STRANGE STATESMEN
In the second of his two journeys down the Silk Road, SD TUCKER pitches his caravan in the desert wastes of Turkmenistan, where both the history books and the record books are being rewritten daily by the ever-growing Central Asian cult of the strongman.
The Terrible Turkmen
Last time we saw how, in the oil and gasrich ’Stans of Central Asia, native unrest and the prospect of jihad was kept at bay by a burgeoning cult of the strongman, with post-Soviet dictators clinging onto power for decades by ruling with an iron fist and making the prospect of their absence appear unthinkable. But succession planning is a must if you don’t want your ’Stan to collapse into chaos once you’re gone. Dictatorial ideas for preventing such a fate have ranged from becoming immortal by drinking special yoghurt to turning yourself into a saint and forcing people to worship you after your death. Each ’Stan has its own special circumstances, meaning there are a variety of potential solutions to the age-old problem of what comes next after the national saviour snuffs it.
MEET THE NEW BOSS, SAME AS THE OLD BOSS
Another good idea when a strongman dies is to install a clone to serve in the original despot’s place. Turkmenistan’s current President, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, is falsely rumoured to be the illegitimate son of his esteemed predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov, such a chip off the old block does he seem. Ruling since 1985 and declared President for Life in 1999, Niyazov easily filled the post-Communist vacuum left by toppled statues of Marx and Lenin. Famously, Niyazov’s own giant statue in the capital, Ashgabat, was made of gold (at least on the outside) and rotated to face the Sun, his outstretched arms guiding its rise and fall. Styling himself ‘Turkembashi the Great’, or ‘The Great Father of All Turkmen’, he renamed towns after himself, copying Leningrad, doing likewise with a meteorite, an airport, a mosque, several brands of consumer product and the entire month of January. He also put his dead mother Gurbansoltan Eje into dictionaries, replacing the native word for ‘bread’ with her name, before renaming April in her honour and planning a new eight-month year. He had already renamed the days of the week; Monday became ‘Main Day’ and Sunday ‘Rest Day’. Only Friday escaped, for reasons unknown. New national holidays named after his favourite things in life, like ‘Melon Day’, also appeared. Claiming there was no native word for ‘ketchup’ he simply invented one, before reforming the entire alphabet.
HE BANNED CAR RADIOS, LONG HAIR, TOBACCO AND CIRCUSES
Amused Western media printed stories about Turkmenbashi’s misrule whenever possible, not always checking facts. It was widely reported he had made beards and gold teeth illegal, but this was not so. He simply expressed distaste for such things, meaning courtiers rushed to follow his example, sycophancy equalling success. Niyazov had no need to resort to passing laws to ensure a rush on shaving foam; this would have indicated a functioning legal system, so would actually have represented a form of democratic progress.
Nonetheless, it was reported Turkmenbashi did the following: banned lip-synching, car radios, long hair, tobacco, circuses, opera, ballet and other pet hates as “foreign” or “unnecessary”; expelled all dogs from the capital for their “unappealing odour”; prevented news anchors from wearing makeup, as he could no longer distinguish the men from the women; advised that Turkmen without dentists should chew bones like dogs (“Those of you whose teeth have fallen out did not chew on bones”); expelled foreigneducated doctors before replacing the
Hippocratic Oath with a pledge of allegiance to himself; and banned the diagnosis of several diseases so it would appear they did not exist. Squandering Turkmenistan’s once vast petro-wealth, he issued decrees making all utilities, plus table salt, free for every citizen, equipped mountains with staircases and planned a desert palace made of ice so “our children can learn to ski”. If water came out of your tap you received no bill, but as most was diverted to fill fountains and irrigate greenery in the 70 per cent desertified country’s showpiece capital, his launch of the annual ‘A Drop of Water is a Grain of Gold Day’ seemed like mockery. Niyazov practised false modesty, claiming to be “ashamed” that music TV only ever played songs about him, and ordered a stamp-like image of his head that appeared at the top right of every show be removed – but if he really felt this way, why did he rename one TV channel ‘The Epoch of Turkmenbashi’? Niyazov once lamented that “the people demand [such things] because of their mentality.” Inhabiting a gold-domed palace, he wept that “all I wanted was a small, cosy house,” but his adoring public would not allow it. Strangely, for one so beloved, Turkmenbashi wore a magic amulet as a tie-pin to combat the evil-eye. His subjects’ primitive mentality was a conscious policydecision. “Uneducated people are easier to govern,” he let slip, which was why he reduced the years of children’s schooling and closed the nation’s libraries as “nobody reads books” – a real self-fulfilling prophecy. So unburdened by knowledge are today’s Turkmen that, according to travel-writer Paul Theroux, some think US astronauts converted to Islam after hearing the Prophet Muhammad’s voice giving the call to prayer on the Moon, NASA’s most famous convert being, er, Louis Armstrong.
