LLOYD: It’s the changing of the guard in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan’s capital. Looming large over the soldiers is the towering figure of Turkmenbashi, the self-styled great leader of all Turkmen. In the 13 years since the country declared its independence from the Soviet Union, Turkmenbashi, or Saparmurat Niyazov, to use his real name, has seen his statues and portraits dominate every public space in town. They make one thing clear, there’ll be no changing of the political guard in Ashgabat, Turkmenbashi has declared himself President for life.
Ashgabat, it’s Arabic, it means the city of love. But here in Turkmenistan what it really means is an all powerful president who’s in love, not so much with his country or his people, but himself. For the great Turkmenbashi has built a one-party state, based on a bizarre cult of personality. In public, ordinary Turkmens will proclaim their devotion to their leader but their affection is contrived, motivated by a climate of fear and intimidation. Celebration is the key to their survival, but that makes ordinary Turkmens mere bid players in a perverse presidential pantomime.
For the western media, the opportunities to visit Turkmenistan are few and far between and those of us granted the dubious privilege are subjected to an endless stream of propaganda. Not so long ago, these goose-stepping soldiers would have sworn allegiance to far away Moscow – now they take orders from just one man.
Every year a sort of people’s parliament of hand-picked cronies is convened to give President Niyazov a collective pat on the back.
MALE SPEAKER: My great leader you are the incarnation of justice, you are the magic crystal, you are the great visionary.
LLOYD: Speakers compete to see who can lavish the most praise upon the President.
FEMALE SPEAKER: We, oh beloved father, great Turkmenbashi, fully approve your wise domestic and foreign policy.
LLOYD: It’s a shameless display of state-sanctioned sycophancy.
PRESIDENT NIYAZOV: The bird of happiness can sit on the head of one man, which means the bird of happiness can sit on the head of the whole Turkmen people.
LLOYD: Ministers are required to stand in the wings and take notes. Laws are passed on a whim and a presidential wave. Turkmenistan television dedicates itself to pumping out pictures of the President and political propaganda. Overseeing the broadcast are television executives who also know how to flatter.
BAHAR MURKHIEVA – EXECUTIVE, TURKMENISTAN TV: Our President is a magnificent expert in history and I would not be wrong if I called him our teacher.
LLOYD: The “teacher” is fond of using the people’s parliament to issue bizarre edicts, mostly bans. It’s forbidden to mention AIDS, have gold dental crowns, perform ballet or wear make-up on television. The President thinks presenters are already pretty enough, and who are TV executives to disagree.
BAHAR MURKHIEVA – EXECUTIVE, TURKMENISTAN TV: Traditionally Turkmen and women are distinct with their natural attractiveness so they rely on their natural beauty, their natural voice. What can be more beautiful?
LLOYD: During our visit, we have constant companions. A burly government minder and a tour guide to show us around.
TOUR GUIDE: At the top of the arch of neutrality there is the statue of Mr President.
LLOYD: A statue, which always rotates to face the sun. Ashgabat is little more than a dictator’s Disneyland. And what makes this city all the more surreal is the fact that so few people actually live in it, most of the four and a half million people live in rural Turkmenistan, beyond those hills. But it’s a select few who have the President’s permission to be seen and heard.
Just beyond the capital we meet the President’s good friend and acclaimed national hero – farm boss, Muratberi Sopyev.
MURATBERI SOPYEV: All Turkmen respect him, love him. He works day and night for them. He enjoys the deepest trust of the people. He is respected and loved by the people.
LLOYD: Muratberi Sopyev takes us to meet what he says is a typical family. The camel has stage fright, offering up no milk but in the presence of the village chieftain, the old woman spouts the party line.
OLD WOMAN: Life since independence is better than before.
LLOYD: After a brief encounter, the government minder decides the family is suddenly very busy.
GOVERNMENT MINDER: Let’s go.
LLOYD: So we drive to another house where a banquet awaits.
HEAD OF HOUSE: After independence, I bought a car and a truck.
LLOYD: The head of the house, yet another enthusiastic supporter of President Niyazov.
HEAD OF HOUSE: In 2003 I got a tractor as a reward when the Great Leader distributed tractors to those who worked hard.
