Turkmenistan on the brink of collapse?

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/10/asia/turkmenistan-caspian-sea-intl-hnk/index.html

by Tomte • 7 years ago

106 102 7 years ago

edition.cnn.com

dekken_• 7 years ago

John Oliver's serendipitous take https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9QYu8LtH2E

davidkuhta• 7 years ago

One word for those interested: Horses

pilsetnieks• 7 years ago

I mean this guy is NK's Kim level of crazy but you should see who he replaced: the previous president-for-life Niyazov is known for:

- renamed months and days of week to references to his own autobiography;

- banished dogs from the capital;

- banned lip syncing at concerts;

- banned recorded music at any public event and on television;

- built a palace of ice in the desert near the capital, so people could learn to skate;

- after quitting smoking himself, banned smoking and chewing tobacco for the entire country;

- outlawed opera, ballet, and circus because it's un-Turkmen-like;

- banned long hair and beards for men;

- banned makeup for news reporters;

- discouraged gold teeth and suggested that people should chew on bones like dogs to improve dental health;

- changed Turkmen language to rename bread (as in actual bread) and the month of April to Gurbansoltan, his mother's name.

MikusR• 7 years ago

- banned lip syncing at concerts;

- after quitting smoking himself, banned smoking and chewing tobacco for the entire country;

How are these two things bad?

mikekchar• 7 years ago

Just because I'm in a playful mood, I've always wondered if Kim is actually mentally unstable in the way many people suggest. Just reading through the Wikipedia page, it seems that he grew up in Switzerland and loves basketball. He was said to be shy and unassuming. His half brother was always supposed to inherit the "throne" (probably there is a better word for it), but was caught trying to go to Disneyland in Japan and lost favour. Kim Jong-un was then made the hasty replacement.

According the the Wikipedia page, Kim Jong-un is on record as having questioned the lavish lifestyle he had. His then-ousted brother was actually downright rude suggesting that the Chairmanship should not be inherited but rather democratically elected (this from a Japanese news report I heard -- I can't really vouch for its veracity, but interesting if true).

I remember when Kim Jong-un came to power and there were reports that hardliners in the party really hated him because they thought he was too soft. When he took over, he did do a lot of thing differently, like going to a pop concert with his then wife.

But then, suddenly: His wife is executed. His uncle's entire family line is eradicated. His elder brother is assasinated. And we hear no more about Kim Jong-un's "softer" approach to running the country. Any time I look at video from about 2012 to 2016 he looks like a deer with its eyes caught in the headlights. Lately it looks like he's got his feet under him and I figure it's because he's learned how to play ball.

I don't know. Like I said, I'm really just being playful, but western governments like their "Axis of Evil". You need the mad, evil villain to justify whatever they decide must be done (Wikipedia page mentions an attempted CIA led assassination...) What if it really was the case that Kim Jong-un is as much a victim as everyone else. Forced to take power. Forced to execute his wife, his uncle, his entire uncle's family and even his older brother. The entire country really being run by a brutal bureaucracy that doesn't care who they steamroll. That would be pretty craptastic.

seanmcdirmid3• 7 years ago

- built a palace of ice in the desert near the capital, so people could learn to skate;

This doesn’t seem weird, they aren’t actually that far south, and are very inland, so winters should still be pretty cool even if arid. (And doesn’t anyone remember watching spies like us in the 80s?)

Thrymr• 7 years ago

It looks a bit like the CNN article was written after watching John Oliver's show (which aired August 11, the date on this piece).

lidHanteyk• 7 years ago

I did not expect to come away with a newfound suspicion of Guinness World Records.

Scoundreller• 7 years ago

Here's 23 minutes more suspicion from Planet Money if you like:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/20/552203402/epis...

With a bit about Georgia (the country, not peaches).

dmitrygr• 7 years ago

He showed up for the opening of the Summit: https://www.dailysabah.com/energy/2019/08/12/first-caspian-e...

xrd• 7 years ago

It really feels like the modern world should be able to expose dictatorships and their propaganda machines much easier than in the past. Is this an example of that truth coming out and destroying a corrupt state, or just the loss of oil revenues?

