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Location(s): Turkmenistan The man who would be king
Author: Story by tom templeton
Location(s):
Turkmenistan
Article Text:
He's turned himself into a living god, erecting thousands of
statues in his own honour and even giving January his name. But while
"President for Life" Saparmurat Niyazov claims to be leading
Turkmenistan into a golden age, others fear his cult of personality
will drive the country to ruin.
On October 27 the people of Turkmenistan - a
gas-rich,
desert-dominated western Asian country - celebrated 13 years of
independence from the former Soviet Union. There were feasts and military
parades in the gleaming capital, Ashgabat. But, like the Soviet-era
buildings behind the marble facades, the fabric of society is crumbling
under
the rule of the man they were praising: Saparmurat Niyazov,
Turkmenbashi the Great, Turkmenistan's "President for Life".
Turkmenistan has, since seceding from the Soviet Union in
1991, "acquired one of the worst totalitarian systems in the world",
according to the European Parliament. And central to this system is a cult
of personality
to match Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.
Turkmenistan's President Niyazov is a man, after all, who has
renamed the month of January - after himself.
In the past decade, thousands of statues of Niyazov have been
erected across the country. The grandest is 12 metres high and coated in
gold leaf; it stands atop a 75-metre monument in the centre of Ashgabat
and rotates to face the sun. Airports, regions, meteorites, cities and
schools have been renamed after the president and his parents. Meetings in
his office are televised and broadcast weekly on the three state TV
channels.
As well as renaming January, Niyazov has renamed April after his
mother, May after
his father, and September after his "divinely inspired" masterwork,
the Rukhnama. This "book of the soul" dominates the life of his five
million subjects. Written between 1997 and 2001, it fills bookstores
across the country and has been made the cornerstone of an otherwise
ravaged educational establishment. "On a par with the Bible and the Koran,
it is to be used as a Spiritual Guide," writes Niyazov in the
introduction, "to remove the complexities and anguishes from day-to-day
living." There are regular pageants staged in sports stadiums depicting
scenes from this opus, centring on the moral purity of his mother and
father. And every morning at factories and schools, the citizens sing the
national anthem, which refers to Turkmenistan as "the great
creation of Turkmenbashi".
"If I was a worker and my president gave me all the things they
have here in Turkmenistan, I would not only paint his picture, I
would have his picture on my shoulder, or on my clothing," Niyazov said
earlier this year. "I'm personally against seeing my pictures and statues
in the street - but it's what people want."
Saparmurat Atajevich Niyazov was born in the small village of
Kipcak on the outskirts of Ashgabat in 1940. His father died in World War
II, while his mother and brother were among the 100,000 killed in an
earthquake that destroyed the capital in 1948. Niyazov grew up in an
orphanage and went to study in St Petersburg before returning to Ashgabat
to work as an engineer. He joined the Communist Party in 1962 and rose
through the ranks before being chosen by the new Soviet leader, Mikhail
Gorbachev, to be general secretary of the Communist Party of
Turkmenistan in 1985. It was perceived that his marriage to a
Russian wife and his upbringing in an orphanage made him free of any clan
allegiance - an important factor for a clan-based society like
Turkmenistan's - and therefore perfect for the job. He was chosen
to carry out Moscow's will because of his deference and obedience, and he
proceeded to do so without dissent.
Perhaps understandably, given his party background, Niyazov was not
in favour of Turkmenistan's independence when the Soviet Union
began to disintegrate. When it became inevitable, however, he embraced the
new ideology as enthusiastically as he had the old, assuming power as
president, prime minister and the chairman of the council of ministers,
and promoting Turkmen nationalism as his central aim - always with himself
at the centre. As the Soviet yoke fell away he assumed the name
"Turkmenbashi" ("father of the Turkmens"). He then set about forging the
nation's new identity in his own image. Turkmen opposition figures were
either driven into exile or imprisoned. (Most have since been released,
but after their experiences in prison, and under constant surveillance
since, those still in the country have never dared to speak out.)
In 1992, Niyazov "won" the first presidential elections unopposed,
and settled into a Soviet-style dictatorship. His handpicked council of
ministers voted him president for life in 1999. In 2001 the Humanitarian
Association of
the World's Ethnic Turkmens voted to suffix Niyazov's name with
Beyt ("great"), much to the president's dismay. "I am afraid of ever more
titles - some even say I am a prophet," he complained.
State-owned newspapers are full of letters from citizens
proclaiming their love for Niyazov. But loyalty to the president is not
optional. Foreign newspapers are banned, and satellite TV is restricted
and censored. The radio station Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is jammed
in most towns. For obvious reasons, news of nearby Georgia's "Rose
Revolution" - the American-engineered overthrow of Eduard Shevardnadze,
last November - was not reported at all.
