Suchergebnisse

In den postsowjetischen Ländern Kirgisistan und Turkmenistan ist im Zusammenhang mit nationalstaatlicher Formierung eine Hinwendung zum Islam zu beobachten. Der Islam dient dabei zur Legitimierung politischer Macht, es wird jedoch eine säkulare Variante eines islamischen Staates angestrebt. (DSE/DÜI)

This paper traces political events and modes of generating legitimacy in Turkmenistan since the Soviet collapse. The emphasis here is on state policies and social movements that relate to "nation building" for their contribution to political legitimacy. The extent of nation-building success is not an immediate subject of inquiry, for this paper is not about public perception and bottom-up response to state policies, but the reverse. It is certain that state-sponsored proclamations and nationalist ideas espoused by the intelligentsia do not always find resonance among the national population at large. However, attention given to social movements in this paper may compensate for this shortcoming in a small way. It must be stated that social movements in Turkmenistan, and Central Asia, as a whole, have been top heavy. They were principally initiated and steered by the urbanized intelligentsia. The extent of mass involvement in such movements is suspect and hard to gauge.

Traces political events & modes of producing political legitimacy in Turkmenistan since the collapse of the USSR. Turkmenistan was jettisoned from the USSR without the efforts of a grassroots political movement. However, Turkmenistan elites have been able to transition smoothly in the post-Soviet period for three reasons: (1) Soviet-made social institutions remained in place after the collapse; (2) a political & social elite that could run the government was maintained; & (3) the presence of a Soviet-trained nationalist-minded intelligentsia that could redefine & popularize a new national identity was continued. It is shown that Turkmenistan elites quickly embraced a new definition of nationalism after the collapse of the USSR. It championed itself as the representative of a new national sovereignty & drew on its propaganda skills to sell this vision to the public. Thus, it is concluded that the creation by the Soviets in the 1920s of a national republic equipped by a national elite in Turkmenistan has been crucial for developments in this state in the post-1989 period. 4 Tables, 3 Figures. D. Ryfe

'Political Change in Post-Soviet Central Asia' by Anthony Hyman is reviewed.