I always believed Tim O'Reilly's statements that sunlight is the best disinfectant but it seems like the propaganda machines are faster than the truth. Maybe "a lie is halfway around the world before the truth has its pants on" is more "truthful."

My mom visited this place last year and she talked about the marble palaces.

wmf• 7 years ago

It sounds like everyone has known all along what was going on there. But who's going to do anything about it? All their money comes from Russia and China who don't give a shit.

tmtempaccount7• 7 years ago

I wish someone gave shit.

Situation in the country is so bad that, over 2mln people left abroad to support their family.

Sick people go to Turkey, India to have proper treatment. The ones who can't afford dies or survives.

Government only sends students to "approved universities" which is overly expensive for average turkmens. (latest news)

davidw• 7 years ago

"a lie is halfway around the world before the truth has its pants on"

I also like the version of this known as the 'bullshit asymmetry principle':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr...

Sniffnoy• 7 years ago

Minor note, the phrase "sunlight is the best disinfectant" is due to Louis Brandeis. (Although, according to this webpage[0], it's paraphrasing an earlier statement by James Bryce.)

[0] https://aroberts.us/2015/03/01/where-brandeis-got-sunlight-i...

pjc50• 7 years ago

It went the other way: corrupt dictatorships started buying advertising, politicians, and media in the West. To the point that half the population now no longer know which way is up.

The Telegraph, who employ the Prime Minister, managed to get a push poll claiming over 50% support for suspending democracy in the UK.

Aperocky• 7 years ago

From my point of view the Jedi are evil!

inflatableDodo5• 7 years ago

managed to get a push poll claiming over 50% support for suspending democracy in the UK.

Also, they didn't, they are just lying about that -

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2019/08/no-mo...

seanmcdirmid3• 7 years ago

This doesn’t apply to the dictators of North Korea or Turkmenistan, who are still doing their dictatoring the old fashioned way. Heck, the authoritarians of China are still stuck using methods from the 1960s and aren’t expected to modernize until after Xi.

oh_sigh• 7 years ago

Exposing Arkadag and his propaganda will do absolutely zero to affect change in Turkmenistan. People don't follow him because they are lied to - people follow him because, as a general rule, for a little person it is almost always a safer, more lucrative decision to be on the strongman's side than against him.

The situation within Turkmenistan has been well reported on for 10+ years. It's not like the outside world couldn't know what was happening inside Turkmenistan.

dmix• 7 years ago

If you're smart and able leader as a citizen in that country you have three options: 1) leave to a better country (easy), 2) fight the system politically (really difficult), 3) ignore your morals and engage in graft directly as a politician or indirectly via enriching yourself via connections/bribes in gov as a private enterprise (semi-difficult since you're still competing with all of the less smart people who are smooth talkers or have entrenched/hereditary influence) or 4) violent revolutionary behaviour (almost impossible outside of external situations like war or regional conflict which can create the anarchy/power vacuums necessary for this to work).

1) and 3) are the biggest hurdles for these countries since most people never even try and just live their life. 3) is often the only path to any change as it continually generates new power players, while greasing the existing wheels as to not stop their momentum, and it's entirely possibly incrementally lesser evil people could take this route. Especially as education improve and economic difficulties create pressure on old broken systems/models which the next grafter might be less inclined to continue.

So if it's not going to be from the inside then it's only going to be external pressure - by other countries. Most foreign countries couldn't be bothered by a small, non-economically or militarily (state or Guerrilla) important country so few would make much of a risk intervening locally. Plus most of the surrounding countries in that region are very tolerant of dictators, so there will likely be more of the opposite pressure in the other direction, even if the west did care enough to counter it.

Then there's the whole immoral nature and high risk of backfiring of foreigners bumbling into a country without understanding local culture, glossing over the power of smaller ethnic tribes (unexpected if you're used to stable democratic government power), or often not building enough trust to legitimate offer the long-term commitment changing-seeking locals need to not face persecution later (as we repeatedly have seen in the Middle East and Africa for the last century).

