BBC: Turkmenbashi dead

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Turkmenistan's authoritarian president Saparmurat Niyazov, who ruled the Central Asian country for 21 years, has died aged 66, state TV has reported.

He died at about 0110 local time (2010 GMT Wednesday) of a sudden cardiac arrest, it was announced.

In 1999 he was made president-for-life by the legislative body of the energy-rich country.

He was the centre of a personality cult that saw cities and airports named after him.

His funeral is set to take place on 24 December in the capital, Ashgabat.

Last month, the president publicly acknowledged he had heart disease.

Uncertainty

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 with large oil and gas resources, the country now faces an uncertain future following Mr Niyazov's death, as there are no clear successors.

According to Turkmen law, the president is succeeded by the head of the legislative body, the People's Assembly. However, this post was held by Mr Niyazov himself.

"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.

Cult of personality

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.

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.

[Bono]

Damn you beat me to it.
Anyways, hopefully this means a new era of freedom for Turkmens, though I'm not optimist.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

There goes one of the world's most entertaining pantomine villians. We'll all miss him in our own way, doubt the Turkmens will though.

[Colin]

There goes one of the world's most entertaining pantomine villians. We'll all miss him in our own way, doubt the Turkmens will though.

I have to agree. Thank God he's dead but he was quite entertaining.

[WMS]

As Stratfor has said...which foreign power will end up with control of Turkmen gas and oil, Iran or Russia? No one else is even in the running, and Turkmenbashi didn't designate a real successor (he probably thought he was immortal or something ) so time for more trouble in Central Asia.

On the plus side, the U.S. won't be involved at all. Kazakhs and Kyrgyz and Tajiks (oh my!), yep, got ties. The Uzbeks kicked the U.S. out for criticizing their massacres (and promptly got support from China and Russia) and the U.S. never had anything to do with the Turkmen. Not that we're close enough to do anything anyway...

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Good riddance.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Interim President: Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov

Try pronouncing that.

[minionofmidas]

As Stratfor has said...which foreign power will end up with control of Turkmen gas and oil, Iran or Russia? No one else is even in the running, and Turkmenbashi didn't designate a real successor (he probably thought he was immortal or something ) so time for more trouble in Central Asia.

He was... for 66 years.

[minionofmidas]

Interim President: Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov

Try pronouncing that.

Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov.

Where's the problem?

[WMS]

As Stratfor has said...which foreign power will end up with control of Turkmen gas and oil, Iran or Russia? No one else is even in the running, and Turkmenbashi didn't designate a real successor (he probably thought he was immortal or something ) so time for more trouble in Central Asia.

He was... for 66 years.

Immortality isn't what it used to be.