CRIMINAL RECORDS
Following Niyazov’s 2006 death, his one-time deputy Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has ruthlessly dismantled Turkmenbashi’s personality cult by restoring traditional calendar names and tearing down the dictator’s statues. Sadly, new statues of the former dentist Berdymukhamedov shot up instead, and he acquired the title ‘Arkadag’, or ‘Protector of the People’, spawning a second personality cult as bad as the first. One old hobby of Turkmenbashi’s that Arkadag still maintains is harassing the Guinness Book of Records. In 2003, a cobbler named Erkin Nepesow ‘spontaneously’ decided to manufacture the world’s largest shoe, 6.2m (20ft4in) long and 1.76m (5ft9in) high, as “a unique symbol of the great steps that Turkmenistan [was] taking in its Golden Age” under Niyazov. Arkadag has continued this tradition, hoping to net Turkmenistan the most world records on Earth, thereby allegedly making the country more appealing to foreign tourists. His chosen method is to set records so obscure and absurdly specific that nobody else would ever even think of attempting them, such as: ‘largest cycling awareness lesson’, ‘largest roof in the shape of a star’, ‘largest Ferris Wheel within an enclosed space’, ‘biggest flagpole in the world’, ‘largest image of a carpet depicted on a main passenger terminal at an airport’ and ‘biggest symbol of a horse’. Ashgabat also has the highest concentration of white marble-clad buildings in the world, but the record for ‘most people allegedly evicted from their homes at a few hours’ notice without compensation to make way for obscene architectural follies’ has not yet been confirmed by Norris McWhirter. Although Guinness claim feats “must be interesting” to be included in their book, they also offer a marketing service which aims to polish tarnished brands by associating them with any new records deemed to be achievable for alleged fees of up to $500,000, leading to criticism from Amnesty International.
Again, stories can be exaggerated, but reportedly ‘The Turkmenator’, as he is known for his habit of dressing like an SAS soldier and firing guns in public, has also done the following: decreed all cars must be white, this being his lucky colour; played surprise rock concerts to stunned workers; lifted heavy gold-plated weights during Cabinet meetings; solved coronavirus (see FT394:5354); performed successful cancer surgery; forced his Cabinet to participate in mass bike rides and fitness sessions; broken into impromptu song while visiting industrial facilities; won national car races; hit bullseyes with bullets from a strangely short range, something deemed “worthy of emulation by military servicemen”; developed the magnetic ability to attract hordes of dancing children; flown a helicopter and an aeroplane; forced officials to publicly confess to bizarre crimes such as stealing 30,000 buckets (“I just don’t understand it. Why do you need 30,000 buckets?”); and employed special janitors to sift through old newspapers at recycling plants to ensure that nobody has “soiled” the President’s image by wiping their bum on it as toilet-paper. With such unprecedented achievements to his name, it is no wonder the President won Turkmenistan’s coveted ‘Man of the Year’ award in 2010. It must have been a brave man who beat him in all the others.
