Turkmenistan Impressions.
Every traveler will form their own impressions of the places they visit and the people they meet. There is no “truth” to impressions other than to the person who has them. That said I do want to share some of mine on this very unique country. It is also difficult to be value neutral with one’s impressions as each of us views the world through our own cultural lenses. That said, I do want to share some of my thoughts on this very unique country.
Turkemenistan is most definitely a totalitarian state. There is no attempt at hiding this fact. Free speech and critical thinking do not exist. The opera, ballet, theater and movie houses were closed soon after the Soviets left. Facebook, yahoo and other Western social media networks have never been allowed in and just recently the Russian sender Yannis was blocked as it broadcast a news release on the President being thrown from his horse. As the President has to be seen as larger than life, anything that shows him as fallible cannot be permitted. This cult of Super Father figures can be traced back through the millennia in the region and is certainly not anything new, but for those from the outside it is difficult to understand or to stomach. On the other hand, both Presidents have tried to do positive things for their people. The first, Turkmenbashi, insisted that the newly independent Turkmenistan be a neutral secular country, while promoting his own version of Islam. This allows the country to be able to negotiate with both the West and its neighbors Afghanistan and Iran, without being pulled in either direction. It’s secular nature allows it to remain neutral, while with his brand of Islam he was trying to revive a spiritual foundation in the people after 70+ years of Soviet rule. He also tried to make Turkmenistan financially independent through its oil and gas reserves, while keeping ties with Russia and the sweet deal they have as the broker of Turkmeni natural resources. He wanted to create a green paradise out of the desert to enhance the way people live, so he ordered everyone working in the government and all university students to plant a tree each and every workday. Pine trees in very distinct rows now grow throughout Ashgabat, where there was once only a desert similar to that between Gila Bend and Yuma in Arizona.
The new President, who came to power in 2007, has his own projects, which include building hippodromes for horse races, relocating the bazaars from the desert to modern facilities, beautiful new hospitals and new housing projects for each of the major cities. One of the latest projects is to make the citizens healthier, so each Ministry had to purchase a certain number of bicycles for their employees. (The previous President established a set of “Healthy Trails” in the mountains behind town, complete with pine tree lined lanes. & very few go on it)
Another recent project is to develop the Caspian Sea region.
Whatever the President wants, the President gets, regardless of whether it makes sense or not. There appears to be a lot of very linear thinking in the decision-making processes, without concern for consequences, environmental or social. For example, the pine trees need water and the irrigation techniques in this region have already led to rivers changing course as happened in Gonur Depe. There is a distinct haze over the city of Ashgabat that may well be from gas drilling as it is in Vernal, UT and So. Colorado. The white marble city that is still being constructed may not be particularly seismically sound, and this is a region that was flattened with a 9. Richter Scale earthquake in 1948.
When I first saw the city I was reminded of a tv cartoon from my childhood called “The Jetsons.” They lived in an ultra-futuristic city of skyscrapers and got around by flying cars. Well, there are neither flying cars nor carpets, but there are these very tall sleek beautiful, yet sterile, skyscrapers, with gold trim on many of them and a few with gold domes. There is the largest indoor ferris wheel in the shape of an eight-pointed star, when it was built the flagpole was the highest in the world, the new media tower is also in an eight-pointed star shape. Many of the buildings are constructed to look like what the functions they house, so, for example, the building Ministry for Publications is in the shape of book. The eight-pointed star has many meanings, but the general concept is for harmony and unity, and it is associated with the founder of the Oghuz tribe, who is the father of the Turkmen. The new wedding chapel is a large blue-ish circle-light within a couple of perpendicular squares, again relating to unity within space and time. The street with the President’s office, which is in a brand new building as he didn’t want to be in the same one Turkmenbashi was in, is closed to the public. It is called the “Dead Street” as one isn’t allowed to walk or drive down it. This is a long wide newly built boulevard that is solely for one person’s use.
The new monuments and parks look great, but there are no toilet facilities anywhere in the area.
The new hospitals look fabulous from the outside, but apparently there are no doctors or nurses to staff them, and those who are in the country are not particularly well trained. There is one Turkish hospital in town and we were told if we got sick that is where we would be sent, rather than to a Turkmeni facility.
The bicycles could well be a good thing, but they sort of exclude women as the traditional dress is a bit too tight to pedal properly, so this is really more geared towards keeping the men healthy and given what I saw they are not in the least interested in a healthy exercise-rich lifestyle.
