I expect the video will be interesting to outsiders for a few reasons. One is that it provides a window into our official culture and festivities surrounding political events, and shows how the president’s personality cult is at the center of everything. In an attempt to build a nation-state, like in other countries cultural traditions are adopted to legitimize a political process (2:12) (it’s ironic that the mere fact that an election was held on Turkmen soil is celebrated as a festivity) but take notice of the spiritualization of the voting ritual — and that’s what it’s become, an empty religious-like action — especially the chanting (3:43) and the creepy way officials speak in unison to the President and his father (4:02).

Another aspect is how the regime is willing to distort facts: near the end of the video (7:17) they claim that “international monitors observed the elections”, which is not exactly true. They are referring to the presence of so-called “monitors” from the CIS (including Belarus, that stalwart defender of the democratic process *cough). As is well-know, the OSCE and several other organizations didn’t even bother to attend.

“Election” officials in Turkmenistan are reporting that 96.28% of the country’s three million eligible voters have cast their ballots. As is well-known by now, the OSCE didn’t even bother trying to observe the poll, but the Daily Telegraph also reports that over the last two days, authorities had restricted entry across its land borders to foreigners and blocked many Western journalists from covering the election. Nevertheless, the ever-reliable RFE/RL reports at least one irregularity, albeit an anecdote, of a person voting for his/her entire family.

This election is only the third time in more than 20 years of independence that Turkmenistan has held a presidential election, and only the second time when there has been more than one candidate running. Berdimuhamedov won the first alternative election held in 2007, less than two months after Niyazov died. It’s hard to say what exactly the regime is hoping to achieve by this empty ritual. neweurasia‘s Annasoltan has come to the unsettling conclusion that it may just be an exercise in megalomania — seriously.

Personally, I wonder whether it may have something to do with life inside the presidential cabinet (insofar that we on the outside can know anyting about it at all). Back in 2010, IWPR reported that the key players in the cabinet are probably three Russians: presidential aides Viktor Khramov (who is said to be the engineer behind Turkmenistan’s ideology and chief censor) and Vladimir Umnov, and Alexander Zhadan, deputy head of the presidential administration. Due to their ethnicity, they cannot be president themselves — and they may prefer to be behind the scenes anyway.

Some analysts say that this troika is backed by Moscow, i.e., to secure its position in the natural gas market, which could explain how they’ve survived so long in what is almost certainly an unpleasant working environment. Now, I’m completely speculating at this point, as I know nothing about their working relationships and personal chemistries with each other, but considering the way in which Berdimuhamedov has been stuffing the government ranks with members of his tribe, as reported by both IWPR and a State Department cable revealed by WikiLeaks, perhaps the election was in some way a message to them, namely, that Berdimuhamedov is not powerless in what is supposed to be, after all, his nation-state. Conversely, they could have engineered the election to re-assure him of this.

Yeah, by airing these thoughts, I’m almost certainly eliminating my chances of ever being allowed to visit Turkmenistan in the near future… But on a cultural side note, apparently Berdimuhamedov appeared at an Ashgabat polling station accompanied by his father (who cast his ballot before the president, in deference to Turkmen tradition), his son, and his grandson, which is from what I understand a rare appearance of the Turkmen first family (note the lack of women in the small entourage; read this and this for background).

Ah, and the photos above are from the official Turkmenistan government website. As Annasoltan reported last week, everyday Turkmen were banned from photographing the election. Literally, it was deemed a criminal offense.

I would also like to draw the viewer’s attention away from the banners and at the context around them. If you look closely, you can see indications of the material impoverishment of my country.

The photograph above is from Ashgabat. It shows all eight of the official candidates. However, there are no posters or advertisements allowed that would show these men individually. By contrast, there are huge posters of Berdimuhamedov just about everywhere.

This banner is hanging over a veritable no man’s land. It reads: “12 February 2012 is the presidential election day!”

“All people to the election!”

And again: “All people to the election!” Naturally, this reminds me of the country’s Soviet past (“All power to the soviets [councils]!”)

