By Charles Pedskalny, December 2003

The great creation of Turkmenbashy,

Native land, sovereign state.

Turkmenistan, light and song of my soul.

Long live and prosper forever and ever!

Those are the opening lines of the national anthem of Independent and Permanently Neutral Turkmenistan.  There's a bunch of other nonsense with these lines repeated over and over, no doubt to get the name of the President for Life, Saparmurat Niyazov - Turkmenbashi (Father or Head of all Turkmen), as much as possible.  It's not a surprise because you can go nowhere in this country without his presense watching over you.

It took me over two hours to clear customs at the Uzbek-Turkmen border as the Turkmen border guards felt the need to fill out at least a dozen pieces of paper, make me fill out three or four, empty the entire contents of my pack, and then they got into an argument over my travel card.  The guy filling it out somehow missed my first name and wrote down Francis Pedskalny instead and it looked like they were debating whether to start all the paperwork over again because of this mistake.  Fortunately my guide and driver Oleg (if you are in Turkmenistan for more than five days, you need to be escorted) convinced them of the silliness of the whole thing and let me go.  For the next ten days I was Francis in the eyes of the Turkmen authority, it seemed appropriate.

The first thing you see at the border post is the country's slogan, Halk, Watan, Beyit
Turkmenbashi!  The translation of this is interesting: People.  Nation (or Fatherland). 
Turkmenbashi.  If I recall correctly this is pretty close to the Fascist Germany slogan, which may better be described as disturbing.  It's everywhere, in the towns, cities, desert, you name it.  Later on in the trip we were driving in the mountains in the middle of nowhere with hardly a hint of civilization and came to a dirt crossroads, and there it was for absolutely no one to see, except the animals.  Reminding them of whose is boss, probably.

The next weird bit was coming out of the desert for the first two days and coming to the capital, Ashgabat.  The places we stayed out in the desert were a mass of poverty and drug abuse, heroin being the choice of the unemployed masses, which is something like 90% of the population in the area.  This area was easily one of the most impoverished places I've ever seen but when you get to the capital you enter another world.

The centre of the city is a giant monument to Niyazov's lunacy.  It looks like all the oil and gas money Turkmenistan has has been poured into the centre to create a massive monument to Turkmenbashi.  There are endless public buildings (off limits to the public) that stretch out and look like a row of palaces, massive apartment blocks that no locals can afford to rent but have been built anyway because they look good, an obsession with fountains and of course the heart of it all, the Arch of Neutrality.  This sucker is great, it's 75 metres tall and on top of it stands a 12 metre golden statue of Niyazov himself, arms outstretched towards his land.  It rotates, he greets the sun as it rises in the morning and waves farewell as it sets at night.  There's a giant bull with a golden child sitting on top of it smiling - Turkmenbashi as
a boy of course.  There are also plans for a lake made out of gold.  It is easily the weirdest city I have ever seen. 

It doesn't end there, the man's face is everywhere.  Billboards, banks, every government building.  There's a variety of the poses with him laughing, looking serious in a military uniform, waving, etc....all the usual stuff to portray Turkmenbashi the Great (he calls himself this now) as a wise soul who has the interests of the people at heart.

Nothing escapes his grasp, including the bottled water.  In English my bottle stated: 21th century, the golden age of Turkmenistan.  This is the countries other slogan, one created five years ago after the first one became the butt of jokes.  In 1992 Niyazov claimed that in ten years Turkmenistan would be like Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates because of it's incredible reserves of oil and gas.  Obviously this is not happening and he needed a more general slogan, one that would work long after his death.  It's similar to the Kazakhstan president's slogan of 2030.  In 2030 Kazakhstan will be an economic powerhouse, long after Nursultan Nazarbaev is dead.  Smart stuff. 

It's just too much.  In the town of Turkmenbashi (like you didn't think he would name a town for himself) there are streets lined with palm trees.  Problem is the climate isn't suited for them and 90% of them die within a year and need to be replaced.  So we were driving down these streets with all these dead palms, waiting to be replaced in the next few months. 

It's not all despair however.  Electricityand gas are all free for homes and the price for petrol borders on the absurd.  400 manat for 1 litre of fuel.  With the exchange rate on the black market at 23 000 manat to the US dollar, one can fill up their car for a buck.  Turkmenbashi looks after his people well!

He's also written a book that he puts only one level below the Koran for the Turkmen: the Rukhnama (no translation, sorry).  It's in English and I of course bought the thing, it was only two bucks.  I haven't read much of it yet since the style is so incredibly annoying and obnoxious (always going on and on about how much he loves the Turkmen, blah, blah, blah).  The highlights so far would be Niyazov trying to claim that the Latin alphabet is actually the Turkmen alphabet, created by the Turkmen thousands of years ago and then spread around the world, because it's just so damn good.  There's some stuff in there about being decendents of Noah as well.  It's going to be a long and ponderous read but if there are just a few bits in it as funny as the 'Latin' alphabet then it'll be okay.  Every good despot needs a book!

I was only there for ten days and after being fascinated and amused by all of the above the one thing that is depressing is that this guy has a population of almost five million people in his grip and is just getting worse and more delusional as time goes on.  Oleg wants to leave, sick of the president and his wasting of the countries resources on his endless monuments.  He's got a point, some of that money could go to building basic infrastructure in the country, schools, hospitals, decent roads (the only good ones are the ones that Turkmenbashi uses) but instead it goes to monuments and insane schemes. 

I wasn't too sad to leave the country, it was by an oil tanker on it's way to Baku so that made it all the more interesting.  I wanted to remember the positive of the place, the Turkmen people, easily some of the friendliest people I've ever encountered, who just want to get on with their lives.  Oleg was fun too and it gave me an excuse to continue my education of drinking vodka like Russians.  One vodka session with Oleg revealed something funny.  I met his wife, Tonya in Ashgabat, his third.  The second one was Chechen and they divorced because her first husband was threatening to kill her and Oleg, obviously they took the threat seriously.  His first wife was a Russian who left him to go live with the son of Turkmenbashi!  She had the choice of a guy with a decent job or the son of the President and a life of luxury so she dropped poor Oleg and took off for Switzerland.  No wonder he doesn't like the president.

It took two hours to buy my ticket for the ferry and to clear customs, going through the exact same process as I came in.  I was no longer Francis and could go by my first name at the next customs stop which turned out to be just as absurdly thorough but at least they got my name right after accusing me of being a smuggler. 

Turkmenistan was done but now I will always be searching for news of the country for two reasons, to hear all the crazy stuff Turkmenbashi is up to and the hope that he either dies of some hideous disease or is assassinated, anyting to free that country from his grip.