Lavish opening
Turkmenistan show self to the world
ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — With a glitzy sports show and a multibillion-dollar spending spree, isolated Turkmenistan wants to show itself to the world.
Turkmenistan, a gasrich former Soviet nation in Central Asia, has comparatively little contact with the outside world and sees few foreign visitors. Its authoritarian government is regularly criticized by human rights organizations.
Keen to turn his country — which has never won an Olympic medal — into a sports power, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov's administration has spent $5 billion on arenas hosting the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games.
Previously a low-key offshoot of the Asian Games, the event was reimagined Sunday with a lavish opening ceremony that stressed Turkmenistan's love of animals, featuring acrobats on horseback and a dog handler leading the athletes' parade.
Berdymukhamedov, who hailed the games as "an event of huge social and political meaning" on Sunday before the ceremony, projects a sporty, all-action image. The cult of personality that surrounds his autocratic rule has included footage and photographs of him riding horses, flying helicopters, throwing knives, cycling, jogging and lifting weights.
Healthy lifestyles are promoted relentlessly. Last year, state employees were coerced into performing morning open-air fitness exercises, while the run-up to the games saw a ban on alcohol sales and a day when private cars were banned from the roads to encourage cycling.
The president — reelected this year with more than 97 percent of the vote — is also a music lover who composed the official anthem of the games. In addition to the anthem, which received a rapturous reception from the crowd of mostly locals, songs also played praising Berdymukhamedov under his title of "Arkadag," Turkmen for "The Protector."
The spending on the games is a vast sum for a country of 5 million people which is mostly desert and has widespread poverty.
Besides the arenas which make up Ashgabat's so-called Olympic Village, the government also splashed out $2.3 billion on an airport terminal shaped like a falcon. The pre-games construction was allegedly marred by what human rights groups called the mass demolition of local people's houses to make way for sports venues.