Update, 9 February: A road scene from Ashgabat, the capital, with banners on a two way road: “12 February 2012 is the day of the presidential election” (left) and “All people to the election!” (right)

Update, 10 February: During a recent cabinet meeting, it was decided to prohibit the taking of photographs during election day. Indeed, the decision equated taking photographs to a crime! The situation remains deeply secretive in the country.

Berdimuhammedov riding an Ahal-Teke breed. Photograph found on a Turkmen social network.

Editor’s note: Is Turkmenistan’s upcoming presidential election really just a totalitarian ploy for false legitimacy, or is it something much more… pitiful? neweurasia’s Annasoltan gives her thoughts.

Speaking as a Turkmen, this upcoming presidential election makes no sense. Really, it doesn’t. I’ve been trying to think: maybe Berdimuhammedov wants to project an image of “modernization” to both international and domestic audiences? The Registan’s Joshua Foust has written:

The only real question [is]: By what margin will tyrant Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov rig the vote? [...] Inexplicably, Berdimuhamedov seems determined to proceed with the trappings of a normal election no one will acknowledge as such. At this point, the only question is what percentage of the vote he will choose to accept. Other Central Asian dictators have not shied away from impossible margins, such as Nursultan Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan (95 percent) and Islom Karimov in Uzbekistan (88 percent). Will Berdimuhamedov meet or beat his 89 percent from 2007? Will he go higher, to lend the appearance of inevitability to his oppressive regime? Or will he go lower, to try to create the false sense of political dynamism?

Foust’s a sharp thinker, and earlier in January, I also had the same logic as him, but now I’m not so certain. That’s because — and it’s hard to describe why — there’s something crazy about this election.

My countrymen may have almost no understanding of democracy, but they aren’t fooled, and a lot of them are thinking that this is just a waste of time. And yeah, one could think in really scary totalitarian terms. It could be as Foust says, that this is all just a way of squashing people’s sense of autonomy with “inevitability”, but that’s not what’s happening. Some people are already squashed, so why squash them any more? Everyone else is trying to squirm their way to some kind of freedom, as I’m seeing more and more of everyday on the Turkmenet, but also in their private lives, their jobs, their thoughts.

Or, maybe it’s mafia-style bullying somehow. Back when the elections were announced in the summer and Berdimuhammedov invited exiles back home, neweurasia‘s Schwartz felt it was a thinly-veiled ploy to capture and kill opponents of the regime. It’s true that over the subsequent autumn and winter, the Turkmenet has seen a lot of weird hacking incidents, but this has been directed mostly at the general population of Internet users. In terms of arrests, these have been focused on ex-candidates from the 2007 sham election.

What’s really going on? As I reported earlier this week, there are seven candidates running besides the president himself, all of whom support Berdimuhammedov’s policies, and anyway, he’s the only one whose campaign advertisements and speeches are appearing in the media and on the streets. And actually, it seems that at first he did not know how to even stage this sham, initially allowing all and sundry to register as candidates, then suddenly stopping that, only two months before the election, as though he couldn’t make up his mind or was negatively surprised by some people’s enthusiasm. I don’t mean to be rude, but it gives me the feeling of a little boy who’s made up his own game and is ambivalent about letting other people play, because a game without other players is not a game, but a game with players means giving up control.

My God, I’m afraid that there’s no real logic behind this election, sinister or otherwise. I’m afraid that it’s just an exercise in megalomaniac ego re-confirmation. Berdimuhammedov is running on a really creepy campaign slogan: “Dowlet adam ucindir” = “The State is for Man”. It officially means the state is at the service of the people, but in reality it means the opposite: all the people serve one man. Really, that’s how absurd this may all really be, that my people have been reduced to being funhouse mirrors for their “Arkadag” (“Protector”). If I’m right, it’s so, so pitiful.

A voting ballot for the upcoming election. Photograph by Adalat Seeker for neweurasia (CC-usage).

Editor’s note: Turkmenistan’s upcoming presidential poll is truly a strange creature. neweurasia’s Annasoltan reviews how it has evolved in the last few months, including the role of government-organized NGOs (GONGOs). “For a sham election,” she writes, “trying to keep track of [it] has proven really annoying.”

