Modern-day politics doesn’t feature many cults of personality anymore (though Lord knows that Supreme Leader Trump is trying his damnedest to make it happen in America…); outside of North Korea, which is probably the best-known example today, there’s few countries left that are specifically designed to solely worship their leader in all aspects of life. This week, we’re looking at the tiny of country of Turkmenistan, who went balls-to-the-wall in the ’90s to have every tiny detail of society specifically engineered to follow the whims of their dictator-in-chief. Let’s meet this week’s Historical Badass.

Saparmurat Niyazov

Born: February 19th, 1940, Gypjak, Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic

Died: December 21st, 2006, Ashgabat, Turkmenistan

Occupation: Power engineer, Communist Party member, President of Turkmen SSR and Turkmenistan

Saparmurat Niyazov’s early life was not easy at all. Born in the throes of the Second World War, his grandfather had been purged by Stalin a few years before he was born; his father killed in battle on the Eastern Front by the Nazis, and his mother and two siblings killed in an earthquake that levelled the city of Ashgabat in 1948. Niyazov, age 8, was the only one who made it out alive from the disaster, spending eight days digging himself out of the rubble of his collapsed apartment building. From there, he was shuffled off to various state-run orphanages and distant family members until he finished school in 1959. He would later go on to become an electrical engineer from further studies completed in 1967.

Niyazov’s life really began to take shape, however, when he got heavily involved in politics in 1962, becoming an official member of the Communist Party and assuming the role of Chief Secretary of the Turkmen SSR by 1985. With the advent of glasnost, Niyazov was one of the main conspirators in trying to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev in a military-backed coup, but when it failed, he reversed course entirely, declaring Turkmenistan a “democratic” independent country, with “free” elections. In 1992, he ran unopposed for the presidency, winning with 99.9% of the popular vote. He would win again, in 1994, with a referendum extending his presidency to 2002. In 1999, further consolidating power, he was named President-for-Life of Turkmenistan by parliament. Shit would get absolutely ridiculous from the moment he took office. Here’s all the insane things that Niyazov managed to do in his time as a dictator of Turkmenistan:

• He legally changed his last name to “Turkmenbashi”, which translates to “Father of all the Turkmens”. As Turkmenbashi, he declared himself global leader of all ethnic Turkmen populations around the globe, even the ones technically outside his jurisdiction.
• He declared Turkmenistan would remain permanently neutral in all diplomatic, economic and military matters – and even had this decree ratified at the United Nations.
• He renamed all of the following things after himself: the month of January, a city, two airports, multiple schools, theaters & streets, two kinds of cologne, a brand of tea, a brand of vodka, and a meteorite. The original “aladeen”, is it not?

• He renamed the month of April and the word for bread after his mother – they were called Gurbansoltan edzhe. He unilaterally renamed the other months for various other important Turkmen historical figures as well.
• In 2001, Turkmenbashi wrote a book on philosophy entitled Ruhnama, and made it mandatory reading for all Turkmen – since he also banned all Soviet-era books, almost every library contains only the Qu’ran and Ruhnama, which must be displayed with equal prominence. Schoolchildren spend one day a week doing nothing but reading Ruhnama, and knowledge of the book is even required for governmental tests such as getting a driver’s license. In 2006, Turkmenbashi made reading Ruhnama three times a mandatory requirement for entry into heaven. Yes, really. It also claims Turkmen lineage to such historical figures as Noah, builder of the Ark, and Seljuk warrior Alp Arslan, despite none of these even being remotely close to factually accurate.