MY LOVELY HORSE
Obsessed with the native Akhal-Teke breed of horses, in 2019 ‘The People’s Horse-Breeder’ released a Father Ted- like ode to his favourite steed, Rovach, including lyrics like “You are like the morning dawn/You are like a sacred form.” Accompanied by his 14-yearold grandson on keyboard, Arkadag had his song put on TV, suspiciously edited in such a way that you couldn’t quite tell whether it was really him playing the centrepiece guitar solo or not. Akhal-Teke horses are a revered
national symbol, and Berdymukhamedov is eager to associate himself with them at every opportunity, hence his authorship of books like Akhal-Teke Horses – Our Pride and Glory and Flight of the Heavenly Race Horses. A huge golden statue of Arkadag on horseback, together with a dove, strengthens this link, a replacement for Turkmenbashi’s own former giant sculpture. The bird represents an iconic moment in Berdymukhamedov’s rule, a 2011 equestrian show marking ‘National Horse Day’. Here, seated on the back of his then-favourite mount Shagadam, the President trotted out onto a racecourse when, as reported by State media, “at that moment, a flock of doves as white as snow flew up to the sky. One of them smoothly descended to land on the shoulder of the leader of the nation, which for many peoples of the world from time immemorial has been perceived as a sign of the highest blessing, and this evoked the next storm of amazed applause – the head of the Turkmen State with a dove on his shoulder was seen as a symbol of the policy of peacemaking that proceeds from our Fatherland, evoking in all of progressive humankind the most heartfelt and bright hopes for universal peace, harmony and prosperity.”
Less well reported in State media were events on Horse Day 2013, when, just after winning the Turkmen Grand National, President Berdymukhamedov fell off his racehorse just after crossing the finishing line in first position and almost died beneath the other animals’ hooves, like a male suffragette protesting against his own tyranny. Carted away in an ambulance, it seemed the daredevil Dear Leader was no more. For 30 minutes, silence reigned, with spectators bursting into tears. Then, abruptly, Arkadag reappeared, unharmed and wearing fancy dress, waving at the crowd, who clapped in profound relief. Things then carried on as normal, as if nothing had happened – because, officially, nothing had happened. Journalists were corralled and told to delete all footage and images of the “sporting accident” as being of “no interest” to anybody at all, anywhere, ever. It must have been of some interest to at least one person, as film was successfully smuggled out anyway. One of Berdymukhamedov’s acts on taking power was to reverse his predecessor’s dread edict that the ‘sacred oath’ of the Turkmen, which stated that a man’s tongue would shrivel and his hand fall off if he spoke ill of his Fatherland or its President, should not have to be recited every day, but saved only for “special occasions”. Surely this must have been one of them?
INSPIRAL CARPETS
A central plank of President Niyazov’s old cult was the pretence he was a great writer. The best local authors, promoted as intellectuals during Soviet times, were banned. Only Turkmenbashi could be a genius now. Niyazov’s own ill-written work, the Ruhnama, or Book of the Soul, was often the only title besides the Koran to be found in bookshops. Copies were also displayed in mosques to make up for the latter’s “shortcomings”. Refusal could lead to demolition. Niyazov said he had written it in consultation with Allah, and that reading it thrice would get you into Heaven and “eliminate all shortcomings” in your person. Officials kept copies of the two-volume, 800-page “textbook of life” on their desks, citizens had to spend their Saturdays perusing it, and a 16-hour exam on its contents became part of driving tests, for “moral” reasons. Schools taught it, dropping “subjects of minor importance” like algebra, physics and PE, as part of the author’s plot to de-educate the land. Science and history were taught from the Ruhnama instead of real textbooks, telling kids ancient Turkmen invented wheels, robots and wheat. A giant mechanical version was installed in Ashgabat, opening its covers every night as a voice read passages aloud. TV showed disguised students reciting it in foreign languages to give the impression that the whole world was studying it. A copy was even blasted off to “conquer space”.
