About two weeks ago neweurasia‘s Annasoltan wrote her first-ever post for our old friends and partners, Global Voices Online (GVO): “Turkmenistan: Global Village or Village Behind the Globe?” I’m writing about it now to make sure that it doesn’t just fade into the background.

Annasoltan has become well-known for using digital culture and digital tools to explore Turkmen (and to some extent Turkish) social, cultural and political issues. True to form, her GVO post was prompted by an interesting discussion on social forum Ertir.com about American travelers and Peace Corps volunteers in Turkmen villages. She offers up a bevy of translations, making this post a rich with primary sources on nothing less than the anthropology of nationalism in Turkmenistan.

In turn, Annasoltan’s post prompted a really interesting reflection by a US Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Azerbaijan: “Whispers of the Village: Who Are These Americans?” A lot of the meta-commentary therein really jives with my own experiences, for example:

That these people are expressing distrust and fear isn’t strange. The concept of joining an organization to go live in the largely-forgotten villages of developing countries is a difficult concept for a lot of Americans to understand; even more so for the people we are living with. On my first day here at AccessBank in Lənkəran, one of the loan officers asked if I was FBI or a spy (I informed him that the FBI is domestic). A strong legacy throughout Central Asia and the former Soviet states is an understanding that foreigners are likely spies. You can imagine how this might affect one’s Peace Corps service.

If I ever write a second edition of CyberChaikhana, you can rest assured that this cross-blog conversation shall be included.

While literature in Turkmenistan is being celebrated on one hand, on the other hand, it continues to be unsurprisingly suppressed – granted this is a regime wherein media is completely controlled by the state and where there is a severe lack of freedom of expression via books.

This month, Turkmenistan hosted their fifth annual book fair in Ashgabat, with the motto “The Book – The Way To Cooperation and Progress“, where thousands of titles on science fiction, economy, culture, history and others were said to be found on stand.

A total of 9 dozen organizations and companies from some 25 countries gathered in Turkmenistan for the event. Of the foreign representation at the International Book Forum, the Russian Federation held a leading role.
Read the full story »

Photograph of chalkboard by Flickr user emdot (CC-usage).

Editor’s note: This school year in Turkmenistan is a special occasion, coming as it does 20 years since independence. neweurasia’s Annasoltan talks with a professional teacher in Ashgabat about education’s challenges under the Berdimuhammedow regime, from shifting generational and cultural values to corruption in the schools.

This has been the first full week of the new school year, but this is no ordinary year. Besides the surprise gift of laptops to first-graders, this also happens to be the twentienth anniversary of our nation’s independence. I think few other countries have undergone the kind of education incredible ups and downs that mine has — from centuries of [eriphalization, to Tsarist and Soviet mass literacy and establishment of universities, to the twists and turns of indoctrination and impoverishment since independence.

Curious to hear an insider's track on the situation for education today, I got a hold of Geldimurat from Ashgabat, a professional teacher. We began our conversation about this troubling statistic: every year there are about 100,000 high school graduates, but of these only 4,500 (4.5%) get a change to step in to higher education. Geldimurat remarks,

"Some people may not agree with me. I hear some people saying, 'Somebody eager to learn will find a way to learn, anyway. It’s up to a person’s will.' Therefore, a lot of Turkmen youngsters are participating in educational competitions between schools in order to be recognized, since the brightest learners get a change of being accepted into the country’s four universities.

"True, there is now the opportunity to go abroad to study -- during the Soviet period, the way to Turkey and to the West was closed -- and the numbers [of students doing this] are increasing every year. However, this is only an option for the better-off, not for ordinary people.”

Read the full story »

Before, it was Kyrgyzstan, now it is Tajikistan:

Today I had a chat with a friend of mine and she informed me that the authorities had told her 22-year-old relative that he cannot continue his studies in Tajikistan, otherwise his diploma will not be acknowledged by the Turkmen authorities.

At first I was surprised — are our students banned from Tajikistan of all places?! So, I did some asking around and also checked RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service (their story in Turkmen here). Actually, the surprise didn’t go away, but it was joined by anger.

Read the full story »

Translator’s note: Translated from Abulfazal’s post (RUS), which I thought would be appropriate re: Annasoltan’s Top Story.

Turkmenistan is actually not the first country to computerize its first graders: in 2009, it was Uruguay, where each elementary school pupil received a free laptop from the state. Turkmenistan, however, is the first among Central Asian states to care for its future Einsteins and Newtons. Until now, no country within the region has come up with a similar initiative.

Resource-rich Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan prefer to spend money on army enhancement, confining only a small portion of funds to academics by granting a few personal computers in order to create a thin public relations spin that “the state actually cares about the growing young generation”. As for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, they are too short of funding for something that is anyway assumed to be unnecessary.

Why is this a good decision for Turkmenistan? On the one hand, a laptop gift is the best stimulus for the start of an academic life, so the authorities’ will to introduce children to computer technology deserves approval.

On the other hand, it is not clear (and the Turkmen media do not indicate) whether kids will or will not have access to the Internet. The answer is pretty clear though — Turkmen authorities do not allow for free and unobstructed access to online media in general. But then again, would first graders really need unfettered online access at this stage anyway?

Last Friday, schools opened across Turkmenistan to some remarkable good news: according to official sources, around 100,000 first graders were provided with free Chinese-made Lenovo laptops. Reportedly worth 26 million USD in total, the laptops are said to be a “gift” from the President, which in turn is reportedly based on a grant from China. The laptops are intended for to be used at school only.

This is truly an ambitious project on the part of the Turkmen government — possibly too ambitious, since most teachers in my country have little in the way of computer skills (I wonder how computer literacy will be integrated into teaching traditional literacy). Nevertheless, this is potentially a huge moment for my nation’s history.