For a sham election, trying to keep track of Turkmenistan’s upcoming presidential poll has proven really annoying. For one, in early January of this year, our country’s “Arkadag” (Protector), Berdimuhamedov, declared his intention to establish a multi-party system. One wonders what exactly he has in mind.

It’s my understanding that in February 2011, several Turkmen citizens submitted party registration documents to the Ministry of Justice. Several of those who applied simply met no response, some of them were subsequently called into the Prosecutor General’s Office, where it was made clear to them that they needed to back off, and according to Deutsche Welle journalist Durdy Nazarov, at least one apparently was given a prison term for commercial fraud!

Also that month, Berdimuhamedov gave a forceful speech in which he boasted that he does not fear the members of the Turkmen opposition in exile, many of whom are former government officials. Incidentally, neweurasia‘s readers may recall how, shortly after the Abadan explosion and the role played by opposition-in-exile media on getting the word out, Berdimuhamedov invited dissenters back into the country so they could run in the election. The few who tried had the door promptly shut in their face — so much for no fear.

Then, in May 2011, Berdimuhamedov floated the idea of a “Peasant Party”, the purpose of which would be to “explain the essence of the agrarian state policy [and] provide ideological support to the ongoing agriculture reform”, in other words, Berdimuhamedov‘s agricultural reform (whatever that actually is). It sounds a bit like some of the pseudo-parties of “liberals” in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which are drawn mostly from pre-approved members of business or state bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, in the attempt to conjure up candidates for this election, Berdimuhamedov has turned not to his ministers and deputies, who would be seen as real rivals, but to second-rank officials from the country’s five provinces. What’s proven to be a headache is that the number of these candidates has inflated and deflated; it’s now at seven, not including the president himself. And by the way, they are all loyalists, declaring their support for Berdimuhamedov’s policies. The official online news site has praised their candidacy as the “way leading to democracy”.

Originally, three candidates from Lebap and Dashoguz provinces were announced. Later on, four more candidates were added from Ahal, Mary and Balkan provinces, thus having candidates form each province. Then, an additional seven candidates were announced, bringing the total to fifteen. Later, it was announced that of the fifteen candidates seven had not been nominated as candidates by the Central Election Commission because five of them had not managed to process their application in time and another two had withdrawn their bid to run in the election. Berdimuhammedov’s nomination came from his Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, the women’s and youth associations and the labor unions whereas the other candidates were selected by “initiative groups”. These groups, by the way, seem like mirages: countrymen with whom I’ve talked say they never knew such groups existed until this election, and they appear to be what’s derisively called “government-organized non-governmental organizations” (GONGOs), which probably means they were created for the sole purpose of manufacturing candidates.

Oddly, these “candidates” have all been announced less than two months before the election. That does not leave them enough time for an election campaign. But then again, the only one really campaigning is Berdimuhamedov. There are no rallies, no speeches, no posters, no advertisements, none of the trappings of a regular democratic election. About the only “pamphleting” going on is the distribution of official voting ballots in the Turkmen language (see: above photograph).

I should also note that all of the “candidates” are male. RFE/RL reports that a female schoolteacher from Ashgabat had her application rejected. It’s hard to say whether it was because she’s a woman or because her candidacy was supported by the Civil Society Movement, an actual NGO (actual in the sense of not being government-organized and government-sanctioned).

And yet, some of my countrymen fall subject to the illusion, or at least pay lip-service to it. I asked one young man from Ashgabat named Ilmyrat what he thought about the election, and he replied:

“When I see all the unfamiliar names of the other candidates, I would like to give my vote to our president because there is a lot of work to do, and in order to do them, he has to be elected one more time. Besides, our country is not ripe yet for open and democratic elections.”

“The play ‘s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” — Hamlet, Act II, Scene II.

Even fake elections can give strongman dictators a headache when ordinary people actually expect them to mean something. It’s widely expected that Turkmenistan’s elections would be just a pro forma confirmation for another five years of Berdimuhammedov, and the likelihood that he may be declared “president for life” in the near future is high. Yet, holding even moderately contested elections would give Berdimuhamedov some clear benefits, appearing “democratic” and demonstrating that he is in fact “the best for the job”. As it currently stands, though, it seems more likely that he wants to crush any hope for alternative by co-opting the very notion of democratic plurality.

