Central Asia - General Discussion Thread

EDIT: This started off as a thread for discussing Turkmenistan, but the topic now covers the whole of Central Asia.

That includes: Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. It may also include Afghanistan, China, Iran, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia and India, though some of these have their own threads and can be massive topics all by themselves, so please don't go on about them too much :)

Here's the original post.

Sure, North Korea gets all the newspaper headlines, but it easily has a challenger in terms of bonkers yet deeply repressive cult of personality leaders.

President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov has won a recent racing derby as is usual for this perfect human being, this god among mortals. One small issue - he fell off the horse during the race, which was obviously rigged to make sure he won it.

He won anyway, according to the solely state controlled national television, who never mentioned anything about the debacle despite thousands of onlookers having seen it. Officials tried to stop videos of the event from leaving the grounds, which even in a repressive state must have been like stopping a locust swarm with a shotgun. The president's fall is going to be an Elephant in the Room for quite a long time to come.

So this is a Turkmenistan conversation thread, although life is so perfect in that state that I'm sure no-one will be able to think of any negative things to say. Like: how did the current prez so effortlessly take over from the even more loony previous president's cult of personality? What do Turkmen really think of their god king and the system he rules over? Is it a testament to the theory that if you can keep people comfortable they'll never rebel, even if they have no freedom?

edited 2nd May '13 1:09:57 PM by betaalpha

Turkmenistan, I have not read any news about you for the last twelve years. If it was not for nostalgia for Atavok and the deportation of Russians I would have forgotten you existed.

I think what you need is some propaganda, you know to attract the tourists, so you can kidnap them or whatever it is you do to get money out of tourists.

For my next blog entry: "My Wacky Turkmenistan Vacation".

Unfortunately, I think many Americans (myself included) know little about the region. From what I recall:

• Kazakhstan- a pretty decent place (which is why Borat pisses them off)
• Azerbaijan- ditto
• Uzbekistan- also pretty ok?
• Kyrgyzstan- ? (my inkling is that it is worse than the above and better than the one below)
• Turkmenistan- I was aware that the previous president-for-life was a nutjob; judging from the OP, the replacement isn't much better

edited 1st May '13 2:27:28 PM by Hodor

There's also Taiikistan. If anyone's curious the naming isn't because a guy named Stan explored the area, it's because stan is a suffix that means "land", "country", "home" or in some of the local languages.

edited 1st May '13 2:59:02 PM by Silasw

Take that "Kazakhstan is pretty decent" with a grain of salt, though it could be worse considering the region, and the topic, I predict it will get worse in coming years, "Russia" is not the common enemy to its people it used to be. Borat was hardly an accurate depiction of it though, we should all be offended by it, worshiping crows.

But to the topic, their En Wikipedia page is oddly positive huh?

Uzbekistan is not great, President Islam Karimov has been called the "prince of torture" and even a post 9/11 US (basically willing to work with anyone opposed to the Taliban) broke off relations with him after this little incident. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andijan_massacre

As crazy as Turkmenistan may seem now... the guy who actually set up the personality cult was even more colorful. Saparmurat Niyazov equated himself with the entire nation, wrote a book (re: plagiarized his people's folklore) that he claimed would allow one to ascend to heaven if they read it three times, named months and cities after himself and his mother and set up a statue of him and mommy that put them in the role of Jesus and Mary. Egomaniac doesn't begin to describe him. Granted he does have something of a Freudian Excuse, when he was a child an earthquake killed his mother and both his siblings and he was trapped with their remains for days until he was pulled out. That would mess anyone up in the head.

edited 1st May '13 3:16:56 PM by Rationalinsanity

I see "single party" and right away I know it's not positive.

edited 1st May '13 3:22:10 PM by Trivialis

Here is some stani news. Kazakstan, Azerbaijan, neither one recognizes freedom of speech. "They claim to but do not practice". Uzbekistan has a paranoid oppressive government and I think the rest of been discussed.

Of course when Israel, the only plot of land with no oil, is the symbol of a region's progress there you are not really shooting for the stars are you?

single party state pretty much means "very bad place" automatically.

Hmm. Maybe this discussion should be about all the obscure 'Stans (after Afghanistan and Pakistan, whom receive a great deal of coverage) and their governments?

Call it the Central Asia thread or something like that?

No, it has to be stan, even if we just limit it to Turkmenistan.

Looks like he will be okay, physically anyway.

Seconded for renaming to Central Asia thread

Wikipedia link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_asia

Ethnic Map : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Central_Asia_Ethnic_en.svg

Uzbekistan : have ethnic problem because many cities have Tadjik minority

Turkmenistan : border with Iran

Kyrgyzstan : border with China, China have several investment there

Tadjikistan : Persian not Turks, have civil war several years ago, have border with Afghanistan and influenced by Afghanistan ethnic Tadjik.

if I not mistaken, Kyrgyz and Tadjik is upriver and have water, Uzbek and Turkmen downriver and have less water.

edited 1st May '13 8:47:14 PM by PhilippeO

Do Pakistan and Afghanistan count? They weren't part of the Soviet Union, which is a common theme with those Central Asian countries.

How did Turkmenistan become to clamped down on political freedom? Other countries at least try to allow some opposition groups.

An egomaniac who equates his own worth with that of his entire ethnic group taking control will have that effect.

How did Turkmenistan become to clamped down on political freedom? Other countries at least try to allow some opposition groups.

Eh, not in Central Asia. dictatorship is the norm there. I think its because they didn't have history of state/national institution there. They go from tribal nomadic society to communist dictatorship. Even the cities like Samarkand and Bukhara is enclave of minority Tadjik Persian who paying tribute to nomad empire.

Soviet border drawing didn't help. and nationalism there is soviet creation.

It still beats the hell out of the job the European powers did drawing borders in Africa.

By how much? I didn't think the Soviets gave them much space.

Or even with Iraq. They just shoved the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds into one country, then gave one of them control. Yeah, that'll work out well.

edited 1st May '13 11:39:40 PM by deathpigeon

The Soviets didn't just draw a bunch of strait lines and call it a day, which is what the European powers did.

Actually, the European powers often would intentionally draw the borders to cover multiple ethnic groups, then put the smallest one in charge. That way they would need the Europeans. Of course, that's when they don't just create ethnic groups out of thin air, like they did in Rwanda.

Also, could Xinjiang and Uyghur nationalism be considered a central asian issue for this thread?

I guess, but I would rather keep it mainly on Turkmenistan, they are the ones I know the least about.^note But on a side note, Sunni/Shia/Kurd is not really such a good grouping. Most Kurds are Sunnis. Furthermore, communists tend to be against the whole "religion" thing so it is hard to imagine Soviets would be too concerned with Islam's divisions, nor would those divisions really be against each other more than the infidel oppressors. Arab/Persian/Kurd might be problematic enough without the religious baggage though.

edited 2nd May '13 5:05:04 AM by Cider

I would say Xinjiang and Uyghur nationalism is a good discussion here only where it relates to Turkmenistan. Eg. if said nationalists are causing trouble or getting help from there.

You could make a new thread though - I'm tempted to make one called "Why No Asian Spring?"

Rumours of access denial to various Websites are surfacing, though I couldn't find any reports from news organisations yet. I'm guessing the pres has never heard of the Streisand Effect.

"Why is Youtube so chuggy?"

"Don't you know? It's because of..." *nervously looks around* "... the horse incident yesterday."

"What? What happened?!?"

"Oh man, you're gonna love this..."

edited 2nd May '13 6:45:11 AM by betaalpha