Unsurprisingly, Russia is the first international actor to shift its gears into engaging with the new Turkmen elite. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday conveyed the interim President Kurbanguly Berdymuhammedov his best wishes for the New Year.
According to a Kremlin press release, Putin noted that:
“Russia has always been and will always be friend to […]

Now slightly out of date, but nonethless worth the watch for the fascinating footage if nothing else. This Russian-language report (in two separate videos) on Niyazov is from Gazprom-owned television station NTV:

The final flickers of hope for anybody expecting that Kurbanguly Berdymuhammedov’s interim succession would signal a shift to openness and democracy will be concerned by his latest efforts to install himself in late Saparmurat Niyazov’s place.
David Holley in the Los Angeles Times reports on the amendments the interim has effected already to ensure that […]

Saparmurat Niyazov was buried at a mausoleum on the grounds of Central Asia’s last mosque, the Turkmenbsahi Rukhy, in his hometown on Sunday. Tens of thousands of people turned out to pay their last respects, accompanied by a number of foreign diplomatic delegations, RIA Novosti reported:
As the procession made its way to Kipchak, where […]

In two more developments, Turkmenistan expert and Vremya Novostei correspondent Arkady Dubnov gave a press conference at the RIA-Novosti press agency in which he revealed that according to information in his possession, close Saparmurat Niyazov confindante and treasurer Alexander Zhadan went missing the day before Niyazov’s death.
“According to information I have, on the evening […]

Opposition leaders were swift in reacting to the absence of leadership in Turkmenistan and one of the earliest comments was from the chairman of the Watan opposition group and former deputy Prime Minister Khudaiberdy Orazov. He placed the emphasis on consultation, which may indicate that contingency plans among the notoriously fractious and scattered […]

As most Central Asia watchers will already have learnt, President Saparmurat Niyazov, father of all the Turkmens, Turkmenbashi, has died at the age of 66. And already theories among opposition groups are abounding about how long he has actually been dead. Retrospectively, it was clear that someone in Ashgabat had been panicking hours before […]

After the ice park and the book-shaped library, President Saparmurat Niyazov has continued with the theme of inaugurating relatively light-hearted centers with the opening last Friday of an amusement park named after himself.
The 88-acre funfair has been called The World of Turkmensbashi Tales, The Associated Press reported:
“It has 54 rides including a Ferris Wheel […]

It has been a busy week in the Turkmen gas sector over the past week. On Dec. 8, Central Bank head Geldymurad Abilov announced that according to preliminary reports the amount of natural gas to be extracted next year will reach 71 billion cubic metres, Reuters said. As Abilov said in a televised government […]

For observers of Turkmenistan’s post-Soviet history of rule-by-purge, the death of former Prime Minister Khan Akhmedov will be of some interest.
As Radio Free Europe reports:
“Akhmedov died of a heart attack on Dec. 6 in the western city of Serdar [formerly known as Gyzylarbat], where he had been in internal exile since 2002. He was […]