But that’s actually the problem. Even though Turkmenistan is a single-party state, ironically, in a country such as Turkmenistan that has a record of rigged elections and a former president-for-life, too many votes for the incumbent president could cast a dark shadow over the legitimacy of the elections and not vice versa. The headache for our “Arkadag” (“Protector”) is that his “opponents” need to be strong candidates who could pose a danger to his rule. What’s key is not how to defeat his counterparts, but how to make the elections look real. When there is a ballot box but there are no viable candidates, it can become a nightmare for the man who wants to be seen as the modern leader of what he calls “the era of great changes” and in many ways different from his predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov.

Unfortunately, Berdimuhammedov likes the theatrical. You may remember his appearance as a singing star playing guitar on Turkmen TV? Or during a conference of the Galkynysh National Revival Movement, he gave a speech highly praising the achievements of that movement, only to then declare its termination in the very same breath without any reason? I wonder how much longer before my people are tired of drama.

Corruption in Post-Soviet Central Asia is something very familiar to people living in the region. Without bribing, one is destined to see their case be delayed for a long time, very often beyond time limits defined by laws.

Be it application for a new passport, or registration at a new place of living, or even finding a day care for your kid — bribing is the easiest way to get it all done faster and without a hassle.

Transparency International (TI) has released its annual Corruption Perceptions Index 2011 (CPI) that ranks countries/territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be. According to TI, it is a composite index, a combination of polls, drawing on corruption-related data collected by a variety of reputable institutions. The CPI reflects the views of observers from around the world, including experts living and working in the countries/territories evaluated.

This year Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have proved that they can also have stablility in something — if not positive and progressive, then at least something not really desirable by leaders of developed countries. That something is the abuse of public power.

These two countries are the ousiders of the index, sharing almost the same position with Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Myanmar, North Korea and Somalia. Basically, President Karimov and President Bardimuhammedov totally failed to show progress in their declarative measures to fight corruption in their countries. Being in the same group of countries, or even worse than some of them, is the best indicator of how promises of a happy life and sustainable development by those two dictators are nothing more than just a lie.

It should be mentioned that both Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are getting worse year after year:

The best position out of all five Central Asian republics belongs to Kazakhstan, which is closer to the highest point (on a scale of 0-10), and somewhere inbetween of Iran and Mongolia. Tajikistan is ranked the 152th; Kyrgyzstan is between Guinea and Yemen (164th).

Leaders of the index are New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and
Singapore with 9.5, 9.4, 9.4, 9.3 and 9.2 respectively.

By the way, CPI is also used by travellers to help them make a right choice. Thus, republics’ efforts to increase the number of tourists are in serious jeopardy.

Read impressions of travellers by TravelPod:

For crowdywendy‘s trip to Uzbekistan follow here.

For ricka‘s story on her voyage from Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan to Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital.

For markwilliams84‘s corruption story on Kazakhstan follow here.

For crowdywendy‘s corruption story on Kyrgyzstan follow here.

For jtroussier‘s corruption story on Tajikistan follow here.

ABOUT CPI:

A country/territory’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption there on a scale of 0 – 10, where 0 means that a country is perceived as highly corrupt and 10 means that a country is perceived as very clean.

The data sources used to compile the index include questions relating to the abuse of public power and focus on: bribery of public officials, kickbacks in public procurement, embezzlement of public funds, and on questions that probe the strength and effectiveness of anti-corruption efforts in the public sector. As such, it covers both the administrative and political aspects of corruption. In producing the index, the scores of countries/territories for the specific corruption-related questions in the data sources are combined to calculate a single score for each country.

The document explores problems of censorship and control of the internet and other new media in Central Asia. It focuses on the situation in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, where the authorities closely monitor and restrict the use of the internet and other communications technologies, filter and block access to undesirable online content, and intimidate and put pressure on websites and internet users who publish or share information that is critical of official policies.

