Intro
Turkemenistan, through the ages, has been known by many different names. The Persians, in the 3rd century, called it Turkestan. This name is still used in some of the books I have read. To describe the entire area. The Elizabethans called it “Tartary”. Which also is still used, on occasion. The notion of Turkmenistan, as a modern nation, is very very recent (say, 1991-recent).
Turkmenistan is 90% desert with vast quantities of oil beneath.
In the 10th and 11th centuries, the Turkmens (or Turcomans…it’s spelled differently in every book I read) started to migrate here from Mongolia. Nobody is sure why. Not even the Turkmens of today know why. These ancient people were nomadic raider types of the Genghis Khan variety. Very good raiders. Not so good nation-builders. Also, the landscape of Turkmenistan does not at all lend itself to any kind of centralized government. It’s just one big huge desert, with most of the population living in 5 oases, spread out, and disconnected.
In the mid 1700s, the Persians subdued the Turkmens (who had been continuously raiding Persia for centuries). In the early 1800s, the Russians arrived. A portentous event. They started erecting forts throughout the desert. The Russians wanted to break Persia’s hold on Central Asia, and they did just that. The Russians began warring with the Turkmens who, understandably, wanted them to pack up their damn forts and trot on back to Moscow.
In 1916 a Turkmen leader came along, the first one to unite this land, which was little more than a massive desert, scattered with tribes and clans who had nothing to do with each other. But along comes Mohammed Qurban Junaid Khan, who instilled in the Turkmens a sense of nationhood, a sense of pride…and they ejected the czarist forces and began a war with the Red Army. Quite a ballsy move, and doomed to failure. The Turkmens were nomadic farmers and wanderers. They were no match for the Russians.
The Soviets won, naturally. They immediately changed the Turkmen alphabet from Arabic to Cyrillic. They sealed the borders with Iran and Afghanistan. Stalin came along, and there were tons of purges and executions. The Russians began to “resettle” in Turkmenistan. The Soviet leadership needed there to be more Russians in these wild backwards Central Asian places, so tons of Russians were sent to Turkmenistan to settle in. The few educated Turkmen that existed were completely annihilated.
Turkmenistan became independent in 1991. But this basically happened against their will. They were forced to become a nation. Turkmenistan was the LEAST prepared of all the Central Asian republics to become a state. Statehood has always been an indistinct and abstract concept in this area. So the Turkmen people inherited a complete void. Which is a perfect situation for a power-crazed dictator to rush in and take over. This is exactly what has happened. A madman is now in charge of Turkmenistan, but that’s a story for another day.
