51international airport in the shape of a falcon (and according to some reports, it is
sinking into the sand and underutilised) and perhaps most infamous of all – a solid
gold statue of its first president, Saparmurat Niyazov, that slowly rotates to follow
the sun. Many of these monstrosities are located around the capital, Ashgabat, and
a seaside resort called Awaza that has the capacity to house several thousands of
tourists but sits empty – a luxurious ghost town. This would be comical were it not
for the fact that such grandiosity is actually as central to Turkmenistan’s unique
brand of totalitarianism as its vaunted neutrality.
Turkmenistan can be thought of as a kind of anti-North Korea. It is no less in-
sane, no less cunning, but it lacks a serious military-industrial complex so it does
not use war to sustain itself. Rather, the regime prefers to promote the country –
both internationally and domestically – as a prosperous, peaceful and happy so-
ciety. In a way, Turkmenistan could thus be considered an experiment in whether
totalitarianism can be sustained through the illusion of prosperity rather than the
illusion of war, in contradistinction to George Orwell’s Ingsoc.
Total state control“Independent critics and their families, including in exile, face constant threat of
government reprisal. Authorities continue to impose informal and arbitrary travel
bans on activists and relatives of exiled dissidents and others,” Human Rights Watch
reports. Many dissidents and independent journalists have disappeared within the
Turkmenistani prison system. Not even members of the regime are safe: counted
among the vanished is a former foreign minister, Boris Shikhmuradov, who has
not been heard from since 2002.
Independent news agencies that cover Central Asia – ranging from The Diplo-
mat, NewEurasia Citizen Media, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and
Chronicles of Turkmenistan – have all reported harrowing stories of psychiatric tor-
ture. According to a 2012 report by the religious rights watchdog Forum 18: “The
interlocking nature of Turkmenistan’s human rights violations appear designed to
impose total state control of all of society. Denial of freedom of religion or belief
is intertwined with denial of the rights to freedoms of assembly, of speech, of ex-
pression and freedom of movement.”
According to Naz Nazar, former director of RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, a key
aspect of the regime’s strategy is absolute dominance over media. There is not a
single independent news outlet within the country: every newspaper, radio and
television channel inside Turkmenistan is owned and controlled by the govern-
ment. “This is more than just a government trying to control its image, like what
A looming humanitarian crisis in the land Orwell forgot, Christopher Schwartz Opinion & Analysis