A mere human shall not cast his miserable shadow upon great palaces.

June 6, 2016 12:33 PM

“Where are all the people?” – this question often arises when people see photos of the white-marbled capital of Turkmenistan. Indeed, new Ashgabat looks empty. Huge new buildings lined with marble, wide avenues, parks, gardens, fountains are all there, but there are no people in the city. Ashgabat is divided into two parts – old town and new town. City of the living and the city of the dead.

Ashgabat: the city of the living and the city of the dead
posted by griphus (47 comments total)

I mean, this makes Where's Waldo a hell of a lot easier.
posted by beerperson at 12:45 PM on June 6, 2016 [9 favorites]

“People are busy and do not loaf about!”

This place sounds like a planet Jack Vance would have dreamed up for his protagonist to stumble upon.
posted by selfnoise at 12:50 PM on June 6, 2016 [13 favorites]

It's sort of like living in an abandoned Second Life sim, without the sex jacuzzis and ability to fly
posted by theodolite at 1:22 PM on June 6, 2016 [11 favorites]

Wikitravel Guide to Ashgabat: "Don't go to Ashgabat"

Lonely Planet Guide to Ashgabat: "Planet's not that lonely."

Let's Not Go Ashgabat
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:26 PM on June 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

Wow. This makes Dubai look nice.
posted by Damienmce at 1:34 PM on June 6, 2016

Wow. Amazing article. I'm still processing it all, and will probably go back and read the others. I know you can't really tell from this small a sample and pictures at a park on a nice day, but the people all seemed a lot happier than you'd expect in pictures of a repressive regime. So hopefully their quality of life is still good overall.
posted by Mchelly at 1:52 PM on June 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

Wow, never thought I'd see a city that makes Pyongyang look lively and vibrant.
posted by Itaxpica at 2:02 PM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is excellent. Can't wait for the next installment.
posted by putzface_dickman at 2:26 PM on June 6, 2016

oh. I looked at the date. Here is the rest of it.
posted by putzface_dickman at 2:30 PM on June 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

that is one hell of a photo essay. got several wows from me.
posted by oog at 2:47 PM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

What that city needs is a big multi-day outdoor rock festival.
posted by ardgedee at 3:35 PM on June 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

I really enjoyed that, thanks.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 3:57 PM on June 6, 2016

I didn't enjoy it at all. But the pictures and story were great and I learned lots and I hope that old Ashgabat survives. And I hope freedom comes to central Asia.
posted by ambrosen at 4:08 PM on June 6, 2016

It's like a cautionary tale about what would happen if the president of the local Home Owners Association board were actually given the absolute dictatorial powers they crave.
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:31 PM on June 6, 2016 [34 favorites]

The contrast between the "city of the dead" and the "city of the living" is amazing. Both cities are built in a collectivist style, but the older city is constructed on a more human scale and has been around long enough to be extensively modified by its inhabitants. I'm struck in particular by the forest of satellite dishes and all the private entryways and back yards. People have literally carved their own individual spaces out of the government imposed collective identity.
posted by Kevin Street at 4:41 PM on June 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

A post-Soviet Muscovite Russian touring post-Soviet Turkmenistan. It's amazing. Some of his commentary has a "I grew up in the ruins of what you are building here" vibe to it if that makes any sort of sense.

The one good thing I will say about the architecture is the streetlamps. A waste of money? Yes. But I really like the idea of every street having it's own lamp shape, particularly abstract ones, because in a human scale city people would develop their own nicknames for the shapes, associations, and shibboleths around them.
posted by Grimgrin at 5:04 PM on June 6, 2016 [7 favorites]

Amazing post.
posted by latkes at 5:47 PM on June 6, 2016

> that is one hell of a photo essay.

Sure is, the pictures are amazing, but I had to back out after a while because I could feel my soul draining away. Great post, will give me nightmares.
posted by languagehat at 5:55 PM on June 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

I couldn't finish this.
posted by kafziel at 6:51 PM on June 6, 2016

Wow, I had to go on to the other essays. This rabbit hole goes all the way down.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:55 PM on June 6, 2016

“You can’t walk through here!” a livid policeman in green uniform yells out.

“Why not? Is this a forbidden area?”

“No, this is the city center!”

“Can’t you walk through the city center here?”

“People usually don’t!”

“What do they do? Why they can’t walk here?”

“People are busy and do not loaf about!”

This cop could not understand that someone may want to take a walk through the streets.

That exchange could happen in a lot of U.S. communities.
posted by gimonca at 7:31 PM on June 6, 2016 [11 favorites]

Yeah, but you're unlikely to encounter some armed yahoo neighborhood watch cop-wannabe in Turkmenistan.
posted by sudogeek at 7:46 PM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

The Central Asian countries are fascinating, I really need to find a good current book or books.
posted by bongo_x at 7:49 PM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

“Where did you receive your visa?” he asked me, studying the protective watermarks of the green sticker under the magnifying glass.

