Long Live Turkmenistan!

One of the countries I did not visit in Central Asia is Turkmenistan. It sounded like one of the wackiest countries in the world with a very active personality cult for their leader, Turkmenbashi (Head of the Turkmen) or Saparmurat Niyazov. The personality cult included only government run bookstores that sold little besides books written by him, cities, seaports and many other things named after him (including a meteorite!) If you want to get an idea for just how weird the country is, read Lonely Planet's Central Asia book in the section about Turkmenistan.

Well, the reason that I mention all this is that Turkmenbashi died last night. There is no clear succession and he was leader for life since the founding of the country. It will be interesting to see what happens when a person like him dies after having such a strong personality cult following. I would imagine it would be similar to Castro and Kim Jong Il when they eventually die but we'll see what happens to the country. Often throughout history when a popular and strong leader dies, the country is thrown into turmoil.