Central Asia’s Ghost City — Ashgabat, Turkmenistan

By: Luke Teague

Oklahoma City— Cities around the world are planned for a variety of reasons. This can be to build a suitable new capital, to better manage the flow of traffic, or to manage outward growth into the surrounding countryside. Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, is not one of those planned cities.

Instead, the urban core of Ashgabat has been completely redesigned since the fall of the Soviet Union. It serves as an exercise in vanity by successive authoritarian leaders of the country. It is littered with gold plated statues, towering monuments, and disused public attractions, built with the country’s immense oil and gas revenues. The city center is less of a functioning planned city than a showcase of what presidents believe to be an opulent and prestigious display of wealth to the world.

The country of Turkmenistan, on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, is a relatively new state, without a long national history. It is one of the five “Stans”, the Central Asian republics which gained their independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991.

Like several other states in Central Asia, Turkmenistan has primarily been inhabited by nomadic herders for the last several thousand years, with only a few historic urban centers that served as hubs of the Silk Road throughout the area.

Ashgabat, is also a relatively new city in such an ancient region, having been established as a fortification by Russian soldiers in 1881. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Turkmenistan declared independence, with Ashgabat being kept as the capital of the new republic. The country’s first president post-independence was Saparmurat Niyazov, the corrupt and eccentric former head of the Turkmen Communist Party.

Niyazov, who renamed himself “Turkmenbashi”, or father of the Turkmen, was the center of a legendary cult of personality, and ruled Turkmenistan until his death in 2006. His cult ranged from writing a book of personal musings that became required reading for every Turkmen, to changing the names of months of the year. For example, changing January to Turkmenbashi, and April to Gurbansoltan; the name of his mother (which he also did to the Turkmen word for bread).

Turkmenbashi had grand plans to remake the capital in his own image, desiring to use the country’s oil and gas wealth to make Ashgabat a beautiful, planned city. Naturally, this included many monuments to the country he led, as well as to himself.

One of the most famous is the Neutrality Monument, which was the tallest structure in the country upon completion, and it was capped with a gold-plated statue of Turkmenbashi himself, which rotated to always face the sun.

*Asghabat’s Neutrality Monument stands in the city’s center Cr: Martin Munneke*

Aside from the numerous monuments, Turkmenbashi also began a sweeping urban redevelopment project which completely changed the appearance of the city center. Beginning in 2004, the Turkmen government began evicting thousands of people throughout the city without compensation, to begin the construction of a massive planned development.

This saw the construction of landscaped boulevards, and the construction of numerous hotels, luxury apartments, palaces, and government offices in the city center. In 2013, this earned Ashgabat the dubiously prestigious Guinness World Record for most white marble buildings in a city.

*Ashgabat now has 543 marble buildings, the columned structures lining the main avenues Cr: Richard Fejfar*

Despite conducting an anti-religion campaign throughout his reign, which saw the destruction of numerous mosques and churches, Turkmenbashi also directed the construction of the largest mosque in Central Asia outside the Ashgabat city center.

The mosque, which opened in 2004, can hold 10,000 people, but is rarely visited by observant Muslims, as it is seen as being a state-controlled religious center.

The walls of the mosque don’t just have inscriptions from the Quran, but also quotes from Turkmenbashi’s aforementioned book of wisdom, which he declared would guarantee Turkmen citizens places in heaven if they read it multiple times, as that wisdom had been revealed to him after he spoke with God personally.

Following Turkmenbashi’s death, rule passed to Gerbanguly Berdimuhamedov, Turkmenbashi’s former Vice President, and following his election in 2007, has never been reelected with less than 97% of the vote.

Like his predecessor, he has also developed a cult of personality around himself, as depicted in a much-watched Last Week Tonight segment from 2019. And like his predecessor, shares a penchant for eccentric additions to the Turkmen capital.

In 2017, Berdimuhamedov opened the first golf course in Turkmenistan, designed by golf legend Jack Nicklaus for an undisclosed amount of money outside of Ashgabat. Berdimuhamedov opened the course by allegedly shooting a hole in one and coming in well under par.

This course, likely costing millions, let alone the huge amounts of water for the upkeep of the grass in the arid Turkmen desert, generally sits unused. In a country where there is no indigenous golf culture, and the course is primarily used by visiting oil executives from Western countries.

He has also continued the building campaign of ornate construction in and around the capital. In 2016, the new, $2.5 billion terminal was opened at Ashgabat International Airport.

In the shape of an eagle, the huge facility can handle up to 14 million passengers a year. As of 2016, it only had traffic of 1.3 million; comparable to American airports such as Columbia, SC, and the Bluegrass Airport in Lexington, KY.

The Ashgabat International Airport replaced the older, Niyazov Airport that was built in 1994 Cr: Polimeks Construction

The airport was built in conjunction for the 2017 Asian Indoor Games, which was hosted in Ashgabat, and was supposed to be a PR victory for the Turkmen regime.

In preparation, up to 20,000 “unsightly” homes were demolished to make way for a $5 billion Olympic Village for the competitions. This project included hotels, a 45,000 seat stadium, and numerous other buildings in the planned community.

Much like other purpose-built sporting villages in countries like Brazil and South Africa, now sits largely derelict in the aftermath of the 10 day international games.

Other distinctive constructions dating from the start of Berdimuhamedov’s rule also dot the Ashgabat skyline these days. These include the world’s largest indoor ferris wheel, the world’s 5th largest flagpole (surprisingly, dwarfing any in the US), and the largest fountain structure in the world.

Not to be outdone by his predecessor, in 2012 Berdimuhamedov commissioned a massive gold plated statue of himself riding a horse, atop a giant marble pedestal.

Reports of this new Ashgabat all share one thing in common: the unique emptiness one feels in the Turkmen capital. Whether from the displacement of tens of thousands of residents to make way for the marble facades and landscaped thoroughfares, or to stay away from the ever-present Internal Troops guarding the government buildings and public areas, the core of the city is purported to seem deserted at times. The capital of the nation, and the great monument to two men’s vanity is a strikingly distinctive ghost city.