“5 minutes ago in the window next to yours,” I answered, yet the visa itself said it was issued at the airport.

i love the smell of totalitarian bureaucracy in the morning
posted by poffin boffin at 8:09 PM on June 6, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm getting deja vu, because if this is not exactly how Malaysia's administrative capital looks like. And I won't be surprised if Turkmenistan was inspired by this as well -- there's a lot of positive* feelings about Mahathir Mohamad in the global South, especially from these Central Asian countries.

*heh. i'm under-describing.
posted by cendawanita at 9:23 PM on June 6, 2016

If you want to get real, real depressed, check out official state-owened Turkmen TV here. 18 students sitting at three tables, all reading the same single page of a book for 30 minutes, never turning the page. A proud male student recites a poem to the camera while his female counterpart sits next to him, reading the page of previous. Ministers stand in front of maps that look indecipherable, all with 5 off colors denoting different areas of Turkmen states. The camera cuts to the president. In one moment, he is smiling a the industry of his ministers working for the state. Then he looks serious. He starts lecturing, but we do not hear what he is saying behind the monotone narration of the announcer. As the president commands, his ministers stare at a book and transcribe his wisdom with a pen, nodding as they do. Other channels show nothing but the same shots of 'New Ashgabat' again and again.

I am always shocked at the enthusiastic obsession the West has with North Korea while Turkmenistan's attempts to hide its totalitarianism succeed.
posted by Theiform at 9:27 PM on June 6, 2016 [5 favorites]

I was so relieved when the photos started to show real people. Up until then, I was convinced that I was looking at the 3D renders of a digital art student who hoped to get work in the videogame industry.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:31 PM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

If you want to get real, real depressed, check out official state-owened Turkmen TV here.

When I clicked it it was a cartoon of a boy and a dog on a hovercraft recusing a cat on a hovercraft, and then the dog and the cat ride a skateboard to get a bath or something.
posted by bongo_x at 9:47 PM on June 6, 2016

From his latest entry dated 1 June:

First of all, they've banned my blog on their territory of course, I mentioned that already. Then strange events began to unravel. The Turkmen leader issued a decree regulating the activities of the foreign media in Turkmenistan. The text is not published openly. New prohibitions appeared. My acquaintances from there tell me that some functionaries lost their jobs in the government, some were reprimanded. Coincidence ? Don't think so.

Scroll down to below the pictures, there are excerpts from Turkmeni media accusing him of working for the FSB among other things. Fair warning: He also outs several of his social media critics and posts pictures of them.
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 10:43 PM on June 6, 2016

. Interesting article, but depressing. The old city is a place that I would enjoy visiting and meeting with people. The new city is just weird. What a waste.
posted by BlueHorse at 11:27 PM on June 6, 2016

I'm getting deja vu, because if this is not exactly how Malaysia's administrative capital...

Add Burma's Naypyidaw to the list.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 1:57 AM on June 7, 2016

The resources used to create those facades are staggering. I am reminded of the ghost cities of China. There is something very weird and 21st century about creating these vast shining Land of Oz movie sets in which humans simply don't belong. It's deeply troubling.
posted by kinnakeet at 2:37 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

The ghost cities of China seem to be more the result of speculation gone awry (they built it, but they didn't come). Ashgabat is more the result of the severe dysfunction that happens when resources are distributed at the whims of an absolute dictator whom, by definition, nobody is going to contradict or even question. It's basically like Neverland, only with serfs.
posted by acb at 3:08 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

Ashbagat was also once home to the Neutrality monument , which was a golden statue of Niyazov that was on a rotating platform such that his face would always be illuminated by the sun.
posted by Karaage at 3:51 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've been to Ashgabat. It's pretty much a Potemkin Village on an epic scale; as that photo essay notes, many of the shops and offices are facades concealing vacant buildings. I was told that on some of the major roads (e.g. ones that visitors are likely to be driven along) this is even more blatant, with only the frontages visible from the road being properly finished.

I'm impressed at how many photos the author of that piece got, although perhaps being Russian he was better able to pass for a local (although apparently the Russian community, having been imported by Stalin, has had a rather hard time since the collapse of the USSR). For most visitors (and getting to visit the country at all is difficult) the experience is that the ubiquitous and numerous police will take a keen interest in anyone with a camera. Most of the pics I got were from a moving car, or the balcony of one of the restaurants that cater to visitors.
posted by Major Clanger at 3:53 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

A small hopeful change was that his successor saw fit to dismantle it.

Well, in so far as Berdimuhamedow has replaced the truly ridiculous and over-the-top cult of personality under his predecessor Turkmenbashi (which included, for instance, renaming April after his mother) with a merely overbearing and oppressive cult of personality, I suppose so. The improvement is mainly that there is no longer a veneer of almost comical silliness distracting from the grotesquely totalitarian dictatorship beneath.

