Dan Murdoch heads to Turkmenistan

SAPARMURAT Turkmenbashi was the sort of priceless lunatic that only communism seems able to turn up.
A true Soviet relic, the man made David Ike look like a Cartesian realist and creationism seem the result of rational enquiry. He existed on an entirely different plain of consciousness- like Michael Jackson but without the dancing, shrieking, crotch grabbing and completely disproved allegations of child molestation.
First a little history (no beard required).
Turkmenistan sits on the east coast of the Caspian Sea and is divided from Iran to the south by the Kopet Dag Mountains, and Kazakhstan to the north by Uzbekistan.
It’s almost entirely desert and over the last few millennia has been overrun by whoever was dominant in the region. So walking through the bazaar is like strolling through history. Alexander the Great offers you Half the Known World by the Age of 32, there’s Genghis Khan in Rape ‘n’ Pillage, first left after Timerlane’s Mass Murder Emporium, Catherine the Great is on the vodka stand and security is provided by one Joseph Stalin.
With predecessors like that, it’s no wonder old Turkmenbashi was a little extreme.
Turkmenistan was the only Soviet satellite that didn’t want independence when the Union collapsed in ‘91. Moscow gave the country no choice so Turkmenbashi, then just the humble communist party leader Sacharet Asyryov, waited until a load of Aeroflot planes were refuelling at Ashgabat airport then declared Turkmenistan a free nation, gaining independence, ultimate power, and the country’s first and only airline.
After winning 98% of the vote in the country’s first ‘democratic elections’ he managed to keep Turkmenistan from collapsing into civil war and lawlessness while his Central Asian neighbours did just that. He declared international neutrality, billing the country as the Switzerland of Asia, and set about harvesting the nation’s vast gas deposits.
Alongside this he ruthlessly clamped down on opposition and fostered one of the most bizarre personality cults in the modern world, setting himself up as a semi-deity and taking the title Turkmenbashi- ‘Father of All Turkmen’.
But not everyone’s perfect.
Yes he renamed the days and the months after friends and family. He made his quasi-spiritual book, the Ruhnama, part of the curriculum and ordered learner drivers to take an exam on it. He banned beards, gold teeth, pop stars from lyp synching and newsreader’s from wearing make up.

But what’s the country actually like?
Well first off, it’s a police state. I’d never visited one before and I can tell you it’s not just a clever name, it means there are police everywhere. My guide told me there are 50,000 cops on the streets of Ashgabat every night, for a city of 600,000 people: “But many more work in secret, underground. I used to have a delivery job and once I went to the police station and there were thousands of them, but with no uniforms.”
He also claimed to know people who had ‘disappeared’ because of their political activity. “I should not be telling you this, maybe I disappear too.”
I must have been stopped every 50km on the long drive to the capital from the renamed Caspian port town of Turkmenbashi (it’s like Dover being renamed Brown). And in the cities there are police at every major intersection and outside all public buildings. And they love to pull you over, especially if you’re driving a multi-coloured plastic car. Which I was.
Our stay was punctuated by constant police harassment and culminated in the arrest of our entire group of eight- for having dirty cars. We were banished from a city, locked in an old walled compound and watched over by the KGB.
Admittedly we were in the county illegally- never overstay your visa in post-Soviet pariah nations governed by deranged megalomaniacs.
Ashgabat, the capital, is a Legoland wonder of stunning high-rise office blocks and apartments in complete contrast to the rest of the country. It looks as if a demented toddler with a curious lust for marble was left in charge of city planning and accidentally blew the national budget. Which is exactly what happened. On close inspection I saw that these building are virtually empty- sterile phallic monuments to one man’s industrial delusions.
Turkmenistan is a rich country- it has some of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas, and Turkmenbashi made a great show of sharing the wealth. He made running water free, think of that next time you open your water bill. And the subsidised petrol costs 1,500 Manat a litre, which sounds a lot but is actually equivalent to three and a half pence. Energy crisis? What energy crisis?

Turkmenbashi died in December 2006. But his gold statues still stand in cities and towns, his picture hangs from official buildings, his name is on factories, vodka bottles, bank notes, streets, towns, the airport. It’s as if he never went away- though I noticed his successor’s image creeping in too.
Obituaries from the international press usually ran along the lines of: “There goes a man who made Kim Jong Il look like a beacon of representative democracy.”
But on the streets of Turkmenistan I found a different message.
“A great leader,” was the general response: “We needed food and he provided food. We needed a strong man and he was strong. You can do what you want, drink, meet women, live how you like. Just don’t get involved in politics.”
No matter how many people I asked, I couldn’t stir dissent in anyone.
“I'm not surprised mate,” a laconic Australian cyclist told me at a hotel bar, “all the places are wired- the whole city’s bugged and every other blokes an informant. No one’s gonna go bad mouthing the old boss round here.”
It was true. Wires or not, no one had a bad thing to say about the Father of Turkmenistan. In fact they still celebrate his favourite fruit with a national holiday- Watermelon Day. Who said he was crazy?

ends
mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com

For the full story of Dan’s travels in Turkmenistan go to: danmurdoch.blogspot.com