According to the research, the authorities of the three Central Asian countries have sought to justify their repressive approach to the internet and other new media with the fight against ”extremism”, ”destructive” forces and other vaguely defined threats to national “security” and ”stability”. However in reality this fight is used as a pretext for implementing measures to stifle free speech and help preserve the governments’ grip on power. Broad and vague restrictions on access to and use of the internet and other communications technologies are in serious violation of international human rights law, which only allows for limitations on the right to freedom of expression in exceptional circumstances and in compliance with certain strict requirements.

Recently several initiatives have been made at the regional level in the former Soviet Union to regulate the use of the internet as part of the struggle against “extremism” and other purported threats to national security. Among others, an ambiguously worded draft “code of conduct” on “information security” has been drafted, and efforts are under way to create a joint mechanism to control social networks. These initiatives give rise to concern about enhanced regional cooperation undermining freedom of expression in the internet.

In spite of its proclaimed commitment to promoting IT, the government of Kazakhstan has created different mechanisms to monitor and filter online material. Access is regularly blocked to web sites that contain information that shows those in power in a bad light. As of October 2011, more than 100 web sites had been blocked for allegedly containing “extremist” propaganda, among them the popular blog community Live Journal. The online video portal stan.tv, which has provided independent coverage of the oil worker strike that is currently under way in the country, has been sued by authorities for allegedly violating health and safety regulations. Its journalists have reported intimidation and two of them were brutally attacked last month. The online news outlet guljan.org, which reports on corruption and other misconduct involving official figures, has been subject to invasive cyber attacks and one of its reporters was recently convicted on criminal defamation charges.

Turkmenistan is one of the world’s most hostile countries for internet users, with its monopoly state-run provider offering only a highly censored version of the internet. All online activities in internet cafes are recorded, while rates for private internet connections remain excessively high. New repressive measures have followed the July 2011 explosions at an ammunition depot, whose destructive impact the authorities wanted to hide. Security services have tried to track down internet and cell phone users suspected of reporting on the accident to the outside world; the website of Austria-based Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights was hacked after it published a set of stories about the explosions; and a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent who blogged about the events was imprisoned on trumped-up charges (even if later amnestied). A campaign has also been re-launched to dismantle private satellite dishes, one of the few remaining means for obtaining independent information in the country.

Aside from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan is the most repressive country for internet users in the former Soviet Union. It is characterized by a pervasive regime of online control and censorship: material that does not please authorities is systematically filtered and blocked. Email and cell phone correspondence by “suspicious” individuals is subject to surveillance, and participants in online discussions on politically charged issues risk facing harassment, as did a number of arbuz.com forum users, who were arrested in early 2011. The recent launch of a new social networking site by the state telecom monopoly has raised concerns about growing control in this area of the internet. Internet users who openly speak up on social problems are highly vulnerable to intimidation and harassment. Recent victims include two women human rights defenders who published online articles about shortcomings in waste management, the care of old people, as well as the implementation of a reform to promote non-cash transactions, the paper says.

Sohbet Kasymow was the surprise winner of Turkmenistan's first-ever Eurasia Star contest. Photograph from the Turkmen government. Click on it to see more.

Editor’s note: The Eurasia Star contest has been envisioned by its organizers in Turkey as a Pan-Turkic pop culture spectacle, but it’s been turning out to be a flop in more ways than one. neweurasia’s Annasoltan reports on how in Turkmenistan in particular it’s become a missed opportunity for direct democracy.

Turkish state television station “TRT AVAZ” is running the first-ever “Eurasia Star” song contest that covers much of the Turkic world, including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, and the Turkish part of Cyprus. Each country must select a representative to compete at the big international round later. Several countries have already completed their selection rounds, and as of this past week, Turkmenistan has selected its vocal champion: Sohbet Kasymow.

Who? According to the official government website, Kasymow is a fifth-year student of the Department of Theater Art of the Institute of Culture of Turkmenistan. This came as a surprise to many in my country, as the selection process seemed, I suppose quite ironically, totally without accountability.

