Asgabat: the digital school without Internet

Turkmenistan wants to make up for the shortage of school books by switching to online libraries. But this contrasts with the very poor quality of the online network, which is also due to the tight police control to prevent the dissemination of undesirable material.

Ashgabat (AsiaNews) - In some regions of Turkmenistan, starting from the great velayat of Mari, there has been a notable lack of school literature for some years now, and a ministerial directive has been issued to overcome this problem by moving to digital libraries, in Country in the world where the internet connection is by far the slowest and most faulty.

Families and students have to spend almost more time downloading the few texts they can obtain than even reading and studying them.

The Turkmen internet network remains under strict state control, to avoid the spread of politically, culturally and socially undesirable materials, and digital education remains a mirage for all school levels up to university.

In Ashgabat schools in January the police carried out extensive checks and searches, with the collaboration of school principals, to check the mobile phones in the children's backpacks.

The confiscated smartphones together with cigarettes and unclear substances were then subjected to meticulous investigations in the police stations, to highlight the "inadequate contents", especially those relating to politics and pornography.

If VPN programs are found in the phones, with which one can access social networks not approved by state bodies, the police summon the parents to question them about their "dedication to the country and the president".

These families are often reported in the register of "unreliable" people who are barred from any employment in state offices. These investigations are followed by continuous restrictions on internet access, and according to official data, over 122 thousand international domains are blocked in Turkmenistan.

The main social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, X-Twitter, WhatsApp, Telegram and Viber are completely unreachable in the country.

In such a context it is certainly not easy not only to access, but also to offer electronic libraries or digital education programs to users, which would require compliance with international standards in the sector.

On the other hand, the crisis in paper publishing pushes upper-class students in particular to expand their use of digital materials as much as possible, and teachers try to stimulate them by threatening bad grades to those who cannot find the necessary manuals and books .

One of the strictest restrictions on the use of the internet occurred at the beginning of this year, after a large commercial campaign spread via the internet, sparking many comments, especially on TikTok.

Access was completely blocked for a few days, and its restoration is taking place particularly slowly. The most widespread portal with the approval of the authorities is Tmcars.Info, dedicated above all to the car market, which is now trying to extend to other sectors such as real estate rentals and sales, job searches, the pet market and agricultural work , and finally also to school literature.

According to official data, in Turkmenistan there are 230 public state libraries with 11 million volumes, and in 2018 the then president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov-senior ordered their digitization, which still appears to be at a very little advanced stage.

The only books easily accessible, on paper and on the internet, are the books of the Arkadag "father of the country", and now also of the junior president. In addition to the "medieval" internet, lately the country's main telephone operator Altyn Asyr has also been working more and more intermittently, making it problematic even to call and send text messages.

The company is making new numbers available with the prefix 71, but users say that the quality of the internet has thus worsened further, to the detriment not only of students, but of all the activities and relationships of Turkmen society.