Turkmenistan

The Turkmen are a Turkic people who arrived in the region around the eleventh century as part of the Oghuz migration and long lived as tribal, largely nomadic horse- and camel-herders. The land held some of the great cities of the Silk Road: Merv, near modern Mary, was for a time one of the largest cities in the world before the Mongols destroyed it in 1221, and Konye-Urgench was a capital of the Khwarazmian empire.

The Russian Empire conquered the Turkmen in the 1870s–80s, a campaign marked by the massacre at Geok Tepe in 1881. Under the Soviet Union, Turkmenistan became a cotton-growing republic, its nomads forcibly settled and its identity suppressed.

Independence in 1991 brought Saparmurat Niyazov, the Communist Party leader, who styled himself "Türkmenbaşy" (Head of the Turkmen), built a personality cult without modern parallel — gold statues, a spiritual guidebook (the Ruhnama) made compulsory, months and towns renamed after his family — and ran a closed, one-party state. On his death in 2006 he was succeeded by Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, who softened some excesses while building his own cult, and in 2022 handed the presidency to his son Serdar while keeping a powerful role as "National Leader" and head of the upper house. The country has declared itself permanently neutral, a status recognised by the UN in 1995, and sits on the world's fourth-largest natural gas reserves, most of it exported to China.

Turkmen identity remains strongly tribal — the five main tribes appear as the five carpet medallions (gül) on the national flag — and clan and regional loyalties matter beneath the surface of the unitary state. Society is Sunni Muslim, though decades of Soviet secularism and current state control of religion keep public practice muted, blended with older customs and reverence for ancestors and shrines.

Hospitality is central: guests are seated on carpets around a low table and offered tea, bread, and melon. Two national emblems carry deep pride — the hand-knotted Turkmen carpet, with its dense geometric patterns, and the Akhal-Teke horse, a slender, metallic-sheened breed that appears on the state emblem and has its own national holiday.

Public life is shaped by the state: mass choreographed celebrations, portraits of the leader, and strict codes on dress, appearance, and behaviour, with limited space for independent expression.

About 7 million people live in Turkmenistan, most along the southern strip near the Kopet Dag mountains and the Amu Darya river, since the Karakum Desert covers around 80 per cent of the territory. Ashgabat, rebuilt after a devastating 1948 earthquake and then again in white marble under Niyazov and Berdimuhamedow, is a city of vast avenues, monuments, and record-setting buildings, often strikingly empty.

The state historically provided citizens with free or nearly free gas, electricity, water, and salt, and subsidised petrol and bread; many of these benefits have been cut back amid economic strain since the mid-2010s, and there have been reports of food shortages and queues despite the gas wealth. Cotton and gas dominate the economy, jobs outside the state are limited, and a significant number of Turkmen work abroad, mainly in Turkey.

Everyday life is quiet, controlled, and family-centred, with weddings and seasonal festivals the main public occasions, and internet access heavily filtered.

Turkmen cooking is close to the wider Central Asian table, built on mutton, wheat, and rice. Palow (pilaf) — rice with mutton, carrots, and onions cooked in a cauldron — is the festive centrepiece. Dograma, a dish of crumbled bread, boiled mutton, and onion in broth, eaten by hand, is considered distinctively Turkmen and served at commemorations.

Other staples are chorba (a rich mutton-and-vegetable soup), manty (steamed dumplings), ishlekli (a meat-filled baked pie from the Balkan region), and skewered grilled meat. Round tandoor-baked bread (chorek) is treated with respect and present at every meal.

Green tea is drunk constantly, black tea more in winter, and camel's-milk chal, slightly sour and fizzy, is a desert speciality. Turkmen melons and watermelons are famous and celebrated with their own national day.

The Darvaza gas crater, a Soviet-era drilling accident set alight and still burning in the middle of the Karakum, is the country's signature sight, best seen overnight on a desert camping trip from Ashgabat. The government has periodically talked of extinguishing it.

Ancient Merv, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a vast field of earthen walls, fortresses, and mausolea — including the great domed tomb of Sultan Sanjar — spread across the desert near Mary. Konye-Urgench, also UNESCO-listed, has the tallest minaret in Central Asia and a cluster of mausolea, and Nisa, near Ashgabat, preserves the fortresses of the Parthian empire.

Ashgabat itself is an attraction of a kind: the white-marble ministries and apartment blocks, the Independence and Neutrality monuments, the Turkmenbashy Ruhy Mosque, and the horse monuments hold several Guinness World Records for their scale and materials. Beyond, the Yangykala Canyon near the Caspian glows in striped pink and white rock, and the warm underground lake at Kow Ata can be swum in.