It's a very difficult problem. A power vacuum after such a 'collapse' could work in their benefit. It could also just result in a worse situation depending on a whole bunch of circumstances. But it's still a better opportunity than hoping some smart guy tries to change the system from within, without getting chewed up and spat out first.

vkou• 7 years ago

It really feels like the modern world should be able to expose dictatorships and their propaganda machines much easier than in the past.

We can't even figure out the difference between fact and blatantly false propaganda in free nations, where you're not going to be killed or imprisoned for talking about uncomfortable truths.

What makes you think that people in nations that don't take such freedoms for granted are going to be any successful at this?

The fact is that when it comes to the marketplace of ideas, lies have no difficulty winning. Whether or not the truth prevails is a complete toss-up, that has more to do with the charisma of the participants, or worse - which version of reality serves the listener better.

JauntTrooper• 7 years ago

If you really think about it, sunlight is a terrible disinfectant.

derefr• 7 years ago

Eh, I dunno. Sunlight (UV radiation, mostly) kills a great amount of simple life. Admittedly, complex life (where even bacteria are "complex life", having things like cell walls and the ability to survive dehydration without DNA degradation) has mostly adapted to protect itself against the UVA and UVB found in regular sunlight.

But UVC (i.e. "sunlight from areas around holes in the ozone layer") is still pretty effective: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2018/06/uv-light-...

conistonwater• 7 years ago

Do you think maybe the phrase comes from a time before widely available disinfectants? Like before water purification plants?

matthewmcg• 7 years ago

I’ve usually seen the phrase attributed to Louis Brandeis in a 1914 book. He wrote of disclosure-based securities regulation: “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”

sb0572• 7 years ago

I think it's more of a case that no one gives a shit about some former Soviet wasteland in the middle of Asia that will never affect them (as far as they know, at least).

moksly• 7 years ago

Haven’t we become a lot less apt at exposing manipulation? There isn’t a history of what you see in your social media feed or in your search results, and there is no record of who paid for it to look the way it did on that particular day. Facebook and others offer a view into the total advertising spending, but not on what or to whom. So while it’s probably better than nothing, it’s really far from being transparent.

I’m not into the field of communication or advertising, but I know from our own communications benchmarking that Social Media campaigns work better than almost anything. We use it to raise awareness on his feeding ducks with bread is a terrible idea, but you could be using it for anything really.

Advertising has certainly always been damaging to society, but in 2019 it’s now also the strongest political weapon of anyone with money and interest, and it seems to be leas transparent than ever before. Maybe it only seems that way because I’m not old enough to know what it was like 50 years ago. But I do know that we don’t currently have the tools to out it to the sunlight, because the records and the data behind it are locked away.

roenxi• 7 years ago

It really feels like the modern world should be able to expose dictatorships and their propaganda machines much easier than in the past.

It is easier, but you might not have realised just how bad the situation was in the past. In the grand old days, propaganda machines were orders of magnitude harder to detect and challenge.

Consider how much we know about what is going on inside China in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet, etc, etc. Compare that to the old Soviet sytem where an academic could stand up on stage, say "This communism seems like a good idea" and be taken seriously.

I mean, even today, the American press on the left and right are both clearly running what are basically propaganda operations for the major parties. The easy availability of transcripts, raw recordings, etc, allow an interested denizen in a foreign country to peer behind the veil in a way that they couldn't 50 years ago.

emilsedgh3• 7 years ago

Coming from a dictatorship country (Iran), my personal understanding is not that dictatorships are not "exposed".

At least in my case it seemed that everybody knows whats going on. It's just that there are socio-economics in place that keep the balance of power, somehow, despite the fact that everyone is completely aware of the situation.

trilila• 7 years ago

It’s almost as if members of the society support dictatorships, making governments a reflection of those societies. I am originally from a former communist society and 30 years after communism fell people still vote strongmen in power.

tmtempaccount7• 7 years ago

Agreed. Turkmens never had a "united country" for centuries before Russians conquered (1880th). Soviet gave us "education" but, also made people more obedient to the government with strong KGB system. It is still running the country.

MaxBarraclough• 7 years ago

It really feels like the modern world should be able to expose dictatorships and their propaganda machines much easier than in the past.

