical games by its neighbors, but instead has helped it to appear valuable to those same neighbors as a buffer zone between potentially hostile actors. Acting as the functional equivalent of the stoner at a frat party, telling the football and the baseball players to "calm down, bro" before they break out into a brawl, Turkmenistan is the definition of a low-key, unintrusive neighbor. Even when the country has been struck by devastating natural disasters, it's declined offers for foreign aid and refrained from issuing calls for help. The country doesn't host any substantial numbers of American troops, it's allowed a much-publicized pipeline across the Caspian Sea to stall rather than pissing off any country that pipeline would have to traverse, and it's quite happy to aid its neighbors with the detention and torture of any dissidents foolish enough to flee from their own countries *into* Turkmenistan.

The reason why we emphasize Turkmenistan's avoidance of the international order, is to emphasize what exactly it does for Turkmenistan's leaders to keep themselves out of sight. Since the country established its sovereignty at the end of the Cold War, the elites of Turkmenistan have understood that the less scrutiny they face from abroad, the more authority they can exert at home. As such, they've done all the things we've already mentioned—avoiding economic projects that might piss off another nation, disengaging from international diplomacy, that sort of thing. But Turkmenistan's regime also understands that after decades of personality cults and totalitarian rule, anybody who comes sniffing around *today* is going to find some weird shit—and rather than change any of that weird shit, Turkmenistan's answer has been to ensure that nobody has any reason to come looking around.

It's by understanding that sort of obfuscation, that people like Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov start to make a lot more sense. His strange behavior in public has its benefits in domestic politics; so did those of Saparmurat Niyazov. But their conduct also ensures that when a foreigner takes a cursory look at Turkmenistan for the first time on, say, YouTube, they're not going to find an expose about what really goes on there. Instead, they're going to see viral, highly memeable videos of a kindly, clueless-looking old dude lifting a gold bar above his head and, at worst, falling off his horse. The vibe is much less, "totalitarian dictator exploiting his people," and much more, "I bet that guy's a lot of fun at a party."

And we can extrapolate that to the grandiose monuments and statues, the strange architecture of the Turkmen capital city, and all the work Turkmen elites do behind the scenes, not to ensure that nothing bad happens in their country, but to ensure that the word never gets out. It's an admittedly savvy strategy in the social-media age: saturate the online Turkmenistan space, if you will, with a caricatured version of the dictator-du-jour as a silly, goofy guy, so that when somebody somewhere makes a piece like…well…this one, it's likely to get lost in the noise. As strange as it is to say, it really does apply: If you want to stick it to Turkmenistan, then like, comment, and subscribe.

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<!-- aeo:section start="turkmenistan-after-gurbanguly" -->
## Turkmenistan After Gurbanguly

After the "President for life" example set by Turkmenistan's first modern leader, most international observers expected that Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov would follow suit, ruling until he eventually dropped dead and letting whichever successor he had named, if he'd named one at all, take over in the aftermath. So it was a shock to the world when in the early 2020s, after continued speculation over Berdimuhamedov's health, the dictator named his successor. Meet Serdar Berdimuhamedov, son of Gurbanguly, who had long been known to people who were paying attention to the intricacies of Turkmen life, but who was largely unknown on an international stage.

In a snap election that was, like all other elections in Turkmenistan, neither free nor fair, Serdar was elected with just about 73% of the national vote. His father had prefaced the election by telling his country that he believed Turkmenistan should be run by younger people, and emphasizing that his son, who had previously served in a long list of government posts before rising to the stature of Deputy Prime Minister, was a rightful choice to lead. Serdar's own pitch to his country emphasized his willingness to continue Turkmenistan's prior development goals, and keep the policies of positive neutrality that have defined Turkmen politics for decades. All the while, his father would continue just…being Gurbangaly, at the head of the Turkmen upper house of parliament.

Early on, it almost appeared that life under Serdar might actually improve things in Turkmenistan. Although he continued his father's long, slow process to accrue more and more power, he also took meaningful steps against corruption at the government's highest level, including even members of his own family. Before long, word spread in the international community that there might be trouble in paradise; Papa Berdimuhamedov was setting to work in unifying the Turkmen upper and lower parliaments into one body, which would be granted basically unlimited powers. In a situation where the elder Berdimuhamedov's continued presence in parliament had already caused confusion around who exactly the rest of the government was supposed to listen to, the move appeared as if it was an attempt to take the reins back from his son.

