A rare blogger who appears to be inside Turkmenistan (or who perhaps travels there frequently) featured on the exile news site gundogar.org has posted some interesting pieces on the lives of Turkmen young people. In a post dated February 3 titled "Youth of Ashgabat: Inside View," the blogger, who uses the pseudonym "voxclamantis_tm" (after the 14th century elegiac verse) and does not disclose anything about his identity, writes of an affluent segment of Turkmen youth given Russian-made cars by their well-connected parents who can afford the cost of around $5000. Then the young men soup them up with various features, including bright headlights that blind oncoming drivers -- "the main point of such 'tuning' is to represent neglect for others," says the blogger.
Called "chirachi" -- a term based on the Turkmen word for "lamp", these kids seem to spend their time like the "rebels without a cause" in the famous 1955 movie by the same name starring James Dean and Sal Mineo, dangerously drag-racing each other and playing loud music on the car stereo. The chirachi are mostly males; women are increasingly strongly discouraged from driving cars as in other Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, says the blogger.
A video clip link posted by voxclamantis-tm on Live Journal shows the chirachi driving endlessly in circles, shouting and laughing and jumping in and out of the car. He says he finds the pointless amusement a "mirror" for the state of Turkmenistan's youth today -- much has been invested on them by the government, particularly for sports in anticipation of Ashgabat's hosting of the 2017 Asian Games, but they have little options for a meaningful future.
Although President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has increased the number of years of schooling, each year, more than 100,000 graduate from high school and there are only 40,000 spaces in universities. That means people are desperate for a spot and corruption is rampant -- parents are expected to pay as much as $20,000 in bribes to gain entrance to higher education for their children.
Youth today seem more interested in acquiring cars and smart phones and getting cushy jobs; they are raised watching television and growing up "wild" in the streets "where only the strongest survives," says voxclamantis.tm. Self-preoccupied with their own advancement, the young people are also notably intolerant -- they believe the dominant Tekke tribe (that of Berdymukhamedov and others in power) is superior and that others in the provinces are inferior. Their notion of tribal segregation also carries over into a hatred of foreigners and minorities like Uzbeks, Turks, Jews, and Russians.
In another post dated February 8, voxclamantis-tm describes how Berdymukhