Turkmenistan: The World’s Wackiest Dictatorship?

How amazing is the place where aaza Caspian waves burst into life is so wonderful in my homeland, my splendid and dazzling Turkmenistan, they are pointing out words, didn't they bring them to us in the form of a rather original rap number? And well, considering that He is involved by none other than the then president of Turkestan and his grandson, the rapper called Little Sandal. Oh, well, they have to be true, don't they? Along with other important messages such as sports and health, inspiration makes the body strong and strong throughout the nation. Former President Ganguli Birdie Muhammad's speech is good, his country Turkestan is a beautiful place and everyone should want to live there now.

If you like, a good proportion of the

world

had never heard of Turkestan before watching this video, then you might be inclined to do so. Take his word for it, but hey, if you've heard of the tech menista, then you probably realize there's a bit of a problem here behind the Turkish president's rap videos, behind his public, mischievous grandpa persona, and behind the veil of anonymity that Turkmenistan has enjoyed for decades. lies one of the most totalitarian regimes in the

world

, it is the ruthless overlords of Turkmenistan, their strange cult of personality and the place and people they crush under their feet, that we are going to explore today, so with that welcome to TCH Menan , the Sovereign Nation of Turkestan is one of the most remote countries in the entire world, a landlocked territory on the shores of the Caspian Sea, which in turn is also a landlocked Turkestan, with a total of four neighbors : Kazakhstan, Usbekistan, Afghanistan and Iran, but despite being almost in the exact center of Turkestan in Central Asia.

It is far from being a notable regional player, with a territory mainly covered in desert, a total area barely smaller than France and Spain, and a population of just over 7 million people. Turkmenistan is instead a quiet, unpretentious country on a quiet, modest expanse of habitable highlands that basically oversee the empty sands at its core, that's not to say Turkmenistan has nothing going for it, it has the fifth largest reserves of natural gas in the world, has a long history of interdependence with its neighboring former Soviet states, has a large amount of oil and energy to export and has a long history of providing its citizens with public services such as electricity and water for free, of which we will talk about a little later.

He doesn't tend to get involved in wars. It doesn't tend to piss off any of its neighbors and is happily placed under the political umbrella of the Russian Federation; In fact, if the people of Turkmenistan tell us about the foreign posters or see them smiling and applauding at one of the former president's Jam sessions, one might think that it is one of the happiest places in the world with a name that scholars translate as a land of pure Turks Turkistan traces its ancient history to the Ained empire of ancient Iran, where federations of Augus tribesmen became the ancestors of modern ethnic Turks backed against the natural barrier of the Caspian Sea and so on .

From an intersection between the ancient empires of their time, the early Turkmen tribes passed from the Dominion of the SELC Empire to the Mongols and the USC K, all while building their own enclaves and settlements, while a proportion of Turkmen continued to live as nomads. Turkish men began practicing Islam in the late 10th century, a faith that has spread to the present day, and they became known throughout the region for a fierce reputation for resistance to all forms of external domination, even while lending their fighters. and his military prowess to a variety of regions. players in the 19th century The Turks gained notoriety as slave traders throughout Central Asia and achieved important victories against invaders from nearby Persia, but the history of the state that would evolve into modern-day Turkestan can trace its history back to the same place. than most other nations we now refer to as post-Soviet states the expansion of Sistist Russia to a wide range of territories in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, although the Turkmen tribes of the time did not remain quiet, they were eventually annexed to the Russian Empire in 1881.

After a few days of consolidating Russian control, the Turkmens joined the rest of Central Asia in rebelling against Moscow's draft orders during World War I, but like the rest of Central Asia , were eventually subsumed by Russia's success in the Soviet Union after a few. years of fierce but ultimately unsuccessful resistance evolved into the Turkish Soviet Socialist Republic the Turkmen state and culture were reorganized into what was a common vision throughout Soviet Russia an agricultural producer in line with the expectations of the Soviet state was found In this state of tranquil subsistence, Turkistan would live the next approximately 70 years isolated by the steps and the Caspian Sea from the ravages of World War II or the independence movements of the late 1980s, when Turkistan declared its sovereignty in 1990, reading the writing on the wall like any other.

In one country in the region it was more a question of survival and avoiding economic exploitation than a question of self-determination. The man who had been leading the Turkish SSR, an ethnic Turk named Sap Morad Neov, continued as Turkmenistan's first Head of State making a clean transition. move from communism to its own brand of authoritarian Turkish nationalism and when we say authoritarianism we mean authoritarianism and we will go into much more depth on Mr. Naov and his successors shortly, but for now suffice it to say that the rise of the N administration rapidly became the rise of the N of the cult of personality;

Within a few years he used a rigged referendum to abolish the requirement that presidents be re-elected, declared himself president for life, and undertook a long series of social and cultural reforms to essentially transform the country of Turkmenistan into the country of Sapura Naov when Naov later died. After a couple of decades of rule and his deputy prime minister Ganguli B Mamedov took over the reign, the cycle continued and when he resigned and passed the nation to his son HRH in 2022 it continued once again now, before getting into the real political weirdness of Turkestan modern, we have to dive a little deeper into the emergency room to find out what exactly makes this country function very similar to other Central Asian nations.

Turkestan has a long history. The history of nomadic life and independence with horses and equestrian culture is as important as ever in Durman culture, where a young Brazilian plays soccer or a young American plays the other soccer well, a young Turk can learn the fine arts of fighting on horseback and he does it too. That nomatic legacy is shown in Turkmen culture, rich in meat and dairy, and in the continued use of traditional htic tires and rugs. Turkestan has a long history of emphasizing poetry and intellectualism, although the area's years under Soviet authority provided a temporary weakening of such traditions and the following regime since repurposed Turkish intellectual culture for its own benefit in a sense.

Economically, the country is deeply dependent on its huge reserves of natural gas and oil, and 92% of its exports in 2019 were petroleum products, but there are pretty massive revenues coming from gas. Turkmenistan's gas reserves have also given it one of its most famous monuments: the Davara gas crater, which has emitted methane and burned continuously since the 1970s. There is no sign of stopping other than gas and oil. The most important thing that Turkmenistan has is its production of raw cotton and it has a certain level of tourism in its district of Oaza, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, the country's income has been completely frustrated. for its gas reserves, that for years Turkmen citizens have enjoyed free allocations of water, gas, electricity and salt for their utilities, although that is no longer the case, Turkmenistan is gone, these ruling regimes that simply cannot avoid leaning into his megalomania with all the crazy architecture and grandiose vanity projects. and strange laws that would be typical of an eccentric dictator, it is true that that same megalomania has caused intense pain throughout Turkmen society and will undoubtedly deepen the human cost of the rule of the Turkish regime, but again, first we have to explain how strange It's really Turkmenistan and on some issues in particular we just can't do that with a straight face as mentioned before.

The first modern dictator of Tur Manan was a guy named Naov. He has been a member of the Soviet Communist Party since the 1960s and was sitting. at or near the top of the Turkmen SSR in a couple of decades, but when Turkmenistan gained independence, Naov decided to declare himself president unilaterally, since no one disputed that he was able to enjoy the trappings of power for a while before holding an election in which of course he was the only candidate when he won he was awarded the title of Turk Bashi the leader of all Turkmens and after a few more years he declared himself president for life After taking power Turkmenistan said about deifying himself in a somewhat differently than the other Nations in the region, of course, Neov did all the typical post-Soviet stuff, a campaign to eradicate the Russian language and open doors for Russians who wanted to leave the country, that kind of thing, but also went a step further, for example, universities weren't exactly banned from accepting foreigners, they were banned from accepting anyone whose name doesn't sound Turkish, which is a bit of a problem if you're a born and raised Turkish native who just happens to be called Steve. o Bob after Turkestan was sufficiently der hurried at his pleasure M offet to make some other changes in a short time he had closed all Turkish hospitals within the capital, forcing all Turks to come to Ash Kabat to receive their treatments .

Libraries outside the capital face the same fate. the circus the opera the use of lip syncing in concerts beards and literally puppies banned gold teeth and kindly offered that people who wanted stronger teeth should chew soup bones, you don't know how that works that turned the second Sunday in August on a holiday called Melon Day and renamed schools, airports and even entire Turkish cities after him, because of course he did, he also invented a new alphabet and insisted that his portraits be hung in every home. of the nation, while demanding that all those homes be blown up. a Turkmen flag and, naturally, rewrote the national anthem, including a chorus that refers to Turkestan as his great creation during the many years that Niazov was dictator.

News broadcasts were expected to begin with the newscaster's promise that his tongue would wrinkle if they ever did. presented a report that SL Ed the country the flag or the naov itself, but it was not only the news presenters who would have to pay attention to naov in the capital, it was prohibited to hang clothes, install air conditioners or even open windows in the streets that no one could use or otherwise see, which at least in the hypothetical sense includes the entire city when it was the target of an assassination attempt in 2002, responded by imprisoning literally thousands of people whom it had previously been inconvenient to imprison and when in another incident an unknown turk put up some signs claiming that neov really wasn't all, to which neov responded by firing his entire cabinet, the police chief of

turkmenistan

, and the head of the turkish police academy because, well, apparently The most notable of all his strange policies and yes, there really is more was the Paseo de la Salud, a concrete staircase that runs along some of the mountains in two sections with a length 45 km in total.

That's not the weird part, the weird part. is that each year Naas ordered all his ministers, members of Parliament and civil servants to walk the entire longest section of the walk, 37 km in total, while Neov watched from a helicopter. Damn my friend, it turns out that people walked 37 km along the path. which didn't have any shade and was usually quite hot tended to cause people more health problems than it relieved, but that didn't stop him, but there is one good thing we can say about him: he loved his mother, in fact , named his mother a month later and bequeathed her. him and several other friends and family with the days of the weeks and months of the year too, but maybe that wasn't special enough for his dear mother, well, don't worry because she also renamed the bread as in the food literally after her.

But if Nao's vanity was impressive on its own, then he often and literally gave way to his successor Gerbang macabre Birdie Mamedov, whom ofNow from now on I will call birdie because the damn Turkish dictator fashion birdie ordered the construction of the central avenue of ashat. destroyed after Nao's death in 2006 and demolished Central Avenue and several dozen surrounding houses to build his own personal palace. A dentist by profession but a dictator by profession. He is also known in Turkmenistan as arodak, the protector or the patron, depending on which. translation you prefer when talking about Bird's particular brand of crackpot

dictatorship

, we have to start in the capital city of Ash Kabat, a name that literally translates to city of love, but which fits a little less than the more informal name of the city, the city of white marble, Ashgabat. holds the world record for including the most white marble of any city on Earth by far, enough to clad 543 entire buildings with a total area of ​​4.5 million square meters when first assessed in 2013 Ashgabat too holds a number of other world records the world's largest covered ferris wheel the world's largest foundation and not the world's largest mural, but specifically the world's largest mural of a star, its operation at the airport in 1994 required that An entire Village was demolished to be built and then rebuilt at a cost of about $2.3 billion, but it operates at about 10% capacity, so money is well spent on the national press building.

It is built with a front facade in the shape of a gigantic book, there is a building that functions as a giant thermometer and the marriage registry called the Palace of Happiness is adorned with an absolutely enormous disco ball for reasons that we cannot explain how. Explain that why his role in marrying the city, the Turkish parliament awarded Birdie the title of distinguished architect of Turkmenistan because, of course, he was Bird's love of white marble, his love of strange architecture, and his love of breaking and establishing completely unnecessary niches and worlds. The records are well documented, but nowhere is more than an ashat shown, unfortunately for many ordinary Turkmens, the white city of Mar came at the expense of their pensions, previously free public services, and the financing of their children's schools, but at least they got a gigantic monument. to the Constitution of Turkey for its problems and we also have to talk about the statues, oh oh, so many statues, Turkestan features a wide range of gold statues depicting former President Naov, including one that rotates with the sun and, naturally, Birdie has since had many of his built to match, there are also countless gold statues of Turk Manan and others depicting ancient horses, warriors and dogs.

Our favorite of the bunch is located in Ashab Bat and features the Holy Trinity of things the little bird likes, a gold leaf image of himself, a horse. Also gold leaf and a rock outcrop constructed of white marble, all at a total height of over 20M Of course Birdie is not only the distinguished architect of Turkmenistan, in fact he is a man who wears many hats during his tenure . Birdie was a writer and will sample a line from his book, Flight of the Heavenly Racehorse, in which he describes the difficult situation he personally faced, citing horse riding, airplane driving, steering wheel, sailor, driving a powerful truck. , a little bird not only demonstrates a wonderful physical shape and high professional skills in every business, it fixes in people's minds the image of a modern strong man who has to do a lot, must be well educated, physically strong and aesthetically bold, claims be sure, so let's go over each of them, he has certainly shown that he is very physically. strong at one point lifting a golden bar above his head while being applauded by his cabinet ministers about a year later he was filmed teaching a group of Turkish police officers how to exercise properly, which must have gone well as the Turkish website state news Orient DTM declared that Turkmenistan was lucky to have such a sports president he has also been seen at a shooting range playing basketball while riding a bicycle practicing Taekwondo throwing daggers and doing his own Rocky style training montages finally immortalized his dedication to the sport in that same rap video we mentioned before but I've tried to forget that he performs alongside his grandson and included the following poignant lyrics.

Sports and health are inspiration. It makes the body strong and strong throughout the nation. Furthermore, as he himself said, he is quite well educated, after all, he has three honorary doctorates and is even an honorary professor of the Beijing Medical School honorary. He is very good at driving powerful trucks. He is very good at driving powerful trucks. He proved it in 2019 when he drove around Turkmenistan's gigantic, perpetually burning Hell's Gate crater to prove he wasn't dead. he is also good at driving the wheel of an airplane, he has done flight tests in a supersonic military plane according to Turkman Media, after all, aesthetically he is Aodi, just look at this man, his outfits clearly absolutely kill and if that wasn't enough , he's a cool DJ, man, unfortunately we have to dispute a claim specifically about horse riding because, although he won many horse races in his time, in 2013 he gained global meme status when he fell off his favorite horse.

Stability doesn't end, does it just not end? Regarding the devastating report that Turkmenistan is in fact far ahead of us in disputing this claim, not only has the incident been forcibly deleted from all Turkish media, but two years later birdie was given a new title: The village horse breeder, what exactly does that mean or where exactly was he located? He figures in the breeding process more than we could tell you, but he has also written several books on the most famous Turkmen horse breed, the AAL te, and has since organized horse beauty pageants. On the legal side, criminalizing the act of changing the name of an akal te horse during its lifetime is a rule that radiofree europe/radio Liberty helped summarize as such, for example Cohen Caravan cannot be renamed Melos orange bird alone because the owner changes his mind and decides he likes the new name better important news news he also made mandatory the act of giving each akal te horse a proper burial with official presence in a designated area even though there were no designated areas for burials of horses in Turkmenistan at that time, we hope it has already become very clear that the ruling regime of Turkmenistan is some kind of clown show. but unfortunately that's not the whole story, in fact, while we certainly wouldn't claim that Niar and Bird's eccentricity was manufactured just for show, it's important to know that they have a real purpose to understand what the purpose is, we'll ask.

To engage in a simple thought exercise, now imagine that you are a television news producer working on a three-minute advertisement about Turkestan. Are you going to talk about the ugly, disgusting human rights abuses or are you going to talk about the dictator DJ who isn't? Donuts literally surrounds a pit of death, and sadly, it's time we ditch all the Turkmenistan buffoonery and instead look at the deeply troubling reality that lies beneath. We have already briefly touched on the Turkish regime's desire to pervert and nullify the country's culture. and history for their own purposes, but the practice is surprisingly deep.

All historical structures in the country, whether ancient ruins or iconic infrastructure, can be demolished if the regime so wishes. Turkmen cultural rituals of dress and grooming have been legislated while at the same time, they are co-opted for photo shoots and publicly broadcast events in which Turkish attendees are forced to dress as if they have traveled back in time from the 18th century in Turkmenistan, and also Turkish money is largely treated as the regime's personal bribe fund in recent years. years of his administration former president naol channeled half of the country's gdp into his own projects and today the birdie dynasty continues to divert additional funds from their poor aien in ashat that marble city that we mentioned before was built after the demolition of many monuments historic most of the city's trees and a series of canals that have defined it for many decades because who needs trees, what a waste of space, it was obviously built to be more of a display of power and wealth in a livable city, but in In practice that means a capital where many neighborhoods lack reliable electrical and water infrastructure, while in districts that are considered important the empty city streets remain brightly lit and water continues to flow into elaborate but deeply unnecessary fountains;

In fact, the quality of life in the city has only gotten worse over time on store shelves. You may be well stocked, but the products are prohibitively expensive, and with air conditioning and open windows banned in many districts, it can be stifling to live in for much of the year. Vision center in back alleys and parking lots to not encroach on visible street facades. Functionally speaking, many of the people who have to live there are showpieces for both the dictator and the elites of his party and for any foreigner who happens to be within the city of Ashkabad.

There is a long way to go between being happy and healthy and living under the rule of a certain Kim Jong-un and Most of Turkish daily life is more like the North Korean option than the nicer alternative: the distribution of Bread, for example, is strictly controlled and Turkmen families are limited to buying two or three loaves of bread a day despite the country's agricultural potential, which is instead used for harvesting. Over 100 million tonnes of cotton a year, food shortages go far beyond bread, although with an ongoing crisis that has only worsened since 2015 and often sees Turkmen citizens waiting for hours in line to receive rations, only to be turned away when the country's agreements run out. with some incredible inflation rates making food prices much worse to the point that many Turkmens who have the opportunity to speak to Western sources report spending more than 34 of their family's income simply on getting food, along with inflation, there is unemployment which officially in Turkmenistan hovers between four and five percent, but in reality is believed to affect up to half of the national workforce, this has pushed countless families into poverty, even as the government continues to spend generously on construction projects and for people who are lucky enough to have jobs, usually with the same salary.

Things in the state are not much better. State workers are often ordered to clean city streets. Make financial contributions to government projects or even donate up to half of your salaries each month toward whatever the regime dreams up on any given day. Under penalty of resignation, they are forced to choose between paying the fees or entering a labor market that is functionally non-existent in the private sector. Turkish state employees have no choice but to pay in the summers. They are forced to buy vacation packages to go on vacation. in the tourist town of Aaza in Turkmenistan and are forced to pay subscription fees to receive publications from state media which, in the case of print media, they often do not even receive - sometimes even unemployed recipients of state money have been forced to contribute, including a case in 2021 where school officials in the southeastern province of Maria forced literal orphans to donate a quarter of their already minimal financial support to help pay for school renovations and then there's the Academy in Turkish schools and universities, which deals with many potentially controversial or sensitive topics. open discussion while curricula are strictly controlled and prescribed in detail for local educators the country refuses to recognize degrees awarded by foreign institutions making studying abroad meaningless for Turkish students who do not want to leave their country permanently Turkestan suffers from an incredible brain drain a phenomenon in which people from an underdeveloped country who travel abroad to receive education choose to stay abroad rather than bring their knowledge home;

The lack of experience translates into a lack of ability to educate young Turkmen who choose to study in their own country and that in turn means that there are very few qualified people in Turkmenistan to do everyday things like keep the lights on or build new infrastructure that you know could help people or something, not just thosePeople may not make their voices heard in Turman's totalitarian government, but they are probably not present in Turkmenistan at all, but young students are not the only people who want to leave Turkestan with the country's population in sharp decline. Government officials have recently taken steps to confiscate travel passports belonging to Turkish state employees and may outright deny the right to leave to any Turk for any reason.

Turks have been removed from flights restricted for international travel before they reach a certain age and detained at border crossings. This rule is applied with particular force against Turkmenistan's Balok minority, a group. whose customs and linguistic culture are prohibited from being taught or disseminated within Turkestan. Fortunately for the Turkish public, some sources suggest that more than 2 million people have left the country since the turn of the millennium, but that does very little for the people still trapped there. So let's go back to that media promise we mentioned earlier, as announced by news anchors at the beginning of their broadcast under the rule of Turkmenistan's first president, Naov, that the news anchors' tongues would wrinkle if any On the one hand, we have to point out here that the Turkish regime does not have the same definition of slander as we do, but a much broader one that includes basically anything negative about the country, the flag or the president pointing out that the Turkmen population has a small drug problem is a slander that points out that many citizens live in poverty.

A slander that points out that a large number of Turkmens are dying of AIDS, which has been true for much of the country's modern history, is a slander. and while the expectation is not that a news anchor's punishment will be to literally wrinkle their tongue, they could face a couple of decades in prison for their troubles. In fact, when it comes to press freedom overall, Turkestan ranks third from last in the world. it is only ahead of North Korea and Eritrea. Independent and non-state-affiliated journalists have long been subject to harassment by authorities, criminal prosecution, imprisonment and even physical abuse, and the families of Turkmen journalists have been harassed even when those journalists work in the foreigner using Turkish.

The language arm of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty suffers the worst treatment, as the organization draws much of its financial support from the US government, including the rare non-state media organizations that manage to survive, mainly the Russians, are subject to the same strict regulations to survive in the country. Bloggers, Instagrammers and YouTubers living in Turkestan are instructed by state officials to propagate the narrative of their country's regime as a happy and prosperous nation and are threatened with arrest as punishment for even liking or commenting on content online. which goes against the narrative so expect a strange comments section today when a Turkish reporter commits the ultimate cardinal sin by trying to tell the world the realities of life in his country they risk being disappeared with no way to locate them once Once they enter the country's murky Peno system, almost all print and broadcast media distributed in Turkestan are under direct state control, and the country's Internet blackouts include all independent or foreign media outlets.

For decades, satellite receivers have been banned in Turkmenistan, which, ironically, was a decision made the same year the country launched its first satellite, so any Turk following the law will be unable to receive any satellite transmissions while anyone found with a recipient faces its own severe penalties. VPNs have been criminalized throughout Turkistan and we would like to quickly say hello to our Turkish viewers who use such VPN to watch this video on YouTube which is also blocked. but hey, anyway, about 122,000 websites have been blocked there and their internet speeds, even for the allowed sites, are incredibly slow; one journalist's attempt to download a 5GB file took almost an entire day and is a telling indicator of how willing Turkish officials are. to investigate the lives of its own citizens, all messaging services that encrypt communications are also banned and then there is the question of religion, which, unsurprisingly, is handled with an equally tight fist.

Religious minorities in Turkestan, predominantly Christian, are subject to intense restrictions on when and where they practice their religion. In recent decades, violators of religion have been punished with imprisonment if their religious material was confiscated; They had been prevented from leaving the country or even tortured while in detention. Former President Naaz's religious text, written in two volumes under the name Rama, is taught in schools along with the Quran. with quotes from the Rama or the book of Alma inscribed in mosques and knowledge of the text is necessary to obtain a driver's license because, of course, and even for Muslims who practice the dominant and state-supported religion of Turkmenistan, it does not They follow regime-approved worship practices. can be grounds for imprisonment even if those regime practices directly conflict with common or fundamental interpretations of Islam in recent years restrictions on individual freedoms have become even more severe the birdie The administration has begun to regulate the use of the plastic surgery the use of makeup the range of permitted clothing and the use of hair dye women have been disproportionately affected by the application of these laws and have been subject to additional restrictions on their travel outside the home were not accompanied by a male relative summer camps for children are now expected to facilitate cotton picking, so the children receive no compensation and those same children have only minimal protection from abuse within their own home, not even the animals have been saved.

Bird's anger in ashat authorities deliberately kill stray animals and domestic pets, while a few Animal rights activists who risk speaking out have been charged in criminal courts and have had their businesses closed. limited Internet access, but despite the Turkish government's intense interest in controlling every aspect of its people's lives, they do not seem particularly interested in keeping those same people safe. As we have mentioned before, Turkish state workers are often mandated to join in picking cotton for the harvest season, but this practice goes much further: large proportions of the Turkish public mobilize each year for what is essentially work forced.

Children are expected to work alongside adults, and Turkmenistan's own judicial authorities have not questioned this practice at all. Turkish lives are at high risk of being trafficked and exploited by criminal organizations both at home and abroad, and the country is a major transit point for opioid products manufactured in Afghanistan, a shipping process that Turkish citizens are doing. They are often forced to participate involuntarily in rape and domestic violence often goes unreported and people accused of crimes are deprived of all forms of due process if the government decides to hold them. The Turkish penal system is an incredibly dangerous place to be.

Being with sadistic forms of torture is commonplace and conditions are almost inhospitable between lack of climate control, inadequate food and medicine and no mechanism to contact the outside world and meanwhile Turkish citizens become increasingly poor. Top government officials are increasingly enriching the country's construction industry in particular. It is known to be incredibly corrupt and contractors regularly bribe Turkmen officials so they can do their jobs, as the entire construction sector in the country, especially things like the White Marble City, could be a front for large scale money laundering, we can't say for sure. but we are sure that international business is banned in large parts of the country until they agree to grease the palms of the Turkish government and any large project must be authorized by presidential decree, which is a completely arbitrary process that enriches almost everyone in the country.

Turkish government and discourages them from exposing the worst forms of corruption at the local level. Turkestan addresses a long-standing problem surrounding the illegal adoption of abandoned babies, which is facilitated by state adoption officials who accept bribes to speed up the process. For the wealthiest families overall, Turkmenistan ranks 167th out of 180 countries for its handling of corruption by Transparency International, a score that easily places it alongside the worst of the worst, now alongside all the state-sponsored evil , we also have to talk about another facet of which the Turkish regime's tendency to avoid the international spotlight at almost any cost Turkmenistan maintains an unusually low profile around the world not only because it has a lower population and could have more difficulties to harm its voice, but because it has intentionally withdrawn from Before the international community, the country has insisted on a state of neutrality since it first gained its independence and became a member state of what its rulers of the time probably perceived as non-optional collectives such as the United Nations and the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States, but even in these organizations he is almost never heard from at the UN.

Turkish personnel remain on the sidelines and have intentionally downgraded their membership in the Russia-centered Commonwealth of Independent States to associate status. It is the only Central Asian nation that has remained outside Shanghai's cooperation. Turkmenistan has maintained a very friendly face despite many political ups and downs in the region. It supplies natural gas to some nearby nations, but has avoided building gas pipelines through others, even though building those pipelines would have opened Luc Caminos for Turkish gas to reach Europe. Turkestan has gotten along well with both Afghanistan's civil administration and the Taliban and they have happily accepted. a designation of permanent neutrality by the United Nations that enshrines that same principle of neutrality in its own Constitution while remaining committed to its foreign partners at a superficial level.

Turkmenistan has largely refrained from taking positions on potentially thorny issues. All of this is aided by Turkmenistan's physical location in the heart of Central Asia, which could very easily have made it pornography in its neighbors' geopolitical games, but instead has contributed to making it appear valuable to those same neighbors. as a buffer zone between potentially hostile actors acting as the functional equivalent of the stoner at a frat party telling the football and baseball players to calm down, bro, before they break out into a fight, Turkestan is the definition of a discreet and non-intrusive neighbor, even as the country has been hit by devastating natural disasters, has rejected offers of foreign aid and refrained from making calls for help, the country does not host a substantial number of American troops, has allowed a highly publicized pipeline across the Caspian Sea is stopped rather than angering any country the pipeline would have to pass through and is only too happy to help its neighbors with the detention and torture of any dissidents foolish enough to flee their own countries to Turkmenistan.

I mean, why would you do that? The reason we emphasize that Turkmenistan avoids the international order is to emphasize what exactly it does for Turkmenistan's leaders to maintain themselves. Out of sight since the country established its sovereignty at the end of the Cold War, Turkestan's elites have understood that the less scrutiny they face from abroad, the more authority they can exert at home. As such, they have done all the things we mentioned above. avoiding economic projects that might anger another nation, disengaging from international diplomacy, that sort of thing, but the Turkmenistan regime also understands that after decades of personality cults and totalitarian governments, anyone who comes snooping around today will find some things The answer to that strange Turkmenistan has always been to make sure that no one has a reason to come and look.

It's by understanding that kind of obfuscation that people like Birdie start to make a lot more sense. His strange behavior in public has its benefits in domestic politics and it did too. those of neov,but their conduct also ensures that when a foreigner takes a cursory look at Turkestan for the first time on, say, YouTube, they won't find an exposé on what's really going on there, but instead will see something highly memeable viral. videos of a kindly clueless old man lifting a bar of gold over his head and, at worst, falling off his horse, the vibe is much less that of a totalitarian dictator exploiting his people and much more.

I bet that guy is a lot of fun at a party and we can extrapolate from that. that for The Grandio Monuments and statues, the strange architecture of the Turkish capital and all the work that Turkish elites do behind the scenes, not to ensure that nothing bad happens in their country, but to ensure that the word never gets out, It's certainly a smart strategy in the R social media saturates Turkmenistan's online space, so to speak, with a caricatured version of the stern dictator as a dumb, dumb guy, so that when someone somewhere makes a piece like, Well, like this, it's probably going to get lost in the noise, but we hope. no, and as strange as it is to say that it actually applies, if you want to continue with Turkmenistan then like, comment and subscribe after the example of the president for life set by the first modern leader of Turkmenistan.