We didn’t get to the Caspian Sea, so I can’t comment on this project from personal experience, just that which other travelers related. There are 20 new hotels in the process of being built along the coast in the hopes of making this region a new swimming capital. The only problem is that the Sea doesn’t really want to cooperate with this plan. The water is frigid until August and again after September. The two people I spoke with said they had tried to snorkel but it was too cold and too murky to see anything so they gave up after just a few minutes, and they were there last week, i.e., the second week of August. The Caspian isn’t the Mediterranean or the Red Sea.
The new apartment complexes are currently largely empty, which is why we hardly saw anyone in town. Most people still live in the Soviet built block apartments, though even here there are differences. We were told that the Stalin apartments were old, but spacious and one was lucky to have them. On the other hand the Khrushchev apartments were small with low ceilings and not well built. The President’s plan is for the Soviet apartments to be demolished and everyone to relocate to the very large and nice new ones. There is a small problem with this, however. The new apartments cost ca. $250K for those not working in the government and their average salary might be around $1300 pr. month. For those working in the government, there is a separate building for each of the Ministries and if one moves into an apartment building belonging to the Ministry where one works then they will pay half the cost, so, one only needs to cough up $125K; but if one works in the government one might only be earning $500 pr. month. Even with all the freebies the government provides the people, basically free gas, free electricity, free water, free garbage removal, free tuition etc., (all complements of gas and oil production) the people don’t earn enough to buy these apartments.
They are buying things though. The car bazaar was packed with people buying cars, household items, and clothes. I’m not sure how many people can afford to eat out on a regular basis, as the café in Mary where I had dinner by the river was about a third full and the one night we had dinner at Ashgabat’s equivalent to the Seattle Space Needle, the Pyramid, the bar had people, but the restaurant only a few, which was a shame because the food was excellent, (plov- the Central Asian stable of rice and vegetables, pumpkin soup, ice cream as the second course after soup but before the meal – which was interesting & the ice cream was very good, and salad) but the best part was this incredible view of the white marble city lit up in changing multicolored lights. It was a Las Vegas show without the neon signs.
This ultra modern spectacle is contrasted by life in the rural villages with dirt roads, houses that are a century old and held together only with care, food that is sold on the curb in the dirt, and water that is far from clean.
Governmental control extends even to the export of carpets and horses. They can’t be. The tight controls are supposed to make sure the quality of the product doesn’t erode. Why they aren’t allowing their beautiful, sweet horses to be exported is a mystery to me. I was very impressed with the horses I saw at the hippodrome. & even they are regulated. Two year olds race rather than at three as in most Western countries, and they are retired to breed farms at three. This year will be the first time they will be racing internationally; until now this has been a closed internal competition within the breed. It is considered a sin, and a crime, to castrate a stud to ensure the continuation of the breed. Turkmenis are very close to their horses, so much so that there is an old adage: “In the morning first greet your father, then greet your horse.”
So with regard to the institutional, political angle, the country appears to be all show. The propaganda machine is doing an excellent job, but it’s a sham; there is little substance behind things. The nouveau riche oil baron seems to want to outdo the Sheiks in the Emirates, but they have a vastly different country and culture than here. Internally, however, the controls are most definitely not show. They are real and can be felt even by outsiders. People are cautious about what they say and there was not one Turkmeni who complained about their President or government, but rather, when pushed, made excuses for him. To me, this is similar to their life under the Soviet KGB; spies are everywhere, and people adjust to the threat by suppressing any desire for public debate and free inquiry. They tow the one party line.
Yet, these are wonderful people. Even with the totalitarian regime, it is well worth coming to Turkmenistan to meet the people. The people I met in the villages expected nothing from us other than the simple pleasure of sharing each other’s company for a few minutes and laughing together. A human exchange that transcends culture and language. The drivers and guides and the people in the hotels and grocery stores were all incredibly helpful, going well beyond the responsibilities of their jobs. They genuinely want tourists to come and enjoy their country and to learn a bit about its history. As one is not allowed to travel alone, at least the regulations and lack of adequate public transportation make it almost impossible to do so, one needs to book a tour company & I can’t speak highly enough about the company we had, Odawan Tours. I didn’t know anything about them before the trip as they were the local subcontractor for the Uzbekistan company I’m using for getting around Central Asia, and was very happy with everything they did.
So the general impression is that it is a very bizarre country, but one that is safe (perhaps the one good thing about a totalitarian regime is that there is virtually no crime), and it is fascinating. It is a country very much in transition, and it will be interesting to see how it develops. In the meantime, it is well worth taking the leap into the unknown and travelling to Turkmenistan. I’m sure that once you get through immigration and customs (bring extra dollars as they make you pay an additional $12 even if you have the visa in your passport and they don’t take credit cards – & yes, they want the money in Euros or U.S. $s), you will be welcomed with open arms. I was.