Interesting timing. The most recent Last Week Tonight episode covers the Turkmenistan dictatorship.

tmtempaccount7• 7 years ago

Lately, I started to see a lot of activities on anti-government media. It barely existed in the country. Azatlyk was the only one.

Western media picked up (HBO, newspapers),number of social media pro and anti government "trolls" increased.

First time after the independence of Turkmenistan - singers, actors (the only influential people after president) talked about politics on social media channels (instagram, twitter). All of them had strikingly similarly outlined pro-government speech on "fake death of president".

heroHACK17• 7 years ago

Wow, I guess John Oliver's world record-breaking marble cake really did end up having an affect on things over there!

spookyuser• 7 years ago

After the episode I was hoping there would be a Wikipedia list of large cakes or something that would rightfully acknowledge their record, but it doesn't seem there is :(

phantom_oracle• 7 years ago

I always reference [1] when I see sensationalist headlines that end in questions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

droithomme• 7 years ago

Turkmenistan since independence has been a reclusive benevolent welfare state. They have universal basic income there, one of a small number of countries and states.

They are compared to North Korea but it's not a fair comparison since they threaten no one and their people are not oppressed. They are restricted, and strongly encouraged to pursue traditional tribal activities and eschew the western world. But not oppressed, despite outside claims.

The capital city's architecture is among the most bizarre and fantastic in the world and worth a visit if you can get in, which is very hard. You have to be invited to visit. Some tourism agencies can arrange this but it's not for the average traveler.

a2tech2• 7 years ago

Its far from a pleasant place. My wife and I had an exchange student from there and while she was a firm believer in the system (you don't get to leave the country without some serious trust from the authorities) but even she could tell you that buying things from the government shops was fraught with fraud, poor quality goods, and lines. Everyone shops at the non-government bazaars and you can buy smuggled goods there for inflated prices--but the goods are of a much higher quality than what you find in the government stores. You can also buy US dollars in the bazaar, which is what everyone does because the local currency (the manat) is essentially worthless and the value fluctuates wildly.

A 'fun' story about our exchange student and goods--she would save her pocket money (allowance, some small money she would make by doing errands for people) all month so she could buy a kg of Turkish salt. See the Turkmen salt you could buy in the store is made from the Caspian sea (distilling salt from the water) and their filtration is crap. So the salt you buy is brownish in the bag, and is filled with small rocks and other clumps of junk. So when you buy a bag of Turkmen salt, you have to carefully clean it before use. Otherwise you bite into your rice pilaf and break a tooth on a stone--which is what happened to her mom. Thats what finally pushed her to take the small amount of money she had and spend it on buying salt for her little family.

gingabriska• 7 years ago

All the things you mentioned, any exchange student from India will also tell you same and India is a democracy.

You can't hold USD in your account, government ration shops have corruption issue. Quality is also questionable.

It just tells you one thing that the US seems far better from their perspective.

mkl• 7 years ago

Do you have a source on basic income? The only result claiming such on Google's first page for ["turkmenistan" "basic income"] is your comment, and DDG has nothing. The following comprehensive-seeming Wikipedia article also has no mention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world

their people are not oppressed. They are restricted, and strongly encouraged to pursue traditional tribal activities

Sounds like oppression to me.

I don't think you need to be invited to visit - I know someone who went there last year. Unless "invitation" is code for tourist visa or something? Wikipedia only talks about visas, and doesn't mention invitations.

tmtempaccount7• 7 years ago

Government removed all "free amenities" such as electricity, gas, etc. It is paid.

Fuel was cheap before, you could buy 40 liters for 1 dollars, but know only 3 liters. For a common turkmen folks, it is very expensive.

There is no universal basic income in Turkmenistan.

You are right on oppression. Not threatened but indirectly (KGB) oppressed. In a level that people always "censor themselves" before speak.

grecy• 7 years ago

A <removed> nation ruled by an egomaniac. Is <it> on the brink of collapse?

I feel like we could use that same headline on a lot of countries right now, including the so called best ones.

AnimalMuppet• 7 years ago

Yes and no. Yes, it seems like a lot of countries are ruled by egomaniacs. Maybe this was always true, and we're just more aware of it now due to better media.

