turkmenbashi is dead.
'bashi was a neverending source of bizarre antics. he did things like changing his name to "turkmenbashi" ("father of all turkmen"), renaming the month of january "turkmenbashi", writing a holy book, having the parliament declare him to be "god's prophet on earth," forbidding newscasters from wearing makeup because he was having trouble telling if they were male or female, erecting a gold statue of himself in the capital city that turned so that it always face the sun and claiming that the sun was actually guided by the statue, banning the use of gold fillings, and many many others. turkmenbashi was always fun to write about, except when you reflect on how horrible it must be for the turkmen people to live under a nut-job like that.
i have no idea what will happen to turkmenistan now. but almost anything is better than 'bashi.
registan.net is always the place to turn for all things central asian.
