The former president of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, despite having handed over the office to his son Serdar, still glories in the title of ‘father of the fatherland’ and in his honour, a brand new smart-city is being built under the name Arkadag. And he has called for the construction time to be shortened so as to settle a greater share of new inhabitants and attract more investment
From Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan former leading politicians are on trial on charges of high treason just because they were identified as possible alternatives to ‘dynastic’ successions. While in Kazakhstan on trial is a group that allegedly ‘menacingly’ planned to storm the presidential palace with a tractor and a cannon loaded with potato fragments.
Ašgabat possesses natural gas reserves of 17.5 trillion cubic metres, ranking 4th after Russia, Iran and Qatar. Today it can no longer sell it to Moscow on the agreed terms, and this could open up new possibilities for Uzbek neighbours living in the cold. But it would require a political choice that is anything but simple.
On the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, just a few kilometres from the city of Turkmenbaši, five-star hotels, services of all kinds, an international airport and various entertainment, sports and catering facilities have been built. There really is everything, only now the sea is missing.
Public schools at all levels, from kindergartens to universities, are growing in the countries of the region. And in several cases it is the state itself that is stimulating investors with the aim of modernising the education and training system.
Istanbul presses for the strengthening of the ‘Turkic world’, rejecting ‘Eurocentric’ descriptions of the region. But Tajik historian Kamoluddin Abdulloev objects: ‘Iran would have just as many arguments to assert its historical influence. In a land where the phases of Mongol domination and the spread of Islam have led to divisions and recompositions between Shiites and Sunnis.