LLOYD: The farmer’s daughter recites a verse she’s been learning at school from a book written by a self-styled poet and philosopher, none other than Niyazov himself.
It goes by the name Ruhknama, a giant version ceremonially opens every night in Ashgabat. In this supposedly secular Muslim nation, it is the new Koran, Niyazov’s spiritual guide for the people. In schools, it’s taught almost as theology. Children are expected to learn passages and so does anyone who wants to get a driver’s license.
The cult of personality cultivated here extends to putting Niyazov up there with God. This three-storey high all marble mosque has just been built in his hometown. It’s one of the world’s largest accommodating up to 25,000 worshipers at one time. Along with phrases from the Koran, the exterior wall is plastered with Niyazov’s favourite lines from the Ruhknama. The building is also modestly named.
There’s plenty more slogans inside proclaiming the greatness of Turkmenbashi but our cameras can’t go in because the Imam says he needs the permission of the President himself. Now this is one cleric who’s not about to go around defying his earthly boss. His predecessor, the last Imam of Turkmenistan, is now serving a 22 year sentence for refusing to preach the Ruhknama in the mosque.
Niyazov has put his design inspiration on many other buildings around Ashgabat, like the magnificent edifice that is the national museum.
OWEZMUHAMMED MAMMETNUROW – NATIONAL MUSEUM DIRECTOR: Naturally the chief designer of the city is President Turkmenbashi the Great. His thoughts go along the lines of the best thoughts of the greatest architects of the modern time.
LLOYD: Pride of place among the nation’s treasures, is a giant carpet, a smaller one features the replica of an old bank note showing the President before he went prematurely black. [Niyazov’s hair] While Niyazov’s busy rewriting his country’s history, this is all that’s left of old Nissa, one of the capitals of the Parthian kings from the third century BC. But it’s not Turkmenistan’s archaeological sites that are of special interest to the present ruler.
For President Niyazov, what really matters is beneath Turkmenistan’s deserts, it’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas worth tens of billions of dollars and all of it under the President’s personal control. Very little of this wealth trickles down to ordinary Turkmen and women, most of whom live in poverty and without jobs. The country is regarded as having one of the lowest life expectancy rates here in the region.
Of course these kinds of people are largely invisible to outsiders, to tourists and foreign media alike. Government minders restrict most visitors to the Orwellian splendours of Ashgabat and besides even if people did want to complain, the chances are they wouldn’t for fear of retribution.
DAVID LEWIS – POLITICAL ANALYST: He is brutal and violent. He’s a leader who has used a whole range of methods against the political opponents. Sometimes he has been happy to force them into exile, sometimes he’s used long terms of imprisonment, sometimes he’s used even more severe methods.
LLOYD: David Lewis can be critical of President Niyazov but from a distance. Today he’s in London. Until recently he was the Central Asia Director of the International Crisis Group, an institute for political analysis.
DAVID LEWIS – POLITICAL ANALYST: He’s clearly a largely paranoid leader, he has very strange sort of behavioural patterns, he’s very dictatorial in his style, in behaviour and very untrusting of anybody around him.
LLOYD: If there are similar voices of dissent inside Turkmenistan, you won’t hear them. The level of repression means you have to leave the country to speak your mind. After the Soviet collapse, Avdy Kuliev was the first Foreign Minister of independent Turkmenistan. Bu he ran foul of the great Turkmenbashi and now lives in exile in Moscow. Declared an enemy of the people, Kuliev still fears for his life. Concerned that a television crew arriving at his house would arouse suspicion, a clandestine meeting was arranged instead.
AVDY KULIEV – FORMER FOREIGN MINISTER: In prison there are participants of the so-called plot in 2002. They are ministers and deputy-ministers, many prominent people, businessmen – all of them subjected to tortures, horrendous tortures. I think it’s probably better to be sentenced to a firing squad than to be imprisoned in Turkmenistan.
LLOYD: Three years ago, Boris Shikhmuradov was part of President Niyazov’s inner circle – Turkmenistan’s Foreign Minister.