By that time, just a few months into Serdar's rule, Turkmen civilians had already begun to protest in public—a previously unheard-of phenomenon to be happening en masse. Unemployment, according to unofficial sources, had climbed as high as sixty percent, and inflation, even by the Turkmen government's own count, was rising by fourteen percent annually at a minimum. Rising tensions in all corners might well have spelled doom for Serdar's rule almost as soon as it began…but he caught a lucky break, at what may have been his personal eleventh hour.

To be specific…he got a war in Ukraine, one that took Russian oil and gas off large sections of the international market. This very quickly turned into an economic windfall for Turkmenistan, with government officials suddenly being courted by Westerners who needed any gas supplier not named Vladimir Putin. Over in nearby China, an economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic led to increased needs for gas imports of their own, rocketing Turkmenistan's export revenues to levels never seen before. Moscow, too, panicked at the prospect of letting Turkmenistan ice them out of the Western market in the long term—and remember, this is still back in the days when Russia thought they'd steamroll Ukraine and go back to business as usual.

With so many potential business partners, Serdar immediately became the man of the hour in Turkmenistan, largely because he, not his father, was expected to act as the lead negotiator in all foreign deals. Serdar got to travel to China, Russia, Qatar, and elsewhere, while Gurbanguly was left at home and forced to ask nicely for even the most basic news about what Serdar was achieving. Gurbanguly attempted to counter his son with his own international tour, but still seemed to believe that nobody else in Turkmenistan had caught on to his power struggle. Because Serdar had no reason to hand his father power, and Gurbanguly perhaps didn't want all the baggage to admit that he was launching a quiet coup against his own son, Turkmen officials were left in a lurch between the two Berdimuhamedovs.

With Serdar so clearly gaining the upper hand, Gurbanguly appeared to get nervous that he might be next on his own son's chopping block. The thing that spooked him the most, was Serdar's appointment of a new Prosecutor General, one who would almost certainly have the power—if perhaps not the will—to investigate the elder Berdimuhamedov directly. With such clear impetus to act, Gurbanguly fused together Turkmenistan's two legislative houses as he had intended. Gurbanguly himself, sitting at the head of the People's Council of Turkmenistan, regained his control over Turkmenistan's constitution, its foreign and domestic politics and development projects, and his basically unchallenged authority over the Turkmen state itself. Serdar, however, was functionally demoted; he still holds the title of President, and will probably regain some of his authority when his dad finally kicks the bucket, but at present, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov is just as much Turkmenistan's leader as ever. In fact, Serdar even gave him the title to match: National Leader of the Turkmen People.

As of now, life in Turkmenistan is still firmly under the control of Gurbanguly. He won foreign awards from Russia and Kazakhstan in 2022, he opened up a new youth-focused magazine to extend his personality cult in 2023, and just a few days before this video was written, he passed a law creating a state award called the Arkadag medal—Arkadag, again, meaning "the Protector," and referring to Berdimuhamedov himself. How long this will continue, and just how many meme-worthy videos and stunts the dictator will pull in the future, we simply can't say, but with power reconsolidated in his iron fist, it's the Turkmen people who seem more thoroughly subjugated today than they've ever been.

Internationally, there are next to no calls for Gurbanguly to step down; in fact, much of the global media seems to have missed the part where he turned his own son into a figurehead president, and took back power for himself. But then, that's always been the intent with the dictators of Turkmenistan: simply don't give the wider world reason to take notice. Don't cause chaos, don't step out of the shadow of Russia or China or Iran, and when a Westerner does come looking, make sure they see dear old granddad Gurbanguly dropping some zesty bars with his grandson. It's that inexplicably goofy, outwardly harmless, and incredibly weird façade that allows the Turkmen regime to crush its own people, as it always has…and until more people around the world take notice, that's how things are likely to stay.