But no, that does not mean the countries are equivalently on the brink of collapse. While you could reasonably ask if the US or UK are on the brink of collapse, they aren't on the brink in anything like the way that Turkmenistan is.

adventured• 7 years ago

While you could reasonably ask if the US or UK are on the brink of collapse

No, in fact you can't reasonably ask that. It's a very unreasonable premise in both cases. It's hyperbolic.

There is zero risk of collapse right now in either the US or UK. Financially, politically, socially, militarily: zero risk of collapse in either case. Nations having problems doesn't constitute a risk of collapse.

To seriously discuss collapse in eg the US, a person has to take a problem that isn't remotely collapse-threatening (eg student debt or partisan anger), and amplify it artificially 10x-100x to mean the end of the world. The sort of headlines & stories that a site like ZeroHedge specializes in 24/7 in the financial sphere (the world is ending every day of the week there, the next great recession has been about to start for a decade now). In general it requires a very high level of avoiding using reason and logic to assess risk, and falling back to emotional-based statements derived from what are actually modest, controllable problems. The same is true in the context of the UK, brexit or no brexit.

checktheorder• 7 years ago

Ah, but most other countries don't share a border with Iran. Wouldn't it be a funny old coincidence if Turkmenistan's economy just happened to completely collapse, and the US saved the day with some generous aid packages coughandsomemilitarybasescough? A funny old coincidence.

ptidhomme• 7 years ago

Despite the downvotes, I think this is a likely scenario.

a2tech2• 7 years ago

I certainly hope not--personally my wife and I had an exchange student from Turkmenistan stay with us for a year and she lives in the capital and could easily be harmed by any sort of violent collapse. But even setting aside my personal feelings, a collapse in Turkmenistan could cause further chaos in an already chaotic region as hordes of poorly trained refuges poor into surrounding countries that are already struggling with their own populace.

xeeeeeeeeeeenu• 7 years ago

Note that the president is no longer hiding, just after the CNN's article was published, he gave the opening speech at the caspian economic forum: https://www.rferl.org/a/gurbanguly-berdymukhammedov-turkmeni...

tmtempaccount7• 7 years ago

Right. He did show up. But he wasn't healthy. It is told that his speech was recorded.

Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OerjiALcPq4

hamilyon2• 7 years ago

I cannot help but feel this piece is itself propaganda.

It is just too similar to what I see on TV and news on Russia every day: half-truth, scary numbers, lack of context, and general "look how bad it is abroad!" message.

Situation is order of magnitude more complex then it is presented.

nnq3• 7 years ago

...some parts of the world desperately need the modern equivalent of "regional empires", it's clear that lots of small nation states have a tendency to degenerate into these kinds of dystopias. Some Central Asian Federation could sort out lots of issues and drastically increase the quality of life and freedoms of such people.

The ironic things is that we seem to recognize it and try and do this exactly in the places where it's not really needed: take the "European Federation" ideal, it probably wouldn't be a net plus since almost all European nations produce basically functional states and provide OK levels of individual freedom. Otoh something like a Middle-Eastern Federation and a Central Asian Federation could solve a ton issues and really be useful. A bunch of mega-states would surely improve lives of people in most of Africa too.

Dunno why we're so taboo ridden and afraid to be open-minded when it comes to geo-politics on a planetary scale, we're stuck with these two horrible ideas of (1) independent nation-states and (2) general-globalism, that are neither any good, and we're totally afraid to think outside the box...

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topher515• 7 years ago

The primary goal of the European “Federation” is not to create a “better” super-state, but to prevent war amongst the states by creating a common economic dependence and by aligning mutual interests.

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nnq3• 7 years ago

Yeah... this is sort of a dangerous idea, constant but "restrained" (like in "let's be gentlemen and don't kill millions or hundreds-of-thousands, instead mostly keep it up to tens-of-thousands") interstate conflict was probably the catalyst for the rapid advances of European culture and civilization. EU needs to catalyze internal economic competition/warfare as a replacement of violent conflict imo, we're too addicted to some kind of violence to just go dry on it, so we need to move most of this violence into economy, culture, education etc.