A missed opportunity for direct democracy…

On 19 November, the Turkmen people were expected to vote for their favorite contestants. There were three finalists: besides Kasymow, Atajan Berdyev and Nuryagdy Redjepov. However, I think it’s safe to say that the majority of Turkmen had hoped that one of the popular singers Bilbil Orazowa, Bega or Palwan Halmyradow would win. It should be mentioned that only people equipped with satellite antennas, and therefore who were able to receive Turkish television channels, were even directly informed about the competition (and even among these, few can actually access TRT AVAZ); the rest of the country had to hear about it by word of mouth, if they heard about it at all.

The jury was made up of our government’s favorite singer, Annush Myratduryyev, the head of the Turkmen musicians that participate in official musical festivities, Kerim Ylyasow, and Burak Kurt, a TRT art specialist from Turkey. The candidates had to perform in front of them without the aid of instrumental music. The jurists then voted in a rather blithe manner, by saying simply “yes” or “no” to the candidates (by way of comparison, the annual national music competition, “Yaňlan diýarym”, is decided by a jury of ten people who vote according to a score range of 1-10; the audience, by the way, is totally excluded). Consequently, the contestants had no idea how well they performed vis-à-vis each other.

The vote for the victor was open to the public and conducted via sms. TRT AVAZ did not provide very good instructions for how to do this. I contacted them directly, but their personnel were unable to tell me anything, not even when the voting was supposed to take place. Moreover, no one was able to send their vote directly to the channel; the sms votes were instead collected and counted by the state telecom, Altyn Asyr, and the results then passed onto TRT AVAZ (who, when announcing the victor, very briefly mentioned the final tally). Although just for pop music, this was a lost opportunity to experiment with electronic direct democracy. There wasn’t any transparency to this process, i.e., to confirm that our votes were really obeyed — something we’re used to in Turkmenistan (although, funnily enough, sms-voting is also quite obscure even in American Idol).

Nevertheless, the competition has provided a unique chance for the famous and not-so-famous talents throughout the region. For some of my aspiring countrymen, this has been one of the very few international competitions they’ve been permitted to join, giving them a tantalizing taste of how it would be if Turkmenistan ever ends up participating in the Eurovision contest. And, of course, for everyday people it presented a unique chance for public participation. Perhaps this was all proven illusory, but I nonetheless hope that it will work out better in the future.

…and for Pan-Turkism

Eurasia Star is being organized by Turkey’s largest media group, but undoubtedly it’s proving to be a disappointment as it hasn’t met its target of becoming the Turkic world’s big pop culture event. According to sources within TRT Avaz, it’s been riddled with logistical problems in the arena of information, communication, coordination, and cooperation, not just in Turkmenistan, although our nation’s isolation and official paranoia only complicated matters further.

Turkmenistan’s official news site has been enthusiastic about the competition, and yet, strangely, it’s said not one word about it being organized by TRT Avaz, instead preferring to describe it vaguely as an “international event”. Also odd is the fact that throughout this process so far, there hasn’t been a single joint Turkish-Turkmen television program devoted to the competition. Yet, clips of the candidates were shown on the “Turkmen Owazy” music channel and over the equivalent Turkmen radio channel, while TRT Avaz showed the jury in Turkmenistan selecting the candidates. My own guess is that this was simply bad coordination on both sides’ parts.

As for the rest of the region, TRT AVAZ has not come up with an effective strategy for reaching out to our neighbors, with the exception of Azerbaijan and Cyprus, wherein Turkish TV programs are a normal fixture of media consumption anyway. Although Turkey actually has a lot of experience organizing international competitions, the country’s skills in this arena were not at all evident. The whole thing has been a bungle.

Editor’s note: The Turkmenet may be very small and very young, but it’s certainly developing at a remarkable rate, and not always in ways that can be clearly said to be good or bad. neweurasia’s Annasoltan explores the rise of hacking in this new space and its particularly Turkmen flavor. [The images above are proxy instructions for a Symbian-enabled smartphone from a Turkmen social site. Sensitive information has been removed from them for security reasons.]

Despite the Internet having so little penetration in Turkmenistan – somewhere in the vicinity of 1.6% of the population or 80,400 users according to the World Bank and United Nation’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) – already it’s exhibiting many of the hallmarks of a much more mature cyberscape, right down to hackers.