• The following things were made illegal under Turkmenbashi‘s rule:
  • The death penalty
  • Algebra
  • Physics
  • Physical education
  • The Internet
  • The Hippocratic Oath (doctors had to swear an oath to the President instead)
  • Recorded music (and lip-synching as well)
  • Smoking
  • Beards and long hair on men
  • Chewing tobacco
  • Ballet
  • Opera
  • The circus
  • Symphony orchestras
  • The National Academy of Science
  • Gold teeth (and if you had them, they had to be extracted)
  • Make-up on women (he stated that Turkmen women were already so attractive that they didn’t have any need for it)
• Turkmenbashi also made the following declarations:
  • Foreigners who wanted to marry a Turkmen woman were required to pay a $50,000 fee to the government in order for the ceremony to be performed in Turkmenistan.
  • All citizens were required to fly the flag of Turkmenistan above their homes at all times.
  • All three state-run TV channels featured broadcasts of Turkmenbashi‘s activities, broadcast around the clock; the official logo of all three channels was a gold-emblazoned portrait of the president. Every broadcast begins with the message that “the broadcaster’s tongue will shrivel if he slanders the country, flag, or president.”
  • Dogs were not permitted in the capital city of Ashgabat due to their “foul odor”.
  • He replaced the entire Turkmen alphabet, based on Russian Cyrillic characters, with a Latin-based one, in order to try and distance himself further from the Soviet Union.
  • Turkmenistan is home to the gigantic, extremely hot & arid Karakum Desert; Turkmenbashi not only ordered that a giant lake and cedar forest be created in the middle of the desert “in order to moderate the country’s climate”, but later a gigantic ice palace as well. Yes, an ice palace.
  • He built tons of gold statues of himself and had them put all over the country, including a few ludicrously large monuments such as the “Arch to Neutrality” in Ashgabat; a towering, 312-foot-high arch that was topped with a 40-foot-tall gold statue of Turkmenbashi – the statue also rotated 360 degrees each day to always be facing the Sun. Elsewhere in the capital, a giant, 30-foot-tall statue of Ruhnama was located nearby to another 50-foot-tall gold statue of the president.

• All cars that were right-hand drive had to be converted to left-hand drive, even those that weren’t easily moddable. (Car stereos, however, did not need to be taken out – citizens just weren’t legally allowed to use them…)
• Some other crazy shit that Turkmenbashi did:
  •  He built himself a $60 million palace with gold-plated white marble, all with taxpayer funds.

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  • He built a giant mosque in his hometown of Gypjak in commemoration of himself, with a capacity of 10,000 worshippers, and declared that all Turkmen should make an annual pilgrimage to the mosque.
  • In 2004, he closed all hospitals outside of the capital and fired 15,000 health care workers, stating that if anyone needed to be treated for anything, it made far more sense to just come to Ashgabat… This resulted in soaring mortality rates.
  • He wrote a new national anthem, the lyrics of which prominently featured his own greatness; it was made mandatory to be played before all public events.
  • In 1994, he created a national holiday called Melon Day – this is still being celebrated today on the second Sunday each August, long after his death.
  • He awarded himself the Hero of Turkmenistan Medal five separate times, as well as an award for his poetry and writing in Ruhnama.
• Despite his eccentric nature, Turkmenbashi did crack down extremely hard on political dissidents, regularly jailing journalists, politicians, and other various so-called enemies of the state. In one particular notable instance, in 2002, he tortured his only political rival, Boris Syhmyradow, until he confessed to attempting an assassination on his life earlier in that year. His subsequent confession, in which he professed to love Turkmenbashi and that he himself was a drug addict and trying to overthrow the country, was broadcast live on national television. Later, in 2004, when a covert leaflet campaign in Ashgabat was trying to create an official opposition to the ruling party, the president fired his Interior Minister and Chief of Police on live national television, for “failing to stop the threat against the nation.”
• When Niyazov died of a heart attack in 2006, there was no succession plan in place as to who would succeed him as president of Turkmenistan – though he had stated in his will that his office be left to his personal dentist. Don’t feel too bad about his wife and two children, though – despite not keeping the presidency in the family, Niyazov skimmed off an estimated two billion dollars from Turkmenistan’s giant oil and gas revenues to place in secure Swiss bank accounts for his family.

So all in all, the man was a crazed lunatic, completely full of half-baked ideas and a ridiculously overinflated sense of self – and yet I still think he’d make a better president than Donald Trump. What scary, horrifying times we live in today.

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