I’ve been waiting for this for years :yahoo:
This man was a completely despicable tyrant, and almost certainly insane as well. It’s rare when I feel glee at a person’s death, but this is certainly one of thse cases.
Hi brutal repression of all political opposition and immense interference in religious practice rendered him a blight upon humanity and mankind is richer for his loss.
It will be interesting to see who succeeds him. Turkmenistan’s constitution names the head of the legislative body to succeed the president - but he himself was in this role and somehow I doubt that having a corpse as head of state would work out too well.
But with no successor and potentially immense natural resource wealth - could we be looking at a civil was to grab the reigns of power?
Turkmenistan’s authoritarian president Saparmurat Niyazov, who ruled the Central Asian country for 21 years, has died aged 66, state TV has reported.
He was the centre of a personality cult with cities and airports named after him. He has no designated successor.
Turkmenistan has large gas reserves, but now faces an uncertain future as outside powers scramble for influence over resources, analysts say.
Mr Niyazov died of a sudden cardiac arrest, it was announced.
According to Turkmen law, the president is succeeded by the head of the legislative body, the People’s Assembly. But this post was held by Mr Niyazov himself.
His funeral is set to take place on 24 December in the capital, Ashgabat.
Deputy Prime Minister Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov was named head of the commission handling the funeral, state television said.
Last month, the president publicly acknowledged he had heart disease.
Analysts say Mr Niyazov’s legacy is grim: education, healthcare, society generally have crumbled under his leadership.
“President Niyazov was in effect the state and what he decreed on any subject, from politics, to culture to science, was absolute law,” says Michael Hall, Central Asia project director for the International Crisis Group.
His death will come as a psychological blow for most of the country.
“There has been an entire generation of young Turkmens who have been brought up in exactly this spirit, but at the same time there is an older generation who do remember what life was like before Niyazov came to power… But for a very large part of the population this will come as a great blow,” he told the BBC World Service’s World Today programme.
A mostly Muslim nation, Turkmenistan boasts the world’s fifth largest natural gas reserves as well as substantial oil resources.
“Turkmenistan has massive reserves of natural gas that a number of countries have been competing to get access to, including Russia, China and other countries, so I think there will be a certain scramble for influence with whatever government might emerge,” Mr Hall adds.
Mr Niyazov became Communist Party chief of what was then a Soviet republic in 1985 and was elected first president of independent Turkmenistan in 1991.
Turkmenistan’s map
During his reign, Mr Niyazov established a cult of personality in which he was styled as Turkmenbashi, or Leader of all Turkmens.
He renamed months and days in the calendar after himself and his family, and ordered statues of himself to be erected throughout the desert nation.
Cities, an airport and a meteorite were given his name.
Mr Niyazov was intolerant of criticism and allowed no political opposition or free media in the nation of five million people.
His laws became increasingly personal. It was forbidden to listen to car radios or smoke in public, or for young men to wear beards.
An alleged assassination attempt in 2002 was used to crush his few remaining opponents.
All candidates in the December 2004 parliamentary elections, at which there were no foreign observers, were his supporters.