Meanwhile, bugging of telephones is assumed to be rife. Members of
the intelligence services, police and military are visible on the streets
of Ashgabat and other towns. Access to the internet is limited and
monitored. Public demonstrations have been suppressed ruthlessly and no
longer take place at all.
Only two religions are freely practised: Islam and orthodox
Christianity. And freedom of movement is nonexistent: Turkmen citizens
need permits to enter "special closed zones" which cover 40 per cent of
the country, and travel is restricted between rural areas and the cities.
According to the former US ambassador to Turkmenistan, Laura
Kennedy: "Turkmenbashi controls everything in this country. He personally
decides who comes in, who goes out." Announcing in March that government
agencies would intensify their video surveillance of Turkmen citizens -
installing cameras on every major street and site in the country - Niyazov
said, "We should know if a fly quietly buzzes past."
The cameras, he claims, are there "not due to a lack of trust, but
to avoid disorder". And the consequences of "disorder" are grave.
Insulting Niyazov carries a minimum five-year prison sentence. Last year,
terrifyingly vague treason laws were passed, carrying life imprisonment
for anyone "attempting to sow doubt among people about the internal and
foreign policies conducted by the first and permanent president of
Turkmenistan, the Great Saparmurat", or even "encouraging
opposition to the state". Professor Jerrold Post - who founded the CIA's
Centre for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behaviour, and is
director of the Political Psychology Program at George Washington
University - is building a psychological profile of Niyazov. "There have
only been a few cults of personality to match this: Kim Jong-il and Kim
Il-sung in North Korea, and Mao Zedong. The narcissism of
the man is really beyond description - he has essentially turned
himself into a living god."
Niyazov's grip on Turkmenistan tightened dramatically
following the events of November 25, 2002, when shots were fired at the
presidential motorcade. Deemed
a set-up by some observers, it led to the arrests of hundreds of
political opponents, journalists, intellectuals and their family members.
A month later at least 59 suspects were jailed after televised show trials
- reminiscent of the Stalin era - were held, during which defence lawyers
actually apologised for representing their clients. These included a
drugged and bruised Boris Shikhmuradov, formerly foreign minister, whose
confession to masterminding the assassination attempt was clearly read
from a script. "I and my allies ... are not opposition members but
ordinary criminals and drug addicts ... We are all worms ... I am a
criminal able only to destroy the state."
According to Amnesty International: "The relatives of those
imprisoned after the November 2002 events have still not been allowed to
visit the prisoners. Many were tortured and there are indications that
some died in prison, but there is no way of finding out the truth."
A ratcheting up of state repression followed across the board,
including the sacking, in January 2003, of the chief mufti, Nasrullah ibn
Ibadullah, who had led Turkmenistan's Muslims (the country's
official religion) for the previous 10 years. Reports variously suggest he
was suspected of involvement in
the "assassination" attempt, objected to having phrases from the
Rukhnama written on the walls of mosques, or refused to declare publicly
that Niyazov is "God's prophet". In March, Ibadullah was sentenced to 22
years
in prison for reasons that remain unclear. In the same month, two
of the few independent journalists left in the country, from Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, were arrested, beaten, drugged and warned against
broadcasting within the country. An estimated 20,000 dissidents are now in
prison.
Niyazov writes in the Rukhnama: "I am attempting to have a logical
kind of freedom accepted and approved by this nation. Otherwise freedom
will turn into irregularity and destroy the essentials of the state and
harm the society."
Murad Turayev and Bayram Medrov (not their real names) are civil
activists from the west and east of the country who have gathered and
passed on information about the human rights situation in
Turkmenistan at great personal risk. Turayev says the alienation
felt by the majority of Turkmens is almost total: "The country has been
converted into a hopeless and sinister reservation closed from the outside
world. The main part of the population simply doesn't have any interest in
what happens. Extreme poverty, unemployment and drug-taking have produced
fear and hopelessness."
Meanwhile, Niyazov continues unchecked. Ever more eccentric edicts
are carried out by increasingly sycophantic flunkeys, and by Western
companies happy to land vast construction contracts. In August, Niyazov
broadcast on state TV perhaps his oddest
plan yet. "Let us build a palace of ice so our children can learn
to ice-skate," he said. "Big and grand enough for 1000 people." With
temperatures reaching 50'C across much of the nation in summer, many
people expected nothing to come of the idea, but Niyazov's favourite
construction company, the French firm Bouygues, is scheduled to start on
the $30 million project this month.
