| Fairly long backgrounder on Turkmenbashi... |
If you look up "cult of personality" in the dictionary, you might find a picture of Turkmenistan's president, Saparmurat Niazov. And wherever you look inside Turkmenistan, you'll see the same image. It is not a simple matter of the ubiquitous public murals of your average dictator: Niazov has a golden statue of himself in the capital, Ashgabat, that moves with the sun. On state television, Niazov's portrait revolves continuously on the corner of the screen. His nationalistic, quasi-spiritual tome, the Ruhnama, not only forms the basis for much TV programming but also dominates Turkmenistan's education curriculum. He's renamed the months of the year, with the month of January now replaced by his self-adopted name, "Turkmenbashi" or "father of all Turkmen."
With no checks on his power, Niazov makes bizarre decisions that essentially become law without any public debate or legislative procedure. In August, he decreed that those seeking a driver's license must first pass a 16-hour course on the Ruhnama. In the same month, he personally banned nas, a popular form of chewing tobacco, and earlier in the year, he declared gold teeth not only unsightly but also forbidden. His building projects, perhaps the most megalomaniacal aspect of his rule, now include a multimillion-dollar contract to build an ice palace in the desert. All of this would be simply comical if it were not so deadly tragic. The apparent lunacy of a dictator is no joke to those who suffer under him.
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