Turkmenistan: The More Things Change...

So what really happened in Ashgabat a year ago, on November 25, 2002? Did assassins try to carry out a coup d'etat, as claimed by official propaganda? Or did President Saparmurat Niyazov's special services stage the event as a way of trapping exiles and insiders who might have fostered resistance to the regime? It is impossible to answer these questions until documents related to the case, now kept in total secrecy by authorities, become public. However, there is some information available that can allow us to draw some reasonable conclusions.

A year ago, a handful of Turkmen with varying degrees of association with Niyazov's dictatorship concluded that the regime they had created would never evolve into a democracy and conspired to remove the dictator. Word of the operation leaked out to too many people, some of whom may have been double agents. As a result, state security agents learned were able to prepare counter-measures. Niyazov's propaganda claimed there was an attempt to assassinate the president, and the special services fabricated evidence that shots had been fired at his motorcade.

According to eyewitness accounts, there was no shooting at the site. On the evening of November 25, Niyazov personally announced the news of the attempted coup on television. Several hours later, he gave further details of the coup plot and named its organizers. Just a few days later, an investigation was said to confirm his accusation. On January 24, those responsible for developing the counter-plot received the Order of Turkmenbashi for "exemplary conduct and guidance."

Obviously, nobody knows who the witnesses were in the "trial" against the "conspirators," since most likely there were none. Nobody even knows where the trial took place. On January 14, I had a conversation with Ambassador Halnazar Agakhanov, Niyazov's envoy to Moscow, and he was unable to give me the specific date and location of the trial.

Two events described below, and chosen more or less at random, illustrate how anti-democratic Turkmenistan has become since the "coup." They also highlight how little the world cares about the suppression of democracy in Turkmenistan.

The National Council of Turkmenistan on February 5, 2003, adopted an act defining the term "parricide." According to the act, "a parricide" is a citizen of Turkmenistan who "questions the correctness of the policy of the President of the country, Sapamurat Niyazov." On October 23, in Vienna before the Standing Council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, members of a Turkmen delegation used Orwellian rhetoric to describe efforts by humanitarian organizations and relatives to visit dissidents, characterizing such action as "attempts to interfere with internal affairs of a sovereign country." Citations of repression became opinions. "We do not admit that problems specified in the report