Turkmen activist: president too “weak” to rule without father

25.01.2024, 18:46 exclusive.kz

Turkmen President Serdar Berdimukhamedov is likely to stay in power only as long as his father and predecessor, Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov, is still around, an exiled activist said.

Ruslan Myatiyev, who is also the editor of the Europe-based Turkmen.news website, said that Berdimukhamedov senior was de facto continuing to rule the country, because Serdar was “weak”.

“If his father departs to another world, Serdar will be immediately toppled,” Myatoyev said in an interview with the independent Belarusian nashaniva.com website.

Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov handed over the presidency to his son Serdar in 2022 after 16 years in office. The former president is now speaker of parliament.

Myatiyev said that there had not been any kind of political opposition in the country since the crackdown on those said to be behind the alleged 2002 assassination attempt on late former president Saparmurat Niyazov.

The prosecution of the alleged plotters “was done so publicly and demonstratively, that nobody has dared to go against the government since”.

“There is no civil society in the country. There is not a single non-government entity that could at least partially monitor observance of human rights and freedoms,” Myatiyev added.

There are no organisations to even help the poor, homeless or people suffering from addictions because of the government’s denial of their existence, he said.

There are only a handful of activists who anonymously, and as secretly as possible, provide information to independent Turkmen media outlets outside the country, according to Myatiyev.

Myatiyev said that the number of political prisoners in Turkmenistan might be “in the hundreds”.

Among those jailed in recent years he named Nurgeldy Khalykov (jailed for sending to Turkmen.news a photo of visiting WHO officials during the Covid pandemic), Mansur Mingelov (jailed for 22 years for complaining about being tortured in detention), Murat Dushemov (jailed for four years for doubting the official claim that the country had not a single Covid case), and Murat Ovezov (jailed for five years for a poem about the Turkmen people’s “harsh destiny”).

He added that there were also dozens of Muslims jailed for alleged religious extremism and attempts to seize power.

Myatiyev said there was “a huge fear” among Turkmens of “the almighty and omnipresent special services”.

“On the whole, the ordinary person’s attitude to the authorities is something between indifference and hatred.”

But people do get angry at some “absolutely pointless restrictions”, like that all vehicles in Ashgabat must be white.

According to Myatiyev, Turkmens are officially free to travel abroad but authorities can stop anyone at the border and bar them from leaving without giving any reason.

The activist said that practically all his relatives remaining in Turkmenistan had been forced to denounce him to save themselves from official harassment.

Myatiyev said that already in the 1990s the government had been conducting a “deliberate” policy of dumbing down the population.

“Schools in Turkmenistan focus not on giving knowledge but making children obedient and submissive.

“Young people are constantly under close state supervision. At universities they strictly control students’ appearance and behaviour, even outside classrooms.

“University administrations and special services want to know what students do in their holidays – before going on holiday every student puts a signature under a list of ten things they are banned from doing,” Myatiyev said.

Turkmen students abroad are also monitored by specially appointed “representatives” who report to corresponding Turkmen diplomatic missions about every student’s life, including if they read independent Turkmen news or are “interested” in religion.

Meanwhile, Turkmen TV is dominated by “pink ponies and unicorns”, “rainbows” and endless eulogies about Berdimukhamedov senior’s various achievements, Myatiyev said.