Turkmen cultural identity
Turkmenistan is a place of collisions. Modern man colliding with ancient nomads, Turks colliding with Turks, Russians colliding with Turks, clashes with Persia, the constant struggle for survival in a terrifying desert, “democracy” butting up against ethnic rivalries and clan loyalties. Alexander the Great (HIM AGAIN) marched across the Kara Kum desert in 329 B.C. and left behind him traces of Macedonia and Greece. The ancient ruins of Turkmenistan reveal a culture filled with a fusion of different influences. Islamic, Persian, Hellenistic, Parthian … all sometimes showing up in the same damn building.
Now think about this mish-mash and beautiful cultural past, something actually to be proud of and embrace, and imagine Mr. Turkmanbashi insisting that, ACTUALLY, in the past, it was all about “Turkmenness”, and there was a homogenous Turkomen society back then when you could be proud of being a Turkomen, and Oh, if we could only go back to the good old days when it was JUST US TURKOMENS here…All fabrications.
There is no homogenous Turkomen identity. It doesn’t exist. In actuality, it’s something much more interesting, but it is too dangerous for Turkmanbashi to allow people to embrace it. He is counting on people to keep the flares of ethnic suspicion and hatred alive.
I will close with an anecdote, which kind of describes what I’m talking about here. Turkmenistan is NOT what you would think. It is a hot dry oil-filled Islamic country, but it is NOT Saudi Arabia. This anecdote is from Colin Thubron’s awesome book The Lost Heart of Asia. This encounter takes place in the ancient Turkomen city of Merv:
I saw an old man touching an elfin hammer to a little anvil. In front of him lay a miniature lathe and a box of gouging and chipping tools — all as intricate and fragile-looking as he — and with these he was creating miniature jewellry and the unearthly, silvery music whenever his hammer struck.
He lived here, I discovered … As I came in, he asked me to sit by him. Tentatively I enquired after the saints buried here, and wondered if he was their guardian.
His voice came thin and musical: ‘They were soldiers, martyrs. When? I don’t know, but in the century of the great sultans. Their history is written in Arabic and Persian. You can’t find it in Russian.’ He added in faint reproof: ‘People should learn the holy languages. You can learn one in a few months if your will is strong enough, and if your heart is right.’ He massaged his heart with a tiny fist. ‘Look.’ He rummaged among his tools and from a carefully beribboned cloth picked out a Koran in Arabic. ‘People should read this!’
Yet his own eyes twinkled over it unseeing; he could no more read it than I could. It was a talisman only. In the Stalin years a whole generation of educated Turcomens, the Arabic speakers, had been despatched into oblivion.
I took it from him and turned the sacred pages. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘From Iran. Sometimes they come here, those people, and from Afghanistan.’
‘You favor that system, that …’ — the word whispered like a secret — ‘fundamentalism?’
For a moment he went on chipping at the ivory in his hands. Suddenly I realized how I hung on his reply. Here, if anywhere, among the poor and pious, must be the breeding-ground for an Islamic resurgence.
But he answered simply, finally: ‘No. We don’t need that here.’ He jerked his chin to the south. ‘That’s for people over there.’
It was strange, I thought. Superficially the soil for fundamentalism was perfect here: the deepening poverty and sense of historical wrong, the damaged pride. But in fact the old man’s response was typical of his people. The idea of religion as a doctrinaire moulder of society seemed shallow-rooted among them, and their faith to thrive somewhere different, somewhere more sensory and pagan.
‘All those laws and customs …’ The old man resettled his grimy skull-cap. ‘They don’t matter. What matters is underneath this!’ — he plucked at his jacket — ‘What matters is the heart!’ … He said, ‘Our country’s had enough of other people’s interference.’ ”
Pretty wonderful, no?