The cyber-attack against the Chronicles of Turkmenistan this past summer, not to mention the related e-mail sent to neweurasia, was quite an eye-opener on the Turkmenet’s rapidly increasing capacities for digital misbehavior (although Schwartz suspects that the hacker from that incident, “0fx0”, was a hired gun). Since then, there have been cyber-attacks against the personal accounts of several prominent Turkmen journalists and human rights activists, including against a close friend of mine.

However, far less dramatic has been the emergence of more “mundane” — but no less dangerous — forms of hacking.

Not long ago, there appeared a scoundrel on Turkmen social sites who seemed very adept at exploiting the peculiar policy and experiential conditions of the Turkmenet for some nasty personal – and perhaps political – gain. To begin with, he created a fake version of the former Teswirler.com site. To more experienced Internet users, this proved to be a classic phishing scam, i.e., a way to obtain the login and password data of visitors, but sadly, many Turkmenetizens, unaware of even the phrase “phishing”, fell victim to it.

In another post in Ertir.com, this same hacker employed another thinly-veiled phishing scam, this time around exploiting the fact that many external social networks like Facebook are banned or otherwise very difficult to access from within Turkmenistan:

”On behalf of TmDesign Group, we intend to open a new social site. As you know, Mail.ru agent in Turkmenistan has begun to show various failures and spams. We aim to open a site that would substitute Mail.ru [as well as] Facebook, Odnoklassniki and other social sites. We are collecting people for testing the site. Since work has not been finished, you could tell us our mistakes. You can connect with us through Facebook. If you have no Facebook membership, you can access us via XXXXXXXX. The URL address of our site is XXXXXXXXXX.”

And even earlier, this hacker launched what seemed suspiciously like an intelligence campaign against Turkemenet-based malcontents, real and potential:

“Hi, how are you? I just joined and hope to befriend myself with you. The reason I came is by no means coincidental. As you all know there was a shooting incident in Ashgabat between two men and the Turkmen authorities. They said that one of the men had died and the other was arrested. This is a lie! He was not arrested. If you want to see under what conditions Arslan has been hidden from the people [i.e., of Turkmenistan], check out the pictures that I have collected for you. I don’t want to violate the rules of this site by showing these photos here. I prepared a slide show; if you want to download it, the address is XXXXXXXXXXXXXX Share this link if you want to know what this government has done.”

Alas, over 500 Turkmenetizens took the bait and ended up downloading a virus file that overloaded computers with a flood of programs opening rapidly one after the other.

These incidents have made the Turkmenet a jittery place. One social site user recently put it very well:

“Imagine what harm an attack from a highly skilled programmer can inflict. It’s easy for a government to order somebody to do it for some money without taking any responsibility.”

The Turkmenet is by no means a “normal” corner of the Internet because of the unique conditions being imposed upon it from the offline world. The simple fact that there are no laws in Turkmenistan protecting IT user rights makes Turkmenetizens vulnerable for such attacks, and many website designers and managers simply lack the security skills to ward them off.

More existentially, though, the Turkmenet operates under constant fear of spying, and very rapidly there is growing awareness that the very tools which could possibly enlighten or even liberate our society might also be used to inflict terror and control over us, as well. For instance, the police can obtain the list that includes the names of people with Internet access. The authorities use IP tracking to locate Turkmen citizens abroad, and there are rumors that the authorities are collecting information from Facebook to spy on those of their citizenry who have managed to get onto the social network.

The eyes really are watching: recently, two third semester students were evicted from the Transportation Institute because of critical remarks they wrote in a Turkmen language chat forum.

However, not all hackers on the Turkmenet have bad intentions. I’ve seen users distinguish between “white” and “black” hackers, with the former trying to bypass the government’s heavy censorship on the Internet and who are ready to share their methods and tools for free with their fellow Internet users. Among these has been a hacked version of the mobile browser Opera Mini 6.0 adapted to Turkmenet conditions and nicknamed “Turkmen Opera”. It has in-built proxying, so the amateur Turkmenetizen doesn’t need to be a coder in order to use it. Similarly, there’s now a hacked Turkmen version of Mail.ru.

It’s an exciting time to be on the Turkmenet, as inspiring as it is frightening.