The Ruhnama had its origins in a genuine academic project to record local ethnic folklore before it was lost forever, folkways having been suppressed under Communism. The paternalistic Niyazov thought that a good way to forge a cohesive post-Soviet national identity was to make the book “the centre of the Universe”. Disliking the finished text, he hired some alcoholics to rewrite it, fictionally if need be. In 2001 Niyazov rewrote the final draft himself to imply he was personally descended from the semi-mythical father of all Turkmens, Oguz Khan (as well as the Prophet Muhammad, Noah and Alexander the Great), who had many of the country’s geographical features named after himself, just as Turkmensbashi did. Niyazov’s rambling pseudo-history keeps stopping abruptly for him to write an appalling poem or offer random advice like “Wear clean and decent clothes”; “The Turkmen does not spare his life in battles or his property at weddings”; or “If everybody likes their own nation, then the nations will like each other”. There is also a long section about the importance of smiling, and an attribution of a “symbolic animal” to every arbitrary epoch of Turkmen history. Criticism of the book could lead to a jail sentence; few smiles there. “I am the Turkmen spirit, reborn to bring you a Golden Age!” one of his poems began, before adding that this promise applied only to those who “are still faithful to me”. He is clearly a lot like Father Christmas: “If you are honest in your deeds, I see this/If you commit wrongdoing, I see this too.” Even foreign businessmen had to behave. Deals were dependent on funding the translation of Niyazov’s words into as many tongues as possible, even Zulu. As Turkmenbashi morphed into Oguz Khan, TV began broadcasting strange photographic evidence that he was magically growing younger, his hair becoming blacker by the day… but then, in 2006, Niyazov died of sudden heart-failure and the Ruhnama dropped right off the best-seller list.
Berdymukhamedov has since removed the Ruhnama from shelves and curricula, in favour of his own literary efforts, notably a ten-volume guide to The Medicinal Plants of Turkmenistan. Besides medicinal plants and Akhal-Teke horses, Arkadag also writes books on two other key topics: tea and carpets. In 2016, his Tea: Medicine and Inspiration was launched, teaching how drinking cups of tea forged an “unbreakable bond [between] eras and generations” as shown by MPs kissing
its cover in admiration. Carpets also weave new bonds between the Turkmen people, Arkadag wrote in Heavenly Beauty, published to a “high printing standard” on the national ‘Day of Celebration of the Turkmen Carpet’, and featuring chapters like ‘Song of Nature’ and ‘Carpet – Congeniality’, with a blurb promising to take readers on a “virtual voyage on a magic carpet throughout time and space”. Apparently, “to weave a carpet is a dream for any Turkmen woman”, as when looking at one, “one feels the tenderness of the carpet-maker’s soul”, thus leading to a happy home and hearth. Having nice carpets is the main “criterion of welfare” for the Turkmen people, due to the “miracle-working power of the carpet” to ensure domestic bliss. Based on “interesting information” he had found, Arkadag told a legend about a beautiful woman who wove the first carpet from seven colours, before flying up to heaven on it – this meant that the seven-coloured rainbow itself was an inherently carpet-related phenomenon! The “magic number seven” was also seen in the seven musical notes, the Seven Wonders of the World and the seven days of the week, all of which are derived from occult knowledge of regional carpets. As was explained, Heavenly Beauty was no mere sample catalogue, but an “original encyclopædia of carpet philosophy”. New Presidential poems are also now printed on newspaper front pages. 2015’s Go, Go! Only Forward, Motherland – Turkmenistan! is especially poignant, although sadly has nothing to do with carpets. 5
TURKMENATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY
In 2019, unthinkable rumours spread that the Turkmen Tolstoy had died of kidney failure. With Arkadag unaccountably not being seen on TV for several consecutive minutes, had his ‘Era of Might and Happiness’ reached a premature end? No. It was announced that the President was just away on holiday – an all-action one. To show he was still alive, State TV broadcast a 30-minute compilation of the vacationing hero hitting the gym, riding a horse and a bicycle, shooting guns, watching his own music videos, playing a synthesiser and writing another book. Then, to prove he really would be back soon, The Turkmenator jumped into a nearby rally-car and sped off to the Karakum Desert at dawn, pulling skids around the edge of a giant fiery gas-crater known as the ‘Gates of Hell’. He didn’t fall in, but the experience must have caused distress, as the 62-year-old leader’s previously remarkably jet-black hair has now turned grey. To imitate him, males had previously been encouraged to dye their own locks black too, but this edict has been reversed and hairdressers told only to give customers grey tints, as from now on “mostly [only] greyhaired people will be allowed to meet him”. There may be plenty of those soon.
