Hardly anyone doubts that Turkmenistan is one of the most isolated countries in the world. In order to travel abroad, Turkmen citizens have to obtain not only the visa of the country they plan to visit, but also a so-called exit visa. This isolation applies also to information. Satellite TV remains the only independent source of information, but this is gradually changing. On the basis of the presidential decree, the government has recently embarked on a project to liquidate satellite dishes and close down companies which provide such services.

Internet is the only window to the outer world for people living in many undemocratic countries. However, this is not the case in Turkmenistan, which - in this respect - can probably be compared only to North Korea. There are only a few Internet cafes in the whole country which charge very high prices and block access to websites that the authorities consider “dangerous”.

Still, there is something like the Turkmen Internet. It obviously includes government-controlled sites designed for foreign audience (e.g. turkmenistan.ru or turkmenistan.gov.tm) as well as websites run by the Turkmen opposition which are edited abroad (gundogar.org, chrono-tm.org). There are also several private sites created by the Turkmen living in the West or in Russia.

While searching for information on Turkmenistan, I sometimes come across really interesting websites about that country (unfortunately, the majority of them available only in Russian), and I’ve decided to present some of them from time to time.
I will start with a site that is absolutely unique in the Turkmen web. It is a blog called Nähili Innovation written in English whose author is a young Turkmen living in Turkmenistan (!). It remains his secret how he manages to regularly post on his blog. For obvious reasons, he avoids commenting on politics, but he writes a lot about his views on the Turkmen economy and business, history of Turkmenistan, the country’s everyday life and its future.

The author is definitely a Turkmen patriot. He sees the future of Turkmenistan in the development of modern technologies but without breaking with the centuries-long tradition and culture.

In his manifesto, he declares:

Nähili Manifesto: There’s little presence of our private business & innovation on the Web. There’s almost no content in English that highlights private business achievements. Nähili blog is personal & unofficial. No one sponsors it. I try to evaluate things from a private Turkmen perspective.

It is clear that the author puts all his heart in what he writes about. I highly recommend his blog to everyone.