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What The Leader
Wants
Omnipotence is the least that the president
for life of Turkmenistan aspires to.
By Adam Bluestein
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His cult of personality — and politics of repression — have earned the Turkmen's
“president for life,” Saparmurat Niyazov, comparisons to Kim Jong Il, Nicolae Ceausescu and Joseph Stalin.
As leader of a natural-gas-rich desert nation where more than a third of his population of 5 million lives in poverty,
the self-proclaimed “Turkmenbashi” (father of all Turkmen) spares no expense on promotion. No one
knows exactly how much money has gone toward the creation of the thousands of statues and giant posters that multiply his
image across the land (or how much it cost to update those posters when Niyazov recently dyed his white hair black). But
the calculations that have leaked to the outside world provide some means for reckoning one man's unquenchable lust for power.
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Turkmenistan has the world's fifth-largest reserves
of natural gas, plus substantial reserves of oil. Opponents claim that Niyazov personally holds US$2.5
billion in offshore bank accounts.
The average Turkman earns US$1,120 per year.
Left: SAPARMURAT NIYAZOV, FATHER OF ALL TURKMEN.
Photo by Russian Look / Polaris
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The 40-foot-tall
gold-covered statue of Niyazov
in the city of Ashgabat stands
atop a 225-foot-tall archway and rotates 360 degrees so that
the face always catches the sun.
Left: GIANT GOLD RENDITION OF SAPARMURAT NIYAZOV IN ASHGABAT, THE CAPITAL CITY OF TURKMENISTAN.
Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters
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A giant artificial lake in the Karakum desert is expected to reduce
the country's scarce water supplies and cost US$6.5 billion to build.
Left: ASHGABAT, 2002,
TURKMEN SERVICEWOMEN MARCH
IN INDEPENDENCE DAY PARADE.
Photo by Russian Look/Polaris
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In 2004, Niyazov fired 15,000
nurses and other health-care workers, replacing them with
army conscripts to save money. Between 2002 and 2004, 12,000 schoolteachers were fired.
Left: NIYAZOV MEETS THE PEOPLE DURING A
TRIP TO THE LEBAP VELAYAT.
Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters
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Niyazov's pet project, “a palace
of ice so our children can learn to ice-skate“ will hold a thousand
people and may cost US$24.5 million to build. Summer temperatures in Turkmenistan reach a high of
50 degrees centigrade (122 degrees Fahrenheit). Since 1991, enrollment in institutions of higher
education has declined by more than 90 percent.
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Niyazov renamed several months of the year after himself and
his family. January, for example, is now known as Turkmenbashi.
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Only Sunni Islam and Russian Orthodox Christianity may be freely practiced. The spiritual leader
of Turkmenistan's Muslims has been sentenced to a 22-year prison
sentence for resisting Niyazov's attempts to control the country's religious life. Any Turkmen
citizen seeking a driver's license must take a 16-hour course
on the Rukhnama (Book of Soul),
Niyazov's moral treatise.
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Citizens found guilty of insulting Niyazov face a five-year prison
sentence (other punishable offenses include smoking in the street,
listening to a car radio, and having a beard). An estimated 20,000
political dissidents are now in Turkmen prisons. Niyazov, who
took power in 1985, is the only head of state 40 percent of the Turkmen population has ever known.
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