Posted on 12/22/2006 12:18:25 PM PST by gleeaikin
The palace of Saparmurat Niyazov, the "president for life" of Turkmenistan, gave the impression of a cross between the court of a medieval potentate, the office of a senior Brezhnev-era Soviet functionary and the home of a wealthy "new Russian". Green and gold trimmings were everywhere in the multiple rooms and corridors, large leather-clad chairs and the most modern microphone system in the auditorium. It created just the right air of anticipation, wealth and intimidation for when the leader himself appeared belatedly for an extremely rare audience in front of an invited group of journalists at the height of his power just a few years ago.
A short, stocky man with black dyed hair, Mr. Niyazov airly dismissed as nonsense a question about allegations of corruption in his country with a cheeky smile and a wave of a hand bearing an enormous diamond ring. Stability, neutrality and more time were his recipes for national success, he explained in short answere, effusing a certain warmth, while giving away little and leaving a lingering impression of menace.
He sat in the centre of Ashgabad, the capital city, which was home to a hierarchy of recent construction projects. For "Turkmenbashi" himself, the self-styled "father of the Turkmens" who ruled autocratically over his nation for more than two decades, there was a showpiece palace, a mosque and a congress centre built by Bouygues, the secretive French group.
Nearby stood the 75-metre tall "arch of neutrality", a tower topped by a life-size gilded statue of Mr. Niyazov, arms upstretched, that rotated once a day so he always faced the sun. Radiating outwards from the city centre, Turkish construction groups had built a large number of modern hotels and circular multistory elite apartments. Yet many buildings were empty, since few resients could afford such showcase luxury, businesses were pulling out the foreigners were rarely allowed in.
Mr. Niyazov's Stalin-like cult of personality--which included naming streets, towns and months of the year after himself, and erecting posters carrying his picture showing his hair variously grey, white and dyed black again--provided amusement to those rare travellers to the country. Yet for many ordinary Turkmens, they were a painful contrast to the squalor in which they lived, in crumbling houses with few job prospects in a land with substantial gas reserves being sold to Russia and beyond.
Free gas, electricity and housing were little compensatio while their leader dismantled the education and health systems, persecuted opponents ruthlessly, and imposed on the school curriculum his own "god inspired" philosophical musings in the form of the pink 400-page book Rahnuma of spiritual revival. As his entourage of Mercedes sped out of the city in the evening, one man I interviewed pulled me away from the window of his apartment, fearing a shot from one of Mr. Niyazov's security men. It felt like the emperor's new clothes in reverse: a man who maintained his authority by keeping his activities heavily cloaked in secrecy.
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