President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has decided to take another step to undo his predecessor’s personality cult. At the expanded government meeting on May 2, it was decided
to relocate the Neutrality Arch to the southern area of Ashgabat. It was noted that it would be expedient to locate this monument in the southern part of Ashgabat […]

They were admired already by Alexander the Great, who had a horse of that breed called Bucephalus. Marco Polo, the famous Medieval traveller, also wrote about them. Beautiful, noble, tenacious, capable of surviving many days in the desert without water, they are the pride of the Turkmen and one of the symbols of their […]

It is Sunday, so I am not going to bother you with politics which everyone is fed up with any other day. In order to take a rest from it, I would like to show you two Turkmen hits that I found on the YouTube service. Their common theme are the Turkmen weddings which […]

Central Asia is becoming increasingly more popular as a tourist destination, especially for tourists from the West. Monuments of Bukhara, Samarkand, Khiva, trips to the Tian Shan and Pamir mountains… They all attract adventure-seekers and tourists in search of exoticism. The Central Asian states are also en route for globetrotters traveling from Europe to […]

Below is the translation of Abdulgamid’s post from the Russian-language part of the blog.
Though the situation with Internet access, what’s most important, connection speed remains the same as in 1995, there is a number of our compatriots in the world virtual space.
There are over 1000 users with Turkmen citizenship are registered in the most […]

I found this short movie at Youtube by accident. Although I was initially a bit discouraged by quotations from the Rukhnama that appear in the very beginning of the video, I decided to watch it to the end. And I do not regret it! I must confess that despite its obvious propagandist purpose, the […]

In May 2007, a UNICEF-sponsored workshop was held in Turkmenistan. Its young participants made several one-minute videos that feature scenes from the everyday life (mainly of Turkmen children) which are to present their problems to broader audience. One of the videos shows a boy suffering during his parents’ argument, another one - the poverty […]

The author of the Nähili.com blog I have already written about devoted one of his posts to the problem of the Russian language in Turkmenistan. He wonders why many Turkmen use the Russian rather than their native Turkmen language in their everyday life. Indeed, it was one of the things that struck me when […]

  
In connection with the topic of CXW post I want to recall another one Saparov - Akysh - is a famous singer and composer, who also stayed in Turkmenistan despite the fact he was officially unable to perform.
Akysh Saparov who is very popular in the country is no longer seen on TV screens as, according […]

Former Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov was not known for his love of external foreign influences, and his reign saw the republic isolated not only politically but also increasingly culturally, as Turkmenbashi sought to distill the essence of Turkmen-ness.
As part of this process, in April 2001 Niyazov banned foreign opera and ballet. He justified his […]