BORIS SHIKHMURADOV: We consider him, not just only President, he is a very strong consolidating factor. The nation is being consolidated just around him and he is the leading political figure to create an atmosphere of social harmony in the country.
LLOYD: The atmosphere of social harmony was short-lived. The Foreign Minister now languishes in gaol after being blamed for an attempted coup, shots were allegedly fired at the Presidential motorcade. Boris Shikhmuradov confessed on national television.
DAVID LEWIS – POLITICAL ANALYST: The trial of Boris Shikhmuradov was a farce essentially. There was no due process involved, there was no defence allowed for Shikhmuradov. The use of torture is widespread. Former inmates in the gaols have given a lot of evidence about this and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Shikhmuradov was also subject to torture while he was in prison and we suspect that the confession was a result of that.
LLOYD: The United States maintains diplomatic relations with Turkmenistan, while professing deep concern with human rights abuses in the country.
TRACEY JACOBSON – US AMBASSADOR TO TURKMENISTAN: And we’re also concerned about access to prisons. The International Committee of the Red Cross has cooperative relations with all four of the other governments of Central Asia and prison access in those countries. In Turkmenistan, no one so far has had access to the prisons.
LLOYD: In a country that rivals North Korea for state sponsored choreography and criminality, American concern stops short of actively lobbying on behalf of Niyazov’s imprisoned political opponents.
TRACEY JACOBSON – US AMBASSADOR TO TURKMENISTAN: We don’t define people who are convicted in a coup attempt as a political prisoner because in fact a violent overthrow of a regime is illegal in any society.
LLOYD: Iraq is obviously an exception to that rule and for all the American rhetoric of spreading democracy around the world, in Turkmenistan access to resources, riches and strategic influence dominate US policy.
TRACEY JACOBSON – US AMBASSADOR TO TURKMENISTAN: Certainly we’re very interested in gas and oil here. We were involved in an earlier effort for a trans-Caspian pipeline which didn’t work out. We’re very interested in following the economic development of the whole region and playing a positive role when we can.
LLOYD: For all the pain and suffering Niyazov has inflicted upon thousands of Turkmen families, he shamelessly exploits his own. This statue in Ashgabat is dedicated to his mother, who was killed along with 100,000 others when the city was devastated by an earthquake back in 1948.
Niyazov’s father was killed a few years earlier in the Second World War. Just last month, Niyazov was in Moscow meeting with Russian President Putin and other world leaders at the 60th anniversary of the allies victory over the Nazis. The one-time Soviet communist party chief is exploiting the end of the cold war by retaining strong links with Russia and now currying favour with the United States.
TRACEY JACOBSON – US AMBASSADOR TO TURKMENISTAN: We believe that a prosperous and more democratic Central Asia is not only in the interests of the Central Asians themselves, but in the interests of the United States.
LLOYD: While Niyazov remains President, the prospect of a democratic Turkmenistan is fanciful. Turkmen teenagers and children are the victims of Niyazov’s paranoia and propaganda. He is the only leader they know. The Turkmenbashi cult is founded on the sympathetic story of an orphan boy.
AYJEMAL ALLASHAEVA – DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF ORPHANAGE: Children are proud that the President stands behind them.
LLOYD: From a distance, it looks like a presidential palace – in fact it’s an orphanage. Costing more than 20 million dollars, it comes courtesy of Niyazov and his personal friend, another president, the late Sheik Zayed of the United Arab Emirates.
AYJEMAL ALLASHAEVA – DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF ORPHANAGE: He was an orphan – but it was he who said they are not orphans. The State is behind them, the great State, so they are not orphans.
LLOYD: Turkmenbashi claims an affinity with his country’s orphans. There are more than 300 here and when it comes to education they are the fortunate ones. Few other schools in this country boast facilities of this quality. Many Turkmen children receive little or no formal education.
DAVID LEWIS – POLITICAL ANALYST: President Niyazov has taken a deliberate policy of essentially dummying down the Turkmen population in colloquial terms. He’s taken out several years of education from the schooling program, the university program’s been cut to just two years.