The BBC comedy-drama The Ambassadors was set in a country so blatantly based on Turkmenistan that I'm surprised they even changed the name. I have it on good authority that everything it depicts about life as a diplomat there is true, but toned down because the reality would be unbelievable even as dark comedy.
posted by Major Clanger at 4:07 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

Major Clanger: "which included, for instance, renaming April after his mother"

I am suddenly struck with the image of modern heads of states in English-speaking countries announcing that they are changing names of months after loved ones. "From now on, the fourth month of the year shall be called April, after my wife, April Thompson." "I decree that the sixth month shall now be named June, after my wife, June Cleaver." "Henceforth, we shall call the fifth month of the year May, after Aunt May, who took care of me after the death of my parents."
posted by Bugbread at 4:18 AM on June 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also, has Turkmenistan always used the Latin alphabet, or did they change from Cyrillic after the collapse of the USSR? (I'm guessing their orthography may be based on post-Ataturk Turkish.)
posted by acb at 4:19 AM on June 7, 2016

I am suddenly struck with the image of modern heads of states in English-speaking countries announcing that they are changing names of months after loved ones..."Henceforth, we shall call the fifth month of the year May, after Aunt May, who took care of me after the death of my parents."

So, which country gets President Spider-Man?
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:58 AM on June 7, 2016

It's so strange that totalitarian regimes all converge on such similar architecture, as if a propensity for gigantic, gaudy white stone monstrosities is somehow embedded in human DNA.

But then, why not? Even ants build towers, and we don't doubt that those are ultimately emergent from ant DNA.

The pictures are terrific, much lovlier than necessary to make the point. And while much of the architecture is cheesy and bizarre, some of it it also amazing and beautiful. The street lamps! That silly book-building! The deco bird air terminal, like some BioShock fever dream!
posted by Western Infidels at 6:31 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

> Also, has Turkmenistan always used the Latin alphabet, or did they change from Cyrillic after the collapse of the USSR?

To quote Wikipedia:

At the start of the 20th century, when Turkmen first started to be written, it used the Arabic script, but in 1928 the Latin script was adopted. In 1940, the Russian influence in Soviet Turkmenistan prompted a switch to a Cyrillic alphabet, and a Turkmen Cyrillic alphabet (shown below in the table alongside the Latin) was created. When Turkmenistan became independent in 1991, president Saparmurat Niyazov immediately instigated a return to the Latin script. When it was first reintroduced it was supposed to contain some rather unusual letters, such as the pound (£), dollar ($), yen (¥), and cent signs (¢), but these were later replaced by more orthodox letter symbols.

posted by languagehat at 6:49 AM on June 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

OK, now I'm intrigued by which other languages have been formally written in more than one alphabet over history. Obviously there's the language spoken in Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia, which I guess is the oldest wholly alphabetic written language which can use more than one alphabet, but I know Romanian and Turkish were initially written in Cyrillic & Arabic especially, but are now both Latin.

Is Turkmen the only language with 3 historic alphabetisations, though?
posted by ambrosen at 3:25 PM on June 7, 2016

The languages in the Malay archipelago of Southeast Asia (eg Indonesia and Malaysia) also has a similar trajectory as well. Indian script (not sure which one) back when it was a mostly animist-Hindu-Buddhist region, Arabic script when Islam arrived and adopted by the royal houses and finally Roman script with the advent of European colonisation. In fact, Arabic script or Jawi is still in use, but very limited in practice -- in Malaysia it's because it was decided that it is only necessary for Muslims to learn it.
posted by cendawanita at 6:59 PM on June 7, 2016

> Is Turkmen the only language with 3 historic alphabetisations, though?

Far from it; the same changes were imposed on all the Central Asian languages in the Soviet period (here's a brief rundown, and here's a Language Log post with more background and detail). There were plans to latinize Korean... and even Russian itself! Mongolian has also had quite a collection of writing systems.
posted by languagehat at 9:38 AM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Languagehat, correct me if I'm wrong on this, since you're the language guy: Even if Korean had been latinized, that would just make two alphabets (hangul and latin script) since Chinese isn't an alphabet, it's a logogram, right? Or did Korea have another alphabet at some point?
posted by Bugbread at 6:14 PM on June 8, 2016

Wow. I mean, so beautiful and so creepy at the same time. Like some kind of architectural uncanny valley. Like a special effect.

Not everything is about American politics I know... But I can't help thinking of Donald Trump's aesthetic preferences, and how much he would love to be in a position to impose them like this.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:46 AM on June 9, 2016

> Languagehat, correct me if I'm wrong on this, since you're the language guy: Even if Korean had been latinized, that would just make two alphabets (hangul and latin script) since Chinese isn't an alphabet, it's a logogram, right? Or did Korea have another alphabet at some point?

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to imply Korean had multiple alphabets, I just thought it was amazing that there had been a plan to latinize it and got carried away!
posted by languagehat at 9:17 AM on June 9, 2016