Perhaps the biggest threat posed by Niyazov's regime is an
artificial lake under construction in the Karakum Desert, to be known as
the Golden Age Lake. At an estimated cost of $6.5 billion, it is expected
by many scientists
to reduce the scarce and vital water supplies of the desert nation
through drainage and evaporation. Experts say the best expenditure of
funds would be to dredge and re-line the Karakum Canal which makes life
possible for
a large proportion of the Turkmen population. A senior Western
official in Ashgabat, who refused to be named, believes
Turkmenistan is at a crossroads. "What it does in the next 50 years
will determine what it will be like in the next 10,000 years. It will
either be a country that can sustain a population of up to eight or 10
million forever, or it will go back to being a desert with a few watering
holes. If it doesn't invest its hydrocarbon profits in the water
infrastructure, we will be bringing food aid
in 50 years' time.
"With the right leader," says the official, "it has a chance, but
Niyazov's only looking at the next 25 years - he just wants people to be
quiet while he fulfils his dreams of grandeur."
If one section of the population is the most sympathetic to its
president it is the youth of Turkmenistan. According to Medrov: "A
new generation is emerging that knows nothing apart from official
propaganda. Before, everyone spoke Russian, could watch TV and know
something about what happens in the world, but this new generation only
speaks Turkmen, so they are absolutely cut off from all this. Today's
state rule is becoming popular among them and this is a new danger."
The brainwashing is intense. Children at kindergarten learn phrases
from the Rukhnama in praise of the great Turkmenbashi before they can
read; schoolchildren have to spend two hours a day reading and pondering
the lessons it contains. Entrance to university, interviews for jobs in
the administration, even driving tests, depend on knowledge of the text.
Earlier this year four Russian-speaking officials in the city of
Turkmenbashi (formerly Krasnovodsk) were sacked after failing the Rukhnama
exam. One high school maths teacher in Ashgabat misread the question,
"What are the names of the mother and father of the president's horse?"
and instead named the president's mother and father. As a result, her
accreditation was cancelled.
Erika Dailey, director of the Open Society Institute's
Turkmenistan Project, says: "The government encourages children to
go home and quiz their parents on the Rukhnama - and to tell their teacher
if they are lacking in knowledge." Meanwhile, parents know their children
have no alternative route to success other than winning cash prizes and
appearances on TV by singing songs and reciting poems in praise of
Niyazov. The education system is already hamstrung by the removal of
children aged 10 and over to harvest cotton from September to November,
and the shortening of the state education period from 11 to nine years.
Ballet, opera, the circus and the cinema are banned in Turkmenistan
- condemned
by Niyazov as contrary to national traditions. And a law passed
last November required non-governmental organisations to re-register,
heralding the closure of groups from ecology clubs to a sports club for
disabled teenagers. The scope for development is shrinking all the time.
The only head of state the 40 per cent of the population under the
age of 14 have ever known is President Niyazov. According to Murad
Turayev: "The new generation of young boys and girls ... consider it
absolutely normal to read the Rukhnama and give all these oaths to the
president. For a quarter of the country's population, the Rukhnama is
virtually the only book they will have read."
The anonymous Western official adds: "Within one or two generations
you will find
a population of younger people who are totally useless, incapable
of living in modern society."
Yet this generation plays an increasingly important role in
Niyazov's heavily policed state. Military service is two years and usually
starts
at age 17. Groups of teenagers with Kalashnikovs check the
documents of people driving across the country. In order to bolster the
failing economy, conscripts work as truck drivers, bakers, train
attendants, traffic police and factory workers. On February 11, Niyazov
sacked a third of the medical workforce - about 15,000 nurses and
healthcare workers - by presidential decree, replacing them
with conscripts to save the state money. The Western official says
that a priority for the country
is "trained people to run its services and its oil and gas
industry. At the moment they have to buy in all their technicians from all
over the world. If they don't keep pumping, which pays for the massive
subsidy system to the nation, this country will slip into chaos."
Niyazov claimed on independence that Turkmenistan would be
the new Kuwait. Bordering the Caspian Sea, the country has vast proven
gas reserves - the fifth largest in the world - and plenty of oil.
By 2001 this was modified to
a promise that within a year every family would have "a house, a
car, and a cow with calf". This promise was then dropped for the more
ambiguous propaganda slogan that "the 21st century is the golden age of
the Turkmens".
