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Studies have found that U.S. and other Western news media now devote less newspaper space, airtime, and financial and staff resources than in the past to foreign news, particularly news unrelated to ongoing wars in which the United States is engaged. That means more competition among "foreign" stories to get into print or onto the air, with editors and news directors exercising their professional judgment in selecting among competing offerings. With novelty among the widely accepted standard news values, it is no surprise that a story about a quirky foreign ruler such as the late president of Turkmenistan, or unusual law or governmental policy may edge out more "serious" stories in that competition for attention. Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov, who died on 21 December, 2006, clearly fit the definition of a quirky, idiosyncratic, and authoritarian ruler. This study examines how three Western news organizations framed Niyazov during a one-year period and how they reported to their readers and audiences about Turkmenistan, specifically the prevalence of personal references to, and personalizing terminology about, the self-described "Turkmenbashi." Finally, it discusses the implications of such media framing for Western understanding of Turkmenistan and its issues, and the consequence that readers lose the opportunity to become informed about serious public policy issues that may directly or indirectly affect them and their own country in such matters as economics, security, politics, human rights, public health, energy, the environment, development, and religious and cultural movements.

Der Autor, früherer Außenminister Turkmenistans, wirft in dem Beitrag dem jetzigen Präsidenten des Landes, Saparmurat Nijazov, einen Personenkult im Stile Stalins der 40er Jahre und die Errichtung einer auf strenge Zensur gegründeten persönlichen Diktatur im Lande vor. Er beschreibt die politische Karriere Nijazovs in der früheren Kommunistischen Partei und sein Verhalten nach dem Zusammenbruch der UdSSR, stellt die Mechanismen der von ihm initiierten politischen Propaganda dar und macht Angaben über die von Nijazov im Rahmen des Präsidentenamtes vollzogene persönliche Bereicherung. (BIOst-Mrk)

"Turkmenistan, das unlängst der zerfallenden Gemeinschaft Unabhängiger Staaten (GUS) den Rücken gekehrt hat, ist unter den früheren asiatischen Sowjetrepubliken ein Sonderfall. Von seinem exzentrischen Präsidenten Saparmurat Nijasow in einer Mischung aus stalinistischer Diktatur und orientalischer Despotie geführt, versucht das Land, sich dem Einfluss Moskaus zu entziehen, obwohl es bei der Vermarktung seiner enormen Gasvorräte doch der russischen Infrastruktur bedarf. Nijasow, der sich selbst als Turkmenbashi, als Führer der Turkmenen, sieht und seinem Volk einen bizarr anmutenden Personenkult nach der Maxime 'Halk, Vatan, Turkmenbashi' (Ein Volk, ein Land, ein Turkmenenführer) verordnet hat, steht für die Missachtung von Menschenrechten, die Diskriminierung von Minderheiten und die Unterdrückung der Meinungsfreiheit. Er steht aber auch für die nationalistische Ideologie der 'Ruhnama', eines abstrusen, von Geschichtsfälschungen strotzenden Buchs, das den Turkmenen von seinem Autor, dem Staatschef selbst, als geistig-weltanschauliche Richtschnur aufoktroyiert worden ist. Wie die Zukunft Turkmenistans, das durch seine 'immer währende Neutralität' in der Außenpolitik, aber auch wegen seiner attraktiven Gasvorkommen keineswegs der Paradefeind des Westens war, aussieht, bleibt auch angesichts der allmählich schärfer werdenden internationalen Kritik an dem Regime in Aschgabad abzuwarten." (Autorenreferat)

Turkmenistan remains the least studied and understood republic to have achieved independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The autocratic and dictatorial rule of Saparmurat Niyazov (also known as "Turkmenbashi," or "Leader of the Turkmen") has so restricted information about this resource-rich but economically desperate republic that any new work about Turkmenistan and the Turkmen is always a welcome addition. Shokhrat Kadyrov is a well-known Turkmen historian whose opposition to the Niyazov regime resulted in his exile to Norway, where he compiled what will be the first of two encyclopedia-like volumes devoted to Turkmen history, culture, and society. In addition, the author has added a historical foreword, chronology, and epilogue, which fill in various gaps that both Soviet and current scholarship in Turkmenistan avoided. As with Soviet interpretations of Turkmen history and culture, present-day Turkmen scholars must conform their work to the wishes of Niyazov's whims and fancies. Moreover, most works now published in Turkmenistan must include praise to Turkmenbashi for his guidance, wisdom, and enlightened vision for Turkmenistan. The most ostentatious demonstration of this reverence is the Rukhnama, Niyazov's quasi-religious history of the Turkmen, which is required reading in schools and necessary to know if one wants employment.