<!-- aeo:section end="turkmenistan-after-gurbanguly" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="key-takeaways" -->
## Key Takeaways

- Turkmenistan is a totalitarian regime with a history of authoritarian leaders.
- The country's leaders use eccentric behavior and grand projects to distract from human rights abuses.
- Turkmenistan's economy relies heavily on natural gas and oil exports, particularly to China.
- The regime tightly controls media, religion, and personal freedoms, leading to widespread poverty and unrest.
- Despite international scrutiny, Turkmenistan maintains a low profile to avoid external interference.

<!-- aeo:section end="key-takeaways" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="frequently-asked-questions" -->
## Frequently Asked Questions

### What is Turkmenistan known for in terms of natural resources?

Turkmenistan is known for having the world's fifth-largest reserves of natural gas and significant oil reserves. These resources are crucial for its economy, with a majority of its exports being petroleum products.

### Who was the first president of independent Turkmenistan?

The first president of independent Turkmenistan was Saparmurat Niyazov, who continued as the chief of state after the country declared its sovereignty in 1990.

### What is the significance of the Darvaza gas crater in Turkmenistan?

The Darvaza gas crater is one of Turkmenistan's most famous landmarks. It has been burning continuously since the 1970s and is a result of the country's massive natural gas reserves.

### How did Saparmurat Niyazov consolidate his power in Turkmenistan?

Saparmurat Niyazov consolidated his power by declaring himself president for life, abolishing term limits through a rigged referendum, and transforming the country into a cult of personality centered around himself.

### What are some of the bizarre laws and policies implemented by Turkmenistan's leaders?

Some of the bizarre laws and policies include banning lip-syncing in concerts, gold teeth, beards, and puppies. Former president Niyazov also mandated that all homes fly a Turkmen flag and hang his portrait, and renamed schools, airports, and towns after himself.

### What is the 'Walk of Health' in Turkmenistan?

The 'Walk of Health' is a 45-kilometer concrete stairway that former president Niyazov ordered all ministers, parliament members, and civil servants to hike annually while he watched from a helicopter.

### How does the Turkmen government control the media and information?

The Turkmen government controls the media by banning independent and non-state-affiliated journalists, criminalizing VPNs, and blocking a vast number of websites. All broadcast and print media are under direct state control, and internet speeds are incredibly slow.

### What is the current political situation in Turkmenistan under Serdar Berdimuhamedov?

Serdar Berdimuhamedov, the son of former president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, is the current president. However, his father retains significant power, having consolidated authority by merging the legislative houses and regaining control over the constitution and foreign policy.

### How does Turkmenistan maintain a low international profile?

Turkmenistan maintains a low international profile by avoiding economic projects that might upset other nations, disengaging from international diplomacy, and ensuring that any foreign attention is focused on the eccentricities of its leaders rather than its human rights abuses.

### What are some of the human rights issues faced by the people of Turkmenistan?

Human rights issues in Turkmenistan include forced labor, severe restrictions on freedom of speech and religion, arbitrary detention, torture, and a lack of due process. The government also controls the distribution of basic necessities like bread and water.

<!-- aeo:section end="frequently-asked-questions" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="sources" -->
## Sources

