AP News, December 21st, 2007
Tens of thousands of people on Friday marked the first anniversary of the death of longtime President Saparmurat Niyazov, laying flowers at monuments to the autocratic leader and streaming to his mausoleum.
Niyazov, who crushed dissent in more than two decades at the helm of the natural-gas rich Central Asian desert nation he kept isolated from the outside world, died on Dec. 21, 2006, at the age of 66.
The personality cult he surrounded himself with was in evidence a year his death, as citizens flocked to some of the many monuments to the former Communist Party boss and filed into the family mausoleum in his hometown of Kipchak — part of a fountain-studded complex that includes Turkmenistan's biggest mosque.
"A year ago, the people and all progressive humanity lost an outstanding political leader and statesman," his successor, Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov, said in televised comments at a ceremony there.
Berdymukhamedov had urged citizens of the nation of 5 million the day before to pay tribute to Niyazov on the anniversary of his death. In a ceremony Friday, he repeated his election campaign pledge to follow the path laid by Niyazov, who called himself "Turkmenbashi" — "Father of all Turkmen."
"We will continue to consistently pursue the great undertakings whose initiator was our great leader Saparmurat Turkmenbashi," he said.
Berdymukhamedov has left the former Soviet republic's single-party system and powerful central control in place. But he has softened some of Niyazov's most draconian policies and taken some steps to open the country to the outside.
Niyazov, meanwhile, is mentioned with less frequency in the official media, and Berdymukhamedov has removed his name from a patriotic oath that was repeated in newspapers and TV news programs during his rule.
But after years of dominance in which he mixed oppressive rule and human rights abuses with populist measures such as free gas, electricity, water and salt, Niyazov looms large in the minds of Turkmen citizens, for better or worse.
"Turkmenbashi is like a father to me. Thanks to him, Turkmenistan after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. has not undergone a single conflict. Peace and calm reign," said Berdymurad, 55, a history teacher who declined to give his last name. "That is why today I am praying with my compatriots for our leader's soul to rest in peace."
