ASeeking new leader’s persona in Turkmens’ murky isolation
By C. J. Chivers Published: July 4, 2007

SHGABAT, Turkmenistan: The old man drove through the gilded city in a dilapidated Soviet-era car. He passed by massive white-marbled buildings with gleaming cupolas and by lines of the ubiquitous police. Along the way were huge portraits and golden statues of the fabulously jowled president for life.

The car coasted by a huge photograph of a younger man. It had been freshly bolted to a government building.

"You see?" said the man, who, owing to the precautions ingrained in the Turkmen population, gave only a first name, Bairam. "There is our new president. Every week more of his portraits are appearing."

There is a new public face in Turkmenistan, the self-isolated police state on the Central Asian steppe, where one man’s face had long been the symbol of the state. It belongs to President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, 50, who stepped out of the palace shadows last December after the death of Saparmurat Niyazov, the dictator who had ruled since the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Since a rigged election in February, the new president (whose name is pronounced gur-BAHN-goo-lee bair-dee-mukh-ha-MAY-doff) has assumed a job extraordinary in both its oddness and its possibilities. He has succeeded the megalomaniac who called himself Turkmenbashi, the Leader of All Turkmens.

this post, Berdymukhammedov sits atop a personality cult so pervasive that even in death the identity of the president is inseparable from that of the country.

But he has inherited more than golden statues and unchecked dominion over a frightened population. He holds the keys to enormous gas fields and state coffers, and has lines of eager suitors from China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Israel, the European Union and the United States.

He has promised reform, and there are signs of change, including a slight easing of the government’s iron grip over the populace.

In June, he instructed the Turkmens not to turn his birthday into an ostentatious national festival. In Turkmenistan, where citizens celebrated the old president on his birthday with an energy that fear and desperation can produce, this is regarded as a good sign. [Lower level officials ignored him, however; parties, concerts and public rallies were held.] He has also acknowledged the nation’s problems with drug addiction, which his predecessor denied.

But as outsize portraits of the current president begin replacing those of Turkmenbashi, Turkmens and foreign diplomats alike wonder: Is the new president actually inclined — or even able — to dismantle one of the weirdest and most repressive governments on earth? Or will he eclipse the Turkmenbashi phenomenon with his own brand of one-man rule?

Evan Feigenbaum, the deputy assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, who visited Turkmenistan in June with hopes of expanding relations with the United States, seemed cautiously optimistic.

"By and large the trajectory is a positive one," he said by telephone. "We think that this is a country with enormous potential, and a country with powerful opportunities should it choose to engage."

Bairam was not hopeful. The Turkmenbashi portraits are coming down, he said, but "everything will be the same."

In fact, neither side seems certain what is happening, in part because the legacy of the dead president remains strong. Turkmenistan is governed in part by fear, a place where uttering the president’s name in public can cause people to flinch, whisper and hush.

Even by the standards of Central Asian politics, where autocracy and endemic corruption are the norm, Niyazov stood alone. Diplomats describe him with words diplomats do not typically use: madman, sadist, freak, thief.

He assembled a government that was opaque and impenetrable. Six months after his death, no one pretends to be able to peer in.

The few analysts who cover Turkmenistan say they do not know whether Berdymukhammedov is secure in power or barely holding on. They have trouble defining his inner circle and decision-making processes, much less his plans or his ability to realize them.

"It’s like looking into a tank, and you can see into the water and all the fish swimming there, but you can’t put your hand in and touch anything," said one European diplomat, describing interactions with Turkmen officials. "They are afraid to talk in all meetings, because everything is bugged as far as they know."

In this uncertainty, everyone reads signs. Some are promising, others not. In interviews with nearly two dozen Turkmens and with Western officials, diplomats and business officials, contradictory views emerged.

One middle-aged man said his home had been razed to make way for gaudy new housing towers. But he sat in the shack where he is a squatter and spoke warmly of the new president.

Niyazov neglected to pay salaries, he said. Now workers at state collective farms are paid promptly. "They used to live like slaves," the man said. "It is becoming better."

Turkmens noted that while the government was repressive, it was not quite the dreary mess of Soviet times. Asian products fill markets, and the country has avoided the terrorism, war and theocracy that have afflicted its neighbors.

Electricity and heat are free, food is inexpensive and gasoline is heavily subsidized. "We are not free," one man shrugged. "But we are not hungry."

Niyazov stopped public education at the ninth grade and forced students to study the Rukhnama, two volumes of semi-autobiographical poems and pablum he wrote and claimed would cleanse the nation. He left a generation of marginally educated Turkmens.

Berdymukhammedov, a dentist with a reputation as a competent bureaucrat, has restored 10th grade, and says more education reforms will follow. It is not clear whether he has the will or power to scrap the Rukhnama, knowledge of which is tested on civil-service exams.

Some of the president’s actions also carry whiffs of his predecessor’s egocentric love of power. Niyazov endlessly purged senior officials, keeping the government terrified and churning. His successor has followed this example.

In April, he fired the country’s senior law enforcement officer on national television. "I have a whole file with evidence against you," he said. "I could dishonor you like a dog."

Many of his reforms have also been only partial. Police checkpoints are less aggressive than before, residents say, but remain common.

A presidential pledge to allow universal Internet access has resulted only in a handful of state-run Internet cafes. When a journalist visited one, it had five computers but no customers. Internet surfing cost nearly $4 an hour — a huge sum in a nation where salaries are often less than $65 a month.

Moreover, access to some Russian-language material criticizing the government was blocked, and a police officer arrived and sat beside the journalist within 15 minutes.

Problems extend to other spheres. Berdymukhammedov seeks outside investment, but business remains dysfunctional.

One Western businessman said his office was stacked with informants from the Turkmen successor to the KGB Bank accounts had been frozen and money not recovered, and leases summarily revoked and tenants evicted — in one case a day after an employee had paid six months’ advance rent.

"You don’t get any serious investors here because you don’t know what will happen to your investment," the businessman said. (Still, guests note that occupancy has doubled at many hotels, as speculators seek a rush on construction, oil and gas, and in sectors underdeveloped in Niyazov’s planned economy.)

There is also no public discussion of the country’s problems or the government’s behavior because there is no independent press. All Turkmen news content is controlled from the president’s office.

"They never tell the truth," said one young woman. "Everything is good, good, good."

Another man, a merchant, said that whatever face the president hoped to show abroad, the country would not be transformed. "The system is now in place and he can live here like a king," he said. "The people will never wake up."

Berdymukhammedov, for his part, has offered pinpoint change. He speaks of foreign investment. On power-sharing and human rights, he has been less ready to change.

When asked about democratization by Turkmenistan Magazine, he signaled no rush. "Since childhood, I keep in memory my father’s phrase," he said. " ’Never run to where you can simply walk.’ "