In the eye of the beholder. Turkmenistan’s authoritarian president, Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov. Photo CC-by-2.0: Thierry Ehrmann / Flickr. Some rights reserved.
This article by Atadzhan Nepesov* originally appeared in Russian at Fergana News, a leading source of information on Central Asia. We are grateful for their permission to translate and republish it here.
In Turkmenistan’s capital of Ashgabat, a state campaign to dismantle satellite dishes atop multi-storey apartment blocks is coming to end. Nevertheless, the “plates”, as Turkmen fondly call them, remain popular across the rest of the country. In provincial cities and towns, even in the auls, tiny clay-brick settlements lost among the sand dunes of the Kara Kum desert, families keep one or two antennae primed at communication satellites Yamal-401 and Hot Bird. Despite barely understanding a word of any foreign language, these viewers eagerly tune in to Chinese, European, Russian, Uzbek and Turkish television channels.