LLOYD: Almost every year the phoney people’s parliament ends with the man who’s already declared himself President for life, announcing that the time has come to find a successor. It is a test of loyalty his ministerial acolytes pass with flying colours, by furiously denouncing such an idea as unthinkable. The political striptease whips the audience into a frenzy and in Turkmenistan they applaud as if their very lives depend on it.
Ashgabat, it’s Arabic, it means the city of love. But here in Turkmenistan what it really means is an all powerful president who’s in love, not so much with his country or his people, but himself. For the great Turkmenbashi has built a one-party state, based on a bizarre cult of personality. In public, ordinary Turkmens will proclaim their devotion to their leader but their affection is contrived, motivated by a climate of fear and intimidation. Celebration is the key to their survival, but that makes ordinary Turkmens mere bid players in a perverse presidential pantomime.
For the western media, the opportunities to visit Turkmenistan are few and far between and those of us granted the dubious privilege are subjected to an endless stream of propaganda. Not so long ago, these goose-stepping soldiers would have sworn allegiance to far away Moscow – now they take orders from just one man.
Every year a sort of people’s parliament of hand-picked cronies is convened to give President Niyazov a collective pat on the back.
MALE SPEAKER: My great leader you are the incarnation of justice, you are the magic crystal, you are the great visionary.
LLOYD: Speakers compete to see who can lavish the most praise upon the President.
FEMALE SPEAKER: We, oh beloved father, great Turkmenbashi, fully approve your wise domestic and foreign policy.
LLOYD: It’s a shameless display of state-sanctioned sycophancy.
PRESIDENT NIYAZOV: The bird of happiness can sit on the head of one man, which means the bird of happiness can sit on the head of the whole Turkmen people.
LLOYD: Ministers are required to stand in the wings and take notes. Laws are passed on a whim and a presidential wave. Turkmenistan television dedicates itself to pumping out pictures of the President and political propaganda. Overseeing the broadcast are television executives who also know how to flatter.
BAHAR MURKHIEVA – EXECUTIVE, TURKMENISTAN TV: Our President is a magnificent expert in history and I would not be wrong if I called him our teacher.
LLOYD: The “teacher” is fond of using the people’s parliament to issue bizarre edicts, mostly bans. It’s forbidden to mention AIDS, have gold dental crowns, perform ballet or wear make-up on television. The President thinks presenters are already pretty enough, and who are TV executives to disagree.
BAHAR MURKHIEVA – EXECUTIVE, TURKMENISTAN TV: Traditionally Turkmen and women are distinct with their natural attractiveness so they rely on their natural beauty, their natural voice. What can be more beautiful?
LLOYD: During our visit, we have constant companions. A burly government minder and a tour guide to show us around.
TOUR GUIDE: At the top of the arch of neutrality there is the statue of Mr President.
LLOYD: A statue, which always rotates to face the sun. Ashgabat is little more than a dictator’s Disneyland. And what makes this city all the more surreal is the fact that so few people actually live in it, most of the four and a half million people live in rural Turkmenistan, beyond those hills. But it’s a select few who have the President’s permission to be seen and heard.
Just beyond the capital we meet the President’s good friend and acclaimed national hero – farm boss, Muratberi Sopyev.
MURATBERI SOPYEV: All Turkmen respect him, love him. He works day and night for them. He enjoys the deepest trust of the people. He is respected and loved by the people.
LLOYD: Muratberi Sopyev takes us to meet what he says is a typical family. The camel has stage fright, offering up no milk but in the presence of the village chieftain, the old woman spouts the party line.
OLD WOMAN: Life since independence is better than before.
LLOYD: After a brief encounter, the government minder decides the family is suddenly very busy.
GOVERNMENT MINDER: Let’s go.
LLOYD: So we drive to another house where a banquet awaits.
HEAD OF HOUSE: After independence, I bought a car and a truck.
LLOYD: The head of the house, yet another enthusiastic supporter of President Niyazov.
HEAD OF HOUSE: In 2003 I got a tractor as a reward when the Great Leader distributed tractors to those who worked hard.
LLOYD: The farmer’s daughter recites a verse she’s been learning at school from a book written by a self-styled poet and philosopher, none other than Niyazov himself.
