Word: saparmurat
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...this would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkmenistan became one of the most closed-off places in the world under the helm of Saparmurat Niyazov, who christened himself Turkmenbashi, leader of all Turkmen, and fostered a bizarre personality cult in the country. During his 16-year reign, he renamed the months after himself and his mother, required that all children read his philosophical tome Ruhnama and filled the country with impressive golden statues of himself. Economically, mostly Muslim Turkmenistan remained heavily dependent on its gas sales to Russia, its main...
...strange move in a part of the world where leaders are none too shy about developing cults of personality. The late ruler of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov - the self-titled Turkmenbashi, or Chief of all Turkmen - erected a golden statue of himself that rotated with the sun, and renamed days and months after family members. In Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev has had not one but two museums built in his honor. During his presidency, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was featured in children's books, his name was printed on women's underwear and portraits of him in various guises - as deep...
Sure, there are some true grotesqueries to be found in the book. There's a wittily observed chapter on the weirdness that is Turkmenistan, with statues and giant photographs of the late dictator Saparmurat Niyazov everywhere: "In some he looked like a fat and grinning Dean Martin wearing a Super Bowl ring." As someone who's been to most of the places Theroux describes, that's the kind of sentence I want to read; the kind that makes me think, "Exactly!" (and "I wish I'd written that...
...years, Turkmenbashi (Father of the Turkmen) Saparmurat Niyazov kept the central Asian state of Turkmenistan under a bizarre and brutal dictatorship that fought dissent and infectious diseases simply by outlawing both. Niyazov's death from cardiac arrest in late December came as a shock to his 5 million subjects, who had never realized that "Presidents for Life" die, too. Now, six contenders are running in the first presidential election in 15 years scheduled...
BANNED. RECORDED MUSIC AT PUBLIC EVENTS; by Turkmenistan President Saparmurat Niyazov; in Ashgabat. Niyazov, the former Soviet republic's famously autocratic leader?he has named the months of January and April after himself and his mother?said the decree was necessary to stem the tide of foreign influence in Turkmenistan. This follows his similar outlawing of opera and ballet in 2001 (currently, much of the music broadcast on Turkmenistan's airwaves are Niyazov's own words set to music). "Don't kill our talents by lip synching," he warned his cabinet. "Create our new culture...