- [Original Places video: Turkmenistan: The World’s Wackiest Dictatorship?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URxwfX9pwNM)
- [https://1997-2001.state.gov/background_notes/turkmenistan_0101_bgn.html](https://1997-2001.state.gov/background_notes/turkmenistan_0101_bgn.html)
- [https://www.metmuseum.org/learn/educators/curriculum-resources/art-of-the-islamic-world/unit-six/chapter-three/who-are-the-turkmen](https://www.metmuseum.org/learn/educators/curriculum-resources/art-of-the-islamic-world/unit-six/chapter-three/who-are-the-turkmen)
- [https://www.thoughtco.com/turkmenistan-facts-and-history-195771](https://www.thoughtco.com/turkmenistan-facts-and-history-195771)
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- [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/02/turkmenistans-president-lifts-golden-weight-bar/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/02/turkmenistans-president-lifts-golden-weight-bar/)
- [https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-50808126](https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-50808126)
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- [https://www.rferl.org/a/turkmenistan-dont-change-horse-names/27438392.html](https://www.rferl.org/a/turkmenistan-dont-change-horse-names/27438392.html)
- [https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/walk-of-health](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/walk-of-health)
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- [https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/06/the-city-of-white-marble-ashgabat-turkmenistan/100528/](https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/06/the-city-of-white-marble-ashgabat-turkmenistan/100528/)
- [https://medium.com/interesting-histories/interesting-histories-saparmurat-niyazov-the-real-general-aladeen-552c12a1e4e2](https://medium.com/interesting-histories/interesting-histories-saparmurat-niyazov-the-real-general-aladeen-552c12a1e4e2)
- [https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5bq77/into-the-weird-opulent-world-of-turkmenistans-dentist-dj-dictator](https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5bq77/into-the-weird-opulent-world-of-turkmenistans-dentist-dj-dictator)
- [https://www.britannica.com/place/Turkmenistan/Turkmen-tribes-and-Russian-invasion](https://www.britannica.com/place/Turkmenistan/Turkmen-tribes-and-Russian-invasion)
- [https://www.rferl.org/a/turkmenistan-bloggers-happy-prosperous-pressure/32453257.html](https://www.rferl.org/a/turkmenistan-bloggers-happy-prosperous-pressure/32453257.html)
- [https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/23/turkmenistan-denial-inaction-worsen-food-crisis](https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/23/turkmenistan-denial-inaction-worsen-food-crisis)
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- [https://www.rferl.org/a/escape-from-turkmenistan-almost-2-million-have-fled-but-the-president-won-t-hear-of-it/29987972.html](https://www.rferl.org/a/escape-from-turkmenistan-almost-2-million-have-fled-but-the-president-won-t-hear-of-it/29987972.html)
- [https://freedomhouse.org/country/turkmenistan/freedom-world/2023](https://freedomhouse.org/country/turkmenistan/freedom-world/2023)
- [https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/turkmenistan/](https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/turkmenistan/)
- [https://provetheyarealive.org/ovadan-depe-medieval-torture-in-modern-turkmenistan/](https://provetheyarealive.org/ovadan-depe-medieval-torture-in-modern-turkmenistan/)
- [https://www.transparency.org/en/countries/turkmenistan](https://www.transparency.org/en/countries/turkmenistan)
- [https://www.ganintegrity.com/country-profiles/turkmenistan/](https://www.ganintegrity.com/country-profiles/turkmenistan/)
- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ5wX1aIW6Y&amp;ab_channel=RadioFreeEurope%2FRadioLiberty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ5wX1aIW6Y&amp;ab_channel=RadioFreeEurope%2FRadioLiberty)
- [https://www.hrw.org/europe/central-asia/turkmenistan](https://www.hrw.org/europe/central-asia/turkmenistan)
- [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-16094646](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-16094646)
- [https://www.state.gov/countries-areas/turkmenistan/](https://www.state.gov/countries-areas/turkmenistan/)
- [https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/turkmenistan](https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/turkmenistan)
- [https://freedomhouse.org/country/turkmenistan](https://freedomhouse.org/country/turkmenistan)
- [https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/europe-and-central-asia/turkmenistan/](https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/europe-and-central-asia/turkmenistan/)
- [https://www.idsa.in/issuebrief/Turkmenistan-Neutrality-Based-Foreign-Policy-jwahlang-200722](https://www.idsa.in/issuebrief/Turkmenistan-Neutrality-Based-Foreign-Policy-jwahlang-200722)
- [https://apnews.com/article/central-asia-asia-turkmenistan-presidential-elections-elections-3d13e95fe055bf53525141c351708488](https://apnews.com/article/central-asia-asia-turkmenistan-presidential-elections-elections-3d13e95fe055bf53525141c351708488)
- [https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/89679](https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/89679)
- [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Vladimir_Putin_and_Serdar_Berdimuhamedow_%282022-06-10%29_01.jpg) by Presidential Executive Office of Russia / openverse, by.

<!-- aeo:section end="sources" -->
<!-- aeo:section start="related-coverage" -->
## Related Coverage
<!-- aeo:section end="related-coverage" -->