Collapsing energy revenues and the cessation of purchases by the Russian petro-giant GazProm in 2016 are causing hyper-inflation, mass unemployment, poverty and food-riots. Even Turkmenbashi’s great gift of free condiments has now been withdrawn by the salt-snatching Arkadag, a decision rapturously applauded by his MPs when announced. “The gratitude of our people towards you [for taking away their salt] is endless,” one said, during a parliamentary session devoted to passing major new austerity measures. “Glory to the Great Protector! Glory to the Hero!” chanted hundreds of like-minded salt-haters. According to Arkadag’s totalitarian spin, State spending is being slashed because there is now no need for such largesse, as everyone is growing richer anyway, even those who would appear to untutored eyes to be starving like dogs; the bones they chew in the street are probably just more dental aids. So endless is the national mood of thankfulness that the hit new samizdat film is Netflix’s latest actionmovie 6 Underground, directed by Michael Bay and set in the ‘fictional’ country of Turgistan, whose insane despotic ruler, named after Arkadag’s favourite non-throwing horse Rovach, is himself overthrown by a team of US-backed mercenaries. Plain-clothes agents now haunt DVD-rental stores, asking for illicit copies of the swiftly banned film to sniff out dangerous dissidents and impose fines of as much as £43 upon them.
If Turkmenistan has now become the gigantic stage set for an all-action hero like Berdymukhamedov, then one big question arises: if, like Niyazov before him, he should die before the final credits on his Era of Might and Happiness have fully rolled, then which lucky replacement Cabinet Minister will be asked to become Turkmenator 2?
NOTES
1 See FT165:9; www.newyorker.com/ magazine/2007/05/28/the-golden-man; http://news. independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=632215;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saparmurat_Niyazov; https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/ has a large number of individual hyperlinked reports about Niyazov filed under ‘Turkmenistan’. 2 Times, 14 Aug 2019; www.wired.co.uk/article/worldrecords-city-ashgabat-turkmenistan; www.turkmenistankultur.at/oesterreich739-guinness-book.html; http:// news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3137943.stm; www. bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11095257; www. yahoo.com/news/cult-turkmen-father-fades-history-10years-141315642.html?
3 Times, 31 Jan 2015, 13 Feb 2017; http://news. scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=623082006; www. bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-44236375; www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-40813502; https:// eurasianet.org/another-personality-cult-blossoms-inturkmenistan
4 Times, 30 Apr 2019; https://eurasianet.org/dovealights-on-turkmen-president; www.bbc.co.uk/news/ world-asia-22352281; https://en.wikipdia.org/wiki/ Gurbanguly_Berdimuhamedow.
5 http://publishingperspectives.com/2009/12/ turkmenistans-tragicomic-publishing-revolution/; https:// publishingperspectives.com/2013/12/turkmenistanproudly-maintaining-the-tradition-of-dictator-literature/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhnama; www.danielkalder. com/TURKMEN.html; www.thenewhuminitarian.org/ feature/2003/07/09/focus-education; www.forum18. org/archive.php?article_id=522; www.rferl.org/a/ turkmenistan-rukhnama-final-chapter/25074649.html; https://en.hronikatm.com/2014/08/turkmenistanis-finally-putting-the-ruhnama-behind-them/; https:// en.hronikatm.com/2016/03/turkmenistan-presidentlauds-tea-drinking-in-new-book/; www.ahal-teke.org/ en/New-Book-vHeavenly-Beautyv-by-President-ofTurkmenistan-Gurbanguly-Berdimuhamedov-p29. html; www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-fromelsewhere-34580641; See also Daniel Kalder, Dictator Literature (2018, Oneworld, pp.319-335) for a full chapter on these books, some of which Kalder has heroically read right through to the end.
6 Times, 3 Nov 2018, 23 July, 6 Aug 2019, 10 Jan, 7 Feb 2020; www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-49319380; www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-49085767. Much of the action footage broadcast to ‘prove’ Berdymukhamedov was still alive may have been old. Rumour has it he was actually in Germany, visiting his sick mother.
For a Fortean Traveller trip to Turkmenistan in 2005 see FT195:74-77.