Ashgabat: The Strangest City In the World?

After leaving Iran, the next stop on our journey was Turkmenistan, truly one of the strangest and most unusual countries on Earth. I’ve been fascinated by the country for over 10 years now, ever since I’d first heard about the excesses of its first president and although I’d often spoken to my friend Jamie about visiting, I never thought I’d actually get the chance to see it first-hand!

Home to the world’s 4^th largest natural gas reserves, Turkmenistan was ruled with an iron fist by President Saparmurat Niyazov, the self-styled ‘Turkmenbashi’ or leader of the Turkmen people.After gaining independence from the USSR in 1991, he became concerned that the country had no real distinct cultural identity of its own, so he decided to fashion one around himself and carried out a series of bizarre reforms across the country including:

• Making his own autobiographical pseudo-spiritual guide to life, the Ruhnama, required reading for all school students and new drivers;
• Renaming the days of the week and months of the year after himself and his family;
• Renaming the Turkmen word for ‘bread’ after his mother;
• Banning long hair and beards;
• Banning television presenters from wearing makeup because he had difficulty in distinguishing between the men and women and because the Turkmen women were already attractive enough;
• Banning lip-syncing at music concerts;
• Banning smoking in public places after he had been forced to quit smoking for health reasons;
• Banning opera, ballet and the circus;
• Banning gold teeth;
• Banning music in cars
• Making all students must wear national dress to college / university

Although Turkmenbashi died of a heart attack in 2006, his legacy is still clear across the country, particularly in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan’s capital city and our first stop.

The historic city of Ashgabat was levelled in an earthquake in 1948, and the rebuilt city now falls into two very distinct areas; the grim, concrete soviet-built old city and the surreal, sparkling new town, with all buildings clad in imported white marble as decreed by Turkmenbashi himself.

Our visit to Ashgabat began with a visit to the Türkmenbaşy Ruhy Mosque, the largest mosque in Central Asia, and home to Turkmenbashi’s tomb. The mosque was a quite unnecessary gift to the town of Turkmenbashi’s birth, as it is large enough to accommodate every resident of the town with room to spare, while the inside of the mosque is not adorned with passages of the Koran as you might expect, but of the Ruhnama, Turkmenbashi’s autobiography! There is even a massive, slightly trippy replica of the Ruhnama in the heart of the city, which opens on special occasions with an accompanying light and music show.

Next stop in Ashgabat was the Arch of Neutrality. This 95m high monument was built to celebrate Turkmenistan being recognised as the first neutral state in the world and is perhaps the most famous example of the excesses and megalomania of Turkmenbashi, as it’s topped with a 12m high gold-plated statue of the former president that would rotate to always face the sun.

The monument used to overlook the presidential palace in the centre of the city but as part of attempts by the new president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov to dismantle the cult of personality Turkmenbashi had built, has now been moved to the outskirts of the city while the gold Turkmenbashi statue no longer rotates. While Berdimuhamedow may have undone some of the excesses of his predecessor, he has built up quite a cult of personality himself, with pictures of himself in hotels and on public buildings across the country, looking very presidential:

Newlyweds are even required to take official photos of themselves in front of the president when registering their marriage at the ‘palace of happiness’ wedding palace.

*Note this image is merely a representation of how one might propose in front of the wedding palace. No actual proposals took place.

We then had a look at the Ashgabat flagpole, which at 133m high used to be the largest flagpole in the world before North Korea, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan all felt the need to join in the competition and outdo each other:

As we drove around, it was striking just how quiet the new city was. While the old Soviet city had some activity, albeit still not that much, the new parts of the city were deathly quiet with barely any cars on the roads and even fewer pedestrians.

Even the ornately designed and fully air-conditioned bus stops were empty:

We then paid a visit to the independence monument or ‘plunger’ as it’s better known.

Situated in yet another empty park, the tower is surrounded by statues of 27 historical Turkmen heroes and him again, Turkmenbashi

Elsewhere in the city is what we were told was the largest fountain in the world, complete with obligatory Turkmenbashi bust. Clearly it’s nowhere near the biggest and even if it was, the fountain was bone dry:

In a nod to the country’s socialist past, the city also boasts a tiny statue of Lenin sitting atop an enormous, ornate and very central-Asian plinth, with the modernist designed former Archive of the Communist Party of Turkmenistan just around the corner

I also loved this retro Soviet-era phone box. No coins needed and it still had a dialling tone!