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zyngaro3• 7 years ago

There isn't a single definition of empire in the dictionary that looks like something that would improve the situation of people living in those countries. Indeed there is an empire in that area of the world. It's called Russia. And speaking of empires, Russia isn't the only one. The U.S is an empire. Try to ask south Americans about it. We still live in an age of empires.

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nnq3• 7 years ago

I'm usually Russia-phobic, but would you rather live in Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan etc., or in Russia? And mega-states like U.S. and Canada and Australia clearly provide a decent standard of living and good wide labour market to thrive on for the people living in them...

And south American w.r.t. the U.S.: I'm really not that knowledgeable about geopolitics in this part of the world.

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chr1• 7 years ago

It's not really clear that large empires are better than national states: two nearby countries that ended up in an empire, xinjiang and tibet, are not really in a much better state, and the previous empire that contained turkmenistan, was pretty dystopian too, at least at times. On the other hand some of the national states that broke off from USSR are better off now, than they would have been if they stayed with Russia.

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benj1113• 7 years ago

So you're claiming the one area that has tried "federation" doesn't need it because they're all functional governments? Do you not think there might be a cause and effect there?

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nosestuff• 7 years ago

The word you are looking is Soviet Russia. It's not a panacea. European Union countries would likely be as developed if they were in a single market union. Governments have the control on the population that they can afford. Poorer societies are more prone to crime, less law compliant. Poorer societies can't afford a police state.

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agumonkey3• 7 years ago

Every month a country is said to be about to collapse.. yet none have done so.

Medias should resist the urge it seems.

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codingdave• 7 years ago

It depends on how you define "collapse". If you mean they turn into a dystopian image of burned-out buildings, and a population looking like the Mad Max movies, then no, there has been no collapse. (At least not on a national level.) But if you define it via metrics related to the economy, employment, healthcare, quality of life, etc... then you get a different story.

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agumonkey3• 7 years ago

there was Greece, then spain, I think I've heard Ireland at some point in time.. of course UK had its share of potential collapse recently

Venezuela is on the verge of collapse for a while now

now Turkmenistan

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threesmegiste• 7 years ago

West want a new country to destroy in the mask of freedom

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9nGQluzmnq3M2• 7 years ago

There was a recent article in Radio Free Europe claiming that almost 2 million people (a third of the population) have fled Turkmenistan in recent years:

https://www.rferl.org/a/escape-from-turkmenistan-almost-2-mi...

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deftnerd• 7 years ago

I know this might seem controversial, but I feel that dictatorships and monarchies give the possibility of multi-decade or even multi-generation projects that would otherwise be impossible.

Modern government gets replaced every few years, and each seems to suffer from 'not legislated here' behavior that makes them cancel slow-growth projects created by their predecessors (especially in times of financial crisis)

There are huge downsides to monarchies and dictatorships, but that's one of the few upsides that I haven't been able to see in Democratic systems.

With huge problems facing our civilization regarding our ecosystem and climate, the solutions might require multi-generational solutions.

Also, does anyone else think that a democracy might not work on a multi-generational interstellar ship?

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biggio• 7 years ago

Yes, true but it is only beneficial to citizens if they get a smart dictator. Not like Berdimuhammedov. I have the impression that he is a clown who doesn't know what they are doing.

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lkjhdcba• 7 years ago

This view is not controversial at all in HN where techno-libertarian crowds abound, and these are often adjacent to more authoritarian circles (see NRx/Moldbug et al.). It's also wrong. If it were true, modern democracies would not have built anything lasting more than 10-odd years since their inception. Multi-generational and even trans-national projects do exist, but perhaps they have been less publicized than other news and you haven't heard of them.

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Alinax• 7 years ago

It gives the impression that it can build multi-decade or multi-generation projects, but in reality it only works for vanity projects that are at the epicenter of the leader (and key players) as long as it is perceived as valuable to them.

It also tends to have a strong upstart, only to slow down and crawl to a point lower than democracies when looking at it in the longer span of time. Democracies and its derivatives tend to create a smaller varience between the ups and downs when it stabilizes while dictatorships tend to oscilate (read volatile) more, in part due to internal struggles.

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Turkmenistan on the brink of collapse?

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