Most international observers expected Birdie to follow suit until he finally dropped dead and let the successor he had named, if he ever named one, take over next, so it comes as a shock to the world when early In the 2020s, after continued speculation about his health, the dictator named his successor. met Sadar Birdie, his son who had been known for a long time to people who paid attention to Turkish life, but was largely unknown on the international stage in a snap election that, like all other elections in Turkmenistan, Sadars were not elected, free and fair, with only approximately 73% of the votes. national vote his father began the election by telling his country that he believed Turkestan should be governed by younger people and emphasizing that his son, who had held a long list of government positions before rising to the rank of Deputy Prime Minister, was a legitimate choice . to lead the SAR's discourse towards his country he emphasized his willingness to continue Turkmenistan's previous development goals and maintain the policies of positive neutrality that have defined Turkmen politics for decades, while his father would continue to be simply his father at the head of the Turkish Upper House.

From the beginning it almost seemed that life under Sadar might actually improve things in Turkmenistan, although he continued his father's long and slow process of gaining more and more power, he also took significant steps against corruption at the highest level of government, including even members of his own family. In a short time it spread in the international community there could be trouble in Paradise Pope Birdie was getting to work to unify the Turkish upper and lower parliaments into a single body that would be given basically unlimited powers in a situation where the Elder birdies had already continued their presence in Parliament. caused confusion over who exactly the rest of the government was supposed to listen to.

The move seemed as if it was an attempt to get Reigns back from his son. At the time, just a few months into Sera's rule, Turkmen civilians had already begun protesting. In public, a phenomenon never seen before, unemployment according to unofficial sources had risen to 60% and inflation, even according to the Turkish government itself, was increasing by at least 14% annually. Rising tensions in all corners could well spell doom for the SAR government almost as soon as it began, but a stroke of luck, what may have been his personal eleventh hour, to be more specific, had a war in Ukraine that took away Russian oil and gas from large sections of the territory.

On the international market, this quickly became an economic windfall for Turkestan, and government officials were suddenly handed over by Westerners who needed any gas supply from someone not named Vladimir Putin in nearby China. The economic recovery after the covid-19 pandemic led to an increase in gas needs. Moscow became too scared at the prospect of letting Turkmenistan squeeze them out of the Western market in the long term, with so many potential trading partners. SDA immediately became the man of the moment in Turkmenistan, largely because he, and not his father, was expected to act as chief negotiator in all foreign agreements.

Sadar could travel to China, Russia, Qatar and other places, while his father stayed home and was forced to politely ask for even the most basic news about what Sadar was accomplishing. The father attempted to counter his son with his own international tour, but still seemed to believe that no one else in Turkestan had noticed his power struggle because Sadar had no reason to hand over power to his father and because his father did not want to. that all the luggage would be passed on. admit that he was throwing a Qui C against his own son. The Turkish officials were left in the lurch between the two birdies with SAR so clearly gaining the advantage that his father seemed to get nervous that he might be next on his own son's chopping block.

What was most frightening was the SAR's appointment of a new attorney general, one who would almost certainly have the power, if not the will, to directly investigate Elder Birdie with such clear impetus to act that the father merged the two chambers Turk Menon's legislative actions as he intended. he himself sat at the head of the Turkestan People's Council and regained control over Turkmenistan's Constitution, its domestic and foreign policy and development projects, and his basically unchallenged authority over the Turkish state itself. he will probably regain some of his authority when his father finally dies, but currently his father is as much of a leader of Turkmenistan as ever; in fact, the SAR even gave him a title that coincides with that of national leader of the Turkmen people, as of now life in Turkestan is still firmly under the control of Birdie Sr., he won foreign awards from Russia and Kazakhstan in 2022 , opens a new youth magazine Focus to expand its cult of personality in 2023 and just a few days before this video was written, it passed a law creating a state. award called arag arag medal again, referring to the protector and referring to the birdie itself, how long will this continue and how many memw-worthy videos and stunts will the dictator do in the future, oh we just can't say it, but with the power reconsolidated in his Iron .

First, it is the Turkish people who seem to be more completely subjugated today than ever internationally; there are almost no calls for him to resign; In fact, much of the global media seems to have missed the part where he turned his own son into an imagined Ed president and then regained power for himself, but that's always been intense with Turkestan dictators. , just don't give the rest of the world reason to notice, don't cause chaos, don't step out of the shadow of Russia or China or Iran, and when a Westerner comes looking, he makes sure to see dear old grandpa leaving a few bars of enthusiasm with his grandson, it is that inexplicably silly, seemingly harmless and incredibly strange façade that allows the Turkish regime to crush its own people as it always has and even more people around the world realize that this is exactly how things will probably continue