Arkadag: President, Protector and DJ

[topum]

Ok, we are trying to get a visa to visit Turkmenistan this summer on our way to Kamchatka. Oh my, I wonder why everyone keeps talking about North Korea but you never hear about Turkmenistan. I guess it is because they don't have nuclear weapons there. But it is up there with North Korea if not more bizarre. I am fascinated.

The visa is super hard to get though, they have over 90% rejection rate. I will have to write a separate post summarising my research on Turkmenistan now, the place sounds surreal. The president is called Arkadag which means "protector". They renamed the months of the year and they have the names of the (former) president's relatives now I think. I need a separate post for this.

Oh and "The Protector" likes to DJ too. Here he is. You might consider clapping enthusiastically while watching this, they tend to shoot everyone who doesn't.

Comments

[topum.livejournal.com]

That's what I would love to do, talk to at least a couple of people there if they let me in.
Some of the things he did were downright crazy, like closing down universities, making people change their dental crowns (he did't like the ones they traditionally used), only allowing blue tinted windows, banning opera, trying to rewrite the constitution so that it is all his poetry, banning most of the internet, mandating what people must and cannot wear, making everyone buy his new official photo twice a year which they had to hang everywhere, etc ,etc. At certain point people must have thought, OK he is just insane, this just cannot go on. And at that stage to stay in power dictators usually have to go the concentration camps route. It does not seem to have happened there.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Wow. I had no idea it was that crazy. I only knew about a few things.