There have been rumors about this project going back to January. At the time, two users on Teswirler.com bitterly remarked,

T.R.: “Nothing should be free. Only education should be free. I also want to study in Turkmenistan, but free of charge. I am asking the authorities: Shall my children also have to pay bribes to study in higher institutions of education? I can pay the laptop myself, but what I need is free education.”

M.O.: “If there is that much money, it should be spent on computer labs, physics and chemistry labs and table tennis rooms to play during the breaks.”

However, Mergen, a computer developer from Ashgabat, stated his belief to me that the new laptops shall be key to helping the overpopulation overcome its native technophobias by shaping the rising generation. Actually, I’m inclined to agree with him, and in fact I think it may have other (probably unintended) consequences: the opening up of my homeland to the rest of the world.

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan have already announced amnesty in 2011. Particularity of Central Asian amnesties is in their connection to national holidays and outstanding events. This year leaders of the first three countries dedicate the pardone of prisoners to the 20th anniversary of their countries’ independence from Soviet Union.

Neutral Turkmenistan prefers to ‘humanitariarize’ the event, by dedicating it to annual celebration of Gadyr Gijesi, or Laylat al-Qadr (لیلة القدر‎ – the Night of Forgiveness), the anniversary of the night Muslims believe the first verses of the Qur’an were revealed to prophet Muhammad.

According to official Turkmen media, this year Gadyr Gijesi falls on 26-27 August, and prisoners will be released as early as needed to get to their homes and celebrate the holy event with their beloved ones.

“Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov instructed the relevant services to “hold this action with all due responsibility, in the spirit of the centuries old values such as compassion, humanity and justice inherited by the Turkmen people from the glorious ancestors, and to take all measures to ensure that pardoned convicts meet Gadyr Gijesi in their homes.”

Turkemistan.ru

Officials in Uzbekistan are silent — the so-called “Golden Amnesty,” dedicated to the 20th anniversary of Uzbekistan, will take place anyways, it’s not even doubted. The question is if political prisoners will be pardoned. Read the full story »

Editor’s note: neweurasia’s Annasoltan interviews a veteran of the Turkmen music scene to explore the last 20 years of artistic development — or un-development — in Turkmenistan.

Is Turkmenistan entering an artistic resurgence? Yes, if we were to believe the official media, in which even Berdimuhamedov has been shown performing a love song with an electric guitar. But what do my nation’s artists think?

I’ve done a lot of coverage about the interaction between the Turkmen music scene, the digital world of the Turkmenet, and our political establishment (“Turkmen on the Turntables”, “TolkunFM — a potential revolution in Turkmen musical life”, Pioneering the Turkmenet” and “Turkmenistan’s singers caught in a vicious circle”). Recently I had a chat with a middle-aged singer and composer, Annaberdi from Ashgabat, a real man of the “analog” era– the dutar. His account of the travails of the music scene in Turkmenistan over the last 20 years raises a lot of questions about not only the past, but a crisis of identity among our nation’s singers and musicians — a crisis fostered by economics, politics, and technology.

Read the full story »

Excerpts from Nima Khorrami’s blog on neweurasia’s partner-site Kanal PIK. We invite our readers to check out the full post by clicking here.

Whether or not the upcoming election [in Turkmenistan] will turn out to be relatively free and fair is hard to tell. Nevertheless, state’s call for elections ought to be welcomed with a sense of optimism given Turkmenistan’s urgent need for more innovative and critical thinking and thus reduced ideological restraint if it is to deal with its myriad social, economic, and political problems successfully.

[...] To be sure, current shortcomings have many causes and that it would be naïve to blame them all on the government. As part of the Soviet Union, for instance, Turkmenistan was tightly woven into a single system of “republics” creating various forms of economic and political interdependencies which have proven difficult to unravel. After all, the collapse of the USSR left a political vacuum that had to be filled by states without necessarily having the resources and the experience for doing so.

Yet 20 years of independence and not a single systematic approach to widespread poverty, corruption, and socio-economic mismanagement clearly indicate that there can no longer be business asusual in a country with the fourth largest natural gas reserves in the world. While officials have been determined to make full use of the rights and prestige given to occupants of high offices, they have miserably failed to fulfil their responsibilities as public servants.

As such, stakes are high for Turkmenistan. The rapid deterioration of infrastructure and the resulting decline in basic services will deepen poverty and public disaffection with the state. This could empower Islamic radicals and indeed bring the regime to its knees as was case in Kyrgyzstan in April 2010. Thus, upholding an even semi-democratic election is certainly a right move in the right direction since it could help to inject some fresh thinking into the state apparatus by enabling new actors to enter the political arena.

Editor’s note: Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov has declared satellite dishes a stain on Ashgabat’s cityscape — but is it just a ploy to curtail the seeping influence of outside media? neweurasia’s Tomyris thinks so. “Maybe satellite dishes are not beautiful for the eyes of those who love landscape,” she writes, “But [they] are as beautiful to the media guru’s eye as a mountain is to the hiker’s.

The news that Turkmenistan is converting to digital broadcasting and building a new television station outside Ashgabat seems fantastic for advancement in the country’s media situation. But, wait a minute, there is a catch – all private satellite dishes must go.

But why? Is it because they “adversely affect the architectural and urban planning shape [of] the country’s capital“, as President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov says, or is it simply a way to control information in Turkmenistan? The latter seems more realistic – if thinking straightforwardly via the Turkmen media context.

Check out the OpenNet Initiative’s Turkmenistan page for a thorough grasp.

On August 18th, The Moscow Times said:

“Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has ordered the removal of satellite dishes from apartment blocks in a move that could restrict access to foreign television channels in the country.”

“Satellite television is one of the few means by which residents of Turkmenistan can access independent channels in a country dominated by state media.”

Read the full story »