Yet gas production is still not back up to the levels of the
early '90s. Plans to build pipelines to Western markets in the Arabian
Gulf or Mediterranean have foundered due to regional instability and
Niyazov's unpredictability. The state provides free gas and water,
cheap housing and bread, and for the men in Ashgabat at least, horse
races. But anecdotally - for there are no hard statistics on
Turkmenistan - unemployment, underemployment and non-payment of
salaries are rife and worsening; state services are disintegrating; life
expectancy falling. The free supply of gas and water is at the
heart of all of Niyazov's claims to be a generous, successful leader. When
he introduced the system 12 years ago it was supposed
to remain in place for a decade before people began to pay. The
anonymous Western official says, "If these services were withdrawn there
would be chaos, you'd be looking at a revolution."
Meanwhile, despite EU and UN resolutions requesting that the
Turkmen authorities co-operate with international human rights
organisations, no such co-operation has ensued. Certain laws - the
introduction of exit visas, the restriction of religious practice - have
been amended, but in practice little has changed; people cannot leave the
country freely and they are free only to practise the central religions.
Human Rights Watch believes international organisations have some
leverage: "The Turkmen government takes great pride in its UN membership.
The UN must make clear that [Turkmenistan's] failure to co-operate
is unacceptable."
Aaron Rhodes, executive director of the International Helsinki
Federation for Human Rights, says that support from major foreign
governments is needed: "Much more could be done to force peaceful change;
if major world leaders with authority would acknowledge that this is a
dictatorship, depriving people of rights, this would really have an
effect."
But there are other factors to consider. The US Air Force benefits
from being able to fly its jets through Turkmen airspace. The vast
reserves of gas and oil in Turkmenistan have been the
subject of frantic lobbying by Western governments in
the past, and the possibility of securing access in the future must
act as a brake to any criticisms of Niyazov. In fact, a high-level Russian
delegation visiting Niyazov earlier in the year praised his achievements
as "fantastic" and the Rukhnama as
"a serious philosophical work". They also signed a co-operation
agreement designed to encourage joint investment in the fishing industry,
mining and, most importantly, gas production.
According to Rhodes, "There's a tremendous tendency to support the
status quo. People don't want to rock the boat, they don't need another
failed state on their hands. They probably would like to see Turkmenbashi
keep power."
Erika Dailey believes the status quo will lead to disaster. "If the
trend continues, and neither economic nor political reform is introduced
soon, Turkmenistan will become non-functional, a failed state."
Robert Corzine is one of the few Western journalists to have met
Niyazov. In his experience, the president is unlikely to be unduly swayed
by outside influence. He recalls an interview in 1999 in which the subject
of the oil- and gas-rich Caspian Sea arose: "Niyazov got a map and
said, 'I'll tell you who owns the Caspian,' and he took out his $1000 pen,
crossed out the word Azeri Oilfield [property of Azerbaijan] and wrote
Serdar ['leader' - his name] Oilfield in
its place. Stabbing the map he said, 'That's mine, that's mine.'
When I left the meeting, his then foreign minister, Boris Shikhmuradov,
who was more of
a suave character, said, 'You can tone down some of the things the
president said.' But Niyazov, who had overheard, said: 'No, he can write
whatever he wants.' The next day when the story appeared, the Azerbaijanis
sent gunboats out."
Despite a recent heart bypass operation, there are no serious
indications that Niyazov has a succession plan: an election mooted for
2008 is expected to disappear like previous dates, and he will almost
certainly rule until he dies. According to one Western observer, Niyazov
won't be worried about succession, either: "He wants to leave the greatest
mosque and all his buildings and monuments, and go down in history as the
great salvation of Turkmenistan and
the greatest Khan - greater even than Tamburlaine or Ghengis Khan."
Caption:
SEVEN PHOTOS: "I'm personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the street - but it's what people want": an official portrait (top) and a golden statue (right) of Saparmurat Niyazov. Keeping in step: (top) the army marches past a painting of Niyazov on the seventh anniversary of the country's independence from the Soviet Union, 1998; (above) the president in his office. APL; AP/AAP APL; GAMMA/headpress APL; AP "If major world leaders would acknowledge that this is a dictatorship, depriving people of rights, this would really have an effect": (above) Niyazov meets Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma in 1998. APL. this is an EDITED VERSION of AN ARTICLE FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE OBSERVER MAGAZINE The president's face is everywhere, but Western officials fear his regime will leave behind a generation "incapable of living in modern society". MAP: Turkmenistan Copyright (c) 2004 John Fairfax Publications Pty
Limited. www.smh.com.au. Not available for re-distribution.
Record Number: 20041106000015167348 | ||||
Article Bookmark(OpenURL Compliant):The man who would be king (Sydney Morning Herald, The (Australia), November 6, 2004) http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:AWNB:SMHB &rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=1062E8952F6BF4F2&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated3&req_dat=0DD8562148E6D180 |