In Central Asia the cult of the leader is the most important instrument of political & cultural control. National in content, it is Soviet in practice. The bizarre excess surrounding the "father of all Turkmen," Nursultan Niyazov, had several functions: It secured power for the leader as well as goodwill & access to financial resources for the elites, & it served the population's social integration & political socialization. After the death of "Turkmenbashi," his successor Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov is developing a similar cult. Adapted from the source document.

This article analyzes the role of mosques dedicated to the "father of the nation" under two personalistic authoritarian systems: Saparmurat Niyazov in Turkmenistan and Sheikh Zayed in the United Arab Emirates (uae). Critiquing "cult of personality" narratives as Orientalist and analytically weak, I emphasize the constructed nature of charisma, asking how such personalistic regimes produce the image of a coherent figurehead—and to what end. As a discursive device, the personalistic leader-as-icon appears in a range of authoritarian regimes, and it is materially inscribed in the symbolic landscapes to create the impression of unity among elites and the masses. To illustrate how this works, I draw on research in Turkmenistan and the uae from 2012 through 2014, including landscape analysis of two mosques memorializing the countries' founding fathers: the Turkmenbashi Ruhy Mosque in the outskirts of Ashgabat, and the Sheikh Zayed Mosque, in the outskirts of Abu Dhabi.

On December 21, 2006, Turkmenistan lost its head-quite literally since that day marked the death of Saparmurat Niazov, the immovable leader of this small Central Asian country. This was a man who, in his megalomania, called himself "Turkmenbashi," or head of all the Turkmen. During his grotesque reign, his people had subsided into poverty & submission. Following his death, a new era is beginning. His successor, Gurbunguly Berdymukhammedov, has already initiated a timid glasnost, under the vigilant eyes of the world's main powers, who are playing out a new episode of the "Great Game" around this gas rich country. For the moment, the advantage is with Russia, which controls the gas pipes through which the Turkmen gas is transported. But China, India, Europe & the United States have not said their last word in this matter. Will Turkmenistan's new leaders be able to profit from this attention in order to improve the lot of their people? Adapted from the source document.

AbstractAfter the disintegration of the Soviet Union, political élites of some of the former Soviet republics, especially the Turkic-speaking ones, found themselves in ideological limbo. The first President of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov (Saparmyrat Nyýazow), has trodden his way out from the vacuum of legitimacy in the most original and interesting manner. In 2001, Niyazov, known also as Turkmenbashi (Türkmenbaşy), made public his book, Ruhnama, which later has been translated into about fifty languages. The book, appealing to the Oğuz Turkic heritage of the Turkmen nation, to her remote Parthian past, and to vague Islamic cultural inheritance, was supposed to provide guidelines for nation-building and cohesiveness. Atatürk's Nutuk was one of the literary models of Niyazov's book. Having fixed the newly-invented national mythology in writing, Niyazov was not only shaping his society in the desirable manner, but also legitimising his own rule. This paper analyses fragments of different—and not identical—versions of the first part of the work in several languages, mostly in Turkmen, Turkish, Russian, and English. The author suggests that the text of the Ruhnama was updated several times, with different translations reflecting different stages of fixing the original; the English text was translated faithfully from the elaborated Turkish translation, not from the Turkmen.

The question presupposes preliminary inventory auditing of the oil and gas resources of the Caspian shelf and identification (at least within the scope of this article) of the best routes for bringing them to the world markets and which are undoubtedly the most desirable prize of the political and economic rivalry that has been unfolding in the region over the last decade. In the Caspian-Black Sea Region, the European Union and the United States have concentrated on setting up a reliable logistics chain to connect Central Asia with the European Union via the Central Caucasus and Turkey/Ukraine. The routes form the centerpiece of INOGATE (an integrated communication system along the routes taking hydrocarbon resources to Europe) and TRACECA (the multi-channel Europe-Caucasus-Asia corridor) projects. The TRACECA transportation and communication routes grew out of the idea of the Great Silk Road (the traditional Eurasian communication channel of antiquity). It included Georgian and Turkish Black Sea ports (Poti, Batumi, and Ceyhan), railways of Georgia and Azerbaijan, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, ferry lines that connect Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan with Azerbaijan across the Caspian Sea/Lake (Turkmenbashi-Baku; Aktau-Baku), railways and highways now being built in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and China, as well as Chinese Pacific terminals as strategically and systemically important parts of the mega-corridor.