It goes by the name Ruhknama, a giant version ceremonially opens every night in Ashgabat. In this supposedly secular Muslim nation, it is the new Koran, Niyazov’s spiritual guide for the people. In schools, it’s taught almost as theology. Children are expected to learn passages and so does anyone who wants to get a driver’s license.
The cult of personality cultivated here extends to putting Niyazov up there with God. This three-storey high all marble mosque has just been built in his hometown. It’s one of the world’s largest accommodating up to 25,000 worshipers at one time. Along with phrases from the Koran, the exterior wall is plastered with Niyazov’s favourite lines from the Ruhknama. The building is also modestly named.
There’s plenty more slogans inside proclaiming the greatness of Turkmenbashi but our cameras can’t go in because the Imam says he needs the permission of the President himself. Now this is one cleric who’s not about to go around defying his earthly boss. His predecessor, the last Imam of Turkmenistan, is now serving a 22 year sentence for refusing to preach the Ruhknama in the mosque.
Niyazov has put his design inspiration on many other buildings around Ashgabat, like the magnificent edifice that is the national museum.
OWEZMUHAMMED MAMMETNUROW – NATIONAL MUSEUM DIRECTOR: Naturally the chief designer of the city is President Turkmenbashi the Great. His thoughts go along the lines of the best thoughts of the greatest architects of the modern time.
LLOYD: Pride of place among the nation’s treasures, is a giant carpet, a smaller one features the replica of an old bank note showing the President before he went prematurely black. [Niyazov’s hair] While Niyazov’s busy rewriting his country’s history, this is all that’s left of old Nissa, one of the capitals of the Parthian kings from the third century BC. But it’s not Turkmenistan’s archaeological sites that are of special interest to the present ruler.
For President Niyazov, what really matters is beneath Turkmenistan’s deserts, it’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas worth tens of billions of dollars and all of it under the President’s personal control. Very little of this wealth trickles down to ordinary Turkmen and women, most of whom live in poverty and without jobs. The country is regarded as having one of the lowest life expectancy rates here in the region.
Of course these kinds of people are largely invisible to outsiders, to tourists and foreign media alike. Government minders restrict most visitors to the Orwellian splendours of Ashgabat and besides even if people did want to complain, the chances are they wouldn’t for fear of retribution.
DAVID LEWIS – POLITICAL ANALYST: He is brutal and violent. He’s a leader who has used a whole range of methods against the political opponents. Sometimes he has been happy to force them into exile, sometimes he’s used long terms of imprisonment, sometimes he’s used even more severe methods.
LLOYD: David Lewis can be critical of President Niyazov but from a distance. Today he’s in London. Until recently he was the Central Asia Director of the International Crisis Group, an institute for political analysis.
DAVID LEWIS – POLITICAL ANALYST: He’s clearly a largely paranoid leader, he has very strange sort of behavioural patterns, he’s very dictatorial in his style, in behaviour and very untrusting of anybody around him.
LLOYD: If there are similar voices of dissent inside Turkmenistan, you won’t hear them. The level of repression means you have to leave the country to speak your mind. After the Soviet collapse, Avdy Kuliev was the first Foreign Minister of independent Turkmenistan. Bu he ran foul of the great Turkmenbashi and now lives in exile in Moscow. Declared an enemy of the people, Kuliev still fears for his life. Concerned that a television crew arriving at his house would arouse suspicion, a clandestine meeting was arranged instead.
AVDY KULIEV – FORMER FOREIGN MINISTER: In prison there are participants of the so-called plot in 2002. They are ministers and deputy-ministers, many prominent people, businessmen – all of them subjected to tortures, horrendous tortures. I think it’s probably better to be sentenced to a firing squad than to be imprisoned in Turkmenistan.
LLOYD: Three years ago, Boris Shikhmuradov was part of President Niyazov’s inner circle – Turkmenistan’s Foreign Minister.
BORIS SHIKHMURADOV: We consider him, not just only President, he is a very strong consolidating factor. The nation is being consolidated just around him and he is the leading political figure to create an atmosphere of social harmony in the country.
LLOYD: The atmosphere of social harmony was short-lived. The Foreign Minister now languishes in gaol after being blamed for an attempted coup, shots were allegedly fired at the Presidential motorcade. Boris Shikhmuradov confessed on national television.
DAVID LEWIS – POLITICAL ANALYST: The trial of Boris Shikhmuradov was a farce essentially. There was no due process involved, there was no defence allowed for Shikhmuradov. The use of torture is widespread. Former inmates in the gaols have given a lot of evidence about this and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Shikhmuradov was also subject to torture while he was in prison and we suspect that the confession was a result of that.
LLOYD: The United States maintains diplomatic relations with Turkmenistan, while professing deep concern with human rights abuses in the country.
TRACEY JACOBSON – US AMBASSADOR TO TURKMENISTAN: And we’re also concerned about access to prisons. The International Committee of the Red Cross has cooperative relations with all four of the other governments of Central Asia and prison access in those countries. In Turkmenistan, no one so far has had access to the prisons.
LLOYD: In a country that rivals North Korea for state sponsored choreography and criminality, American concern stops short of actively lobbying on behalf of Niyazov’s imprisoned political opponents.
TRACEY JACOBSON – US AMBASSADOR TO TURKMENISTAN: We don’t define people who are convicted in a coup attempt as a political prisoner because in fact a violent overthrow of a regime is illegal in any society.
LLOYD: Iraq is obviously an exception to that rule and for all the American rhetoric of spreading democracy around the world, in Turkmenistan access to resources, riches and strategic influence dominate US policy.
TRACEY JACOBSON – US AMBASSADOR TO TURKMENISTAN: Certainly we’re very interested in gas and oil here. We were involved in an earlier effort for a trans-Caspian pipeline which didn’t work out. We’re very interested in following the economic development of the whole region and playing a positive role when we can.
LLOYD: For all the pain and suffering Niyazov has inflicted upon thousands of Turkmen families, he shamelessly exploits his own. This statue in Ashgabat is dedicated to his mother, who was killed along with 100,000 others when the city was devastated by an earthquake back in 1948.
Niyazov’s father was killed a few years earlier in the Second World War. Just last month, Niyazov was in Moscow meeting with Russian President Putin and other world leaders at the 60th anniversary of the allies victory over the Nazis. The one-time Soviet communist party chief is exploiting the end of the cold war by retaining strong links with Russia and now currying favour with the United States.
TRACEY JACOBSON – US AMBASSADOR TO TURKMENISTAN: We believe that a prosperous and more democratic Central Asia is not only in the interests of the Central Asians themselves, but in the interests of the United States.
LLOYD: While Niyazov remains President, the prospect of a democratic Turkmenistan is fanciful. Turkmen teenagers and children are the victims of Niyazov’s paranoia and propaganda. He is the only leader they know. The Turkmenbashi cult is founded on the sympathetic story of an orphan boy.
AYJEMAL ALLASHAEVA – DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF ORPHANAGE: Children are proud that the President stands behind them.
LLOYD: From a distance, it looks like a presidential palace – in fact it’s an orphanage. Costing more than 20 million dollars, it comes courtesy of Niyazov and his personal friend, another president, the late Sheik Zayed of the United Arab Emirates.
AYJEMAL ALLASHAEVA – DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF ORPHANAGE: He was an orphan – but it was he who said they are not orphans. The State is behind them, the great State, so they are not orphans.
LLOYD: Turkmenbashi claims an affinity with his country’s orphans. There are more than 300 here and when it comes to education they are the fortunate ones. Few other schools in this country boast facilities of this quality. Many Turkmen children receive little or no formal education.
DAVID LEWIS – POLITICAL ANALYST: President Niyazov has taken a deliberate policy of essentially dummying down the Turkmen population in colloquial terms. He’s taken out several years of education from the schooling program, the university program’s been cut to just two years.
LLOYD: Almost every year the phoney people’s parliament ends with the man who’s already declared himself President for life, announcing that the time has come to find a successor. It is a test of loyalty his ministerial acolytes pass with flying colours, by furiously denouncing such an idea as unthinkable. The political striptease whips the audience into a frenzy and in Turkmenistan they applaud as if their very lives depend on it.