50 Fun Facts About Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is one of how many independent Turkic-speaking states?

With Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Turkmen is close enough to Turkish that Turkish television is widely watched.

Which desert covers more than 80% of Turkmenistan?

Its name means 'black sand'. Some spots get only 12 mm of rain a year, and the Repetek reserve recorded 50.1 °C, the Soviet Union's all-time high.

Turkmenistan's western border is formed by which body of water?

The shoreline runs 1,748 km. Since the Caspian is landlocked, the country counts as landlocked too, though the Volga-Don Canal gives ships a route out.

Which country lies along Turkmenistan's southern border, separated by the Kopet Dag mountains?

Afghanistan is to the south-east and Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to the north. The Kopet Dag is prone to earthquakes, including the 1948 disaster.

The Darvaza gas crater, nicknamed the 'Door to Hell', has been burning since which year?

Soviet drilling punctured a gas cavern and the roof collapsed. In 2022 the president ordered the fire put out; it is still Turkmenistan's most famous sight.

Who ruled Turkmenistan as 'President for Life' from independence until his death in 2006?

He styled himself Türkmenbaşy, 'Head of the Turkmens', and built a personality cult compared to Kim Il Sung's. He closed every hospital outside the capital in 2005.

What was Niyazov's spiritual guidebook, treated like scripture in schools and mosques, called?

'Book of the Soul'. Knowledge of it was needed to pass a driving test, and its quotations were carved on the walls of a mosque, to many believers' dismay.

Among Niyazov's eccentric decrees was renaming the months of the year. September was renamed after what?

He finished writing it on 19 September 2001. January became Türkmenbaşy after himself, and April took his mother's name, Gurbansoltan.

Niyazov replaced the Turkmen word for which everyday item with his mother's name?

His mother and two brothers had died in the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake, and her memory was woven into the state cult.

How is Serdar Berdimuhamedow, Turkmen president from 2022, related to his predecessor?

Gurbanguly, a former dentist and health minister, took over in 2007 and handed the presidency to Serdar in a 2022 election judged neither free nor fair.

In which year did Turkmenistan declare independence from the Soviet Union?

Niyazov, then the communist boss, had wanted to keep the USSR together but called a referendum in October 1991 as it fell apart around him.

Turkmenistan's green flag carries a vertical stripe of what, celebrating the country's most famous craft?

Five guls, one for each major tribe, run down the hoist. The crescent and five stars stand for the five regions and the pillars of Islam.

Turkmen hand-knotted carpets are commonly, but wrongly, sold in the West under what name?

Bukhara was merely the market they were traded through. Each clan has its own gul motif, so a rug's pattern tells you who wove it.

The Akhal-Teke, Turkmenistan's national horse breed, is nicknamed the 'Golden Horse' because of what?

Only about 6,600 exist worldwide. Bred for speed and endurance in the desert, it is thought to be among the oldest horse breeds on Earth.

Turkmenistan celebrates a national holiday on the second Sunday of August devoted to which fruit?

The star of the show is the huge, fragrant Türkmenbaşy melon, a crossbreed named after the first president.

Turkmenistan holds roughly what rank in the world for natural gas reserves?

The Galkynysh field alone is second only to South Pars in the Gulf. China, via three pipelines, is now the main buyer.

Turkmenistan's biggest gas field, estimated in 2011 as the world's second-largest, is called what?

Reserves are put at 21.2 trillion cubic metres. Ojak in 1966 was where the country's gas industry really began.

Which country is the largest buyer of Turkmen gas, via pipelines across Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan?

The first line opened in 2009. Sales to Iran were cut off in 2017 over unpaid bills, and the TAPI pipeline to India remains half-built.

In 2025 Turkmenistan was the source of most of the world's largest leaks of which greenhouse gas?

Seepage from ageing gas fields gives Turkmenistan per-person emissions far above the OECD average.

The oasis city of Merv, once perhaps Earth's largest, was destroyed by which invaders in 1221?

In the 12th and 13th centuries it may have held 500,000 people and was called 'capital of the eastern Islamic world'. Its ruins are a UNESCO site near Mary.

The 1881 battle that crushed the last Turkmen resistance to Russia was fought at which fortress?

The Teke had defeated a first Russian attempt in 1879. Krasnovodsk on the Caspian was the Russian base and is now called Türkmenbaşy.

In 1855 and 1861 the Teke Turkmens defeated invading armies from Khiva and which empire?

Before the Russian conquest the Turkmens were feared across the region for their raids and their role in the Central Asian slave trade.

The Turkmen descend from which Turkic confederation that arrived from Mongolia in the 8th century?

Oghuz groups later founded the Seljuk Empire and carried Turkic culture west into Azerbaijan and Anatolia. The name 'Turkmen' first appears in the 10th century.

In which year did Turkmenistan switch its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin?

Russian lost its status as the language of inter-ethnic communication in 1996. Turkmen is close enough to Turkish that Turkish TV is popular despite official disapproval.

What is Turkmenistan's currency?

Officially 3.5 to the dollar, it traded at around 18.5 on the black market in 2022. Azerbaijan also calls its currency the manat.

In 1995 the UN General Assembly recognised Turkmenistan's status as what?

It refuses to join military blocs, downgraded to associate membership of the CIS in 2005 and has never sent UN peacekeepers.

How many white-marble-clad buildings does the capital have, the most of any city in the world?

The city also boasts the world's largest enclosed Ferris wheel and a Wedding Palace topped by a giant globe, all part of a hunt for obscure world records.

The capital's Alem Entertainment Center holds which world record?

The Foreign Ministry sits under a globe, the Development Bank under a giant coin and the Health Ministry is shaped like a caduceus.

How many regions, or welayatlar, is Turkmenistan divided into?

Ahal, Balkan, Daşoguz, Lebap and Mary, plus the capital district. The five stars and five carpet guls on the flag match them.

What is Turkmenistan's highest peak?

It rises 3,137 metres in the Kugitangtau range on the Uzbek border, far from the Kopet Dag along the Iranian frontier.

The Soviet-era irrigation canal crossing the desert to the capital draws from which river?

Built from 1954 to 1958, it runs 1,375 km through the desert to Ashgabat and beyond, and its leakage is a major reason the Aral Sea shrank.

Turkmenistan is the tenth-largest producer of which crop, reportedly picked by forced public-sector labour?

Teachers and doctors risk their jobs if they refuse. Raw cotton exports were banned in 2018 in favour of selling yarn and garments.

How many foreign tourists did Turkmenistan report receiving in 2019?

Every visitor needs a visa, usually with sponsorship from a local agency, and the Awaza resort on the Caspian has failed to change that.

Under a 2003 decree, which utilities were free to Turkmen citizens until 2019?

Each citizen was entitled to 35 kWh of electricity and 50 cubic metres of gas a month plus 250 litres of water a day.

The traditional tall, shaggy hat worn by Turkmen men is called what?

Made of black or white sheepskin, it is worn with a red robe over a white shirt even in desert heat.

About what proportion of Turkmenistan's population is Muslim?

Most of the rest are Russian Orthodox. The first Baháʼí House of Worship in the world was built in Ashgabat, seized by the Soviets and lost to the 1948 earthquake.

The 1948 earthquake that killed Niyazov's mother struck which part of the country?

Ashgabat and the surrounding villages were largely destroyed. The Kopet Dag fault has produced strong quakes in 1869, 1893, 1895, 1929, 1948 and 1994.

According to the official 2022 census, Turkmenistan's population was about how many?

Exiled media dispute the figure, with some sources putting the true population under 3 million after years of emigration.

In which year did Turkmenistan's footballers first appear at the AFC Asian Cup?

They returned in 2019 and went out in the group stage both times. The country has never reached a World Cup.

Which world championships did the capital host in 2018?

The city had staged the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games the year before in a purpose-built Olympic complex.

The name 'Turkmen' is thought to combine 'Turk' with a Sogdian suffix meaning what?

'Almost Turk', marking them as outside the Turkic dynastic myths. Muslim chroniclers preferred 'Turk' plus 'iman', faith, after a mass conversion in 971.

The port of Türkmenbaşy, the Russians' base for conquering the region, was known until 1993 by what name?

Niyazov renamed it after his own title. Ashgabat itself was briefly Poltoratsk in the 1920s.

In which year was the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic formed from the former Transcaspian province?

Turkmen fighters had joined the Basmachi rebellion against the Bolsheviks earlier in the decade.

In January 2022 the president ordered what done to the Darvaza crater?

He cited health, the environment and lost gas revenue. It was officially renamed 'Shining of Karakum' and kept burning regardless.

About what share of Turkmenistan's people were internet users as of 2021, the lowest in Central Asia?

Access comes only through the state ISP Turkmentelekom, and satellite dishes are officially banned though widely used.

Turkmenistan is roughly the same size as which European country?

At 488,100 square kilometres it is the world's 52nd-largest country, slightly smaller than Spain and larger than Cameroon.

Which two forms of entertainment did Niyazov ban as 'insufficiently Turkmen'?

His successor repealed the ban, but later introduced new rules of his own, such as outlawing cars that were not white.

In which year was the first rail line in Turkmenistan built, from the Caspian shore to Mollagara?

The line grew into Imperial Russia's Trans-Caspian Railway, reaching Samarkand in 1888 and Tashkent in 1898.

Turkmenistan's planned rail line from Serhetabat into Afghanistan was to reach which city?

On completion it may join a proposed line onward to Khaf in Iran, giving the region a new link to the south.

Which empire's company, Ganz Works, built Turkmenistan's first power plant in 1909?

The triple-turbine Hindukush hydroelectric plant was built by Ganz Works and was still running as of 2019.