Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The most recent phase of Turkmeni-
stan's development is dubbed 'the New
Era', superseding Niyazov's 'Golden Age',
and while the personality cult of Turkmen-
bashi still survives in the form of monu-
ments and statues throughout the country,
there's a mood of moving on in the air, with
few people even wanting to talk about the
man who dominated every aspect of daily
life for the past two decades. And while the
new president hasn't exhibited the same
lust for adoration as his predecessor, por-
traits of Berdymukhamedov are ubiquitous
and he himself enjoys no meagre personal-
ity cult.
Berdymukhamedov won an unsurpris-
ing re-election as president in 2012, with
some 97% of the vote and unanimous
praise from his 'rivals'. However, 2010
wikileaks cable transcripts from the US
Embassy in Ashgabat suggested that this
high opinion of the president wasn't held
by all: '[Berdymukhamedov] does not like
people who are smarter than he is. Since
he's not a very bright guy … he is suspi-
cious of a lot of people.'
A new gas pipeline connecting Turk-
menistan to China opened in late 2009, en-
suring access to the world's fastest growing
economy and further economic stability be-
yond the control of Russia, yet it continues
to look unlikely that this economic progress
will be matched by political reform and de-
mocratisation any time soon.
Turks appropriated Merv, Alexander's old
city and a Silk Road staging post, as a base
from which to expand into Afghanistan.
Two centuries later Chinggis (Genghis)
Khan stormed down from the steppes and
through Trans-Caspia (the region east of
the Caspian Sea) to lay waste to Central
Asia. Entire city-states, including Merv and
Konye-Urgench, were razed and their popu-
lations slaughtered. Unlike Samarkand and
Bukhara, the cities to the south failed to
recover.
It's not known precisely when the first
modern Turkmen appeared, but they are
believed to have arrived in modern Turk-
menistan in the wake of the Seljuk Turks
some time in the 11th century. A collec-
tion of displaced nomadic horse-breeding
tribes, possibly from the foothills of the
Altay Mountains, they found alternative
pastures in the oases fringing the Karakum
desert and in Persia, Syria and Anatolia (in
present-day Turkey). Being nomads, they
had no concept of, or interest in, statehood
and therefore existed in parallel to the con-
stant dynastic shifts that so totally deter-
mined Central Asia's history.
Terrorising the Russians, who had come
to 'civilise' the region in the early 19th cen-
tury, Turkmen captured thousands of the
tsar's troops, and sold them into slavery
in Khiva and Bukhara. This invited the
wrath of the Russian Empire, which finally
quelled the wild nomads by massacring
thousands of them at Geok-Depe in 1881.
After the Bolshevik revolution in 1917,
the communists took Ashgabat in 1919.
For a while the region existed as the Turk-
men
oblast
(province) of the Turkestan
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, be-
fore becoming the Turkmen Soviet Social-
ist Republic (SSR) in 1924.
History
From Conquerors to Communists
Stone Age sites have been identified in the
Big Balkan Mountains but the first signs of
agricultural settlements appeared in Kopet
Dag in the 6th millennium BC. More Bronze
Age sites have been located in the Margiana
Oasis, where archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi
has identified a sophisticated culture that
encompassed several villages and an ex-
tensive capital. Rivers that shifted over the
centuries caused the abandonment of these
settlements, but paved the way for a great
civilization around Merv. Alexander the
Great established a city here on his way to
India.
Around the time of Christ, the Parthians,
Rome's main rivals for power in the West,
set up a capital at Nissa, near present-day
Ashgabat. In the 11th century the Seljuq
The Turkmen SSR
Inflamed by Soviet attempts to settle the
tribes and collectivise farming, Turkmen
resistance continued and a guerrilla war
raged until 1936. More than a million Turk-
men fled into the Karakum desert or into
northern Iran and Afghanistan rather than
give up their nomadic ways. The Turkmen
also fell foul of a Moscow-directed cam-
paign against religion. Of the 441 mosques
in Turkmenistan in 1911, only five remained
standing by 1941.
Waves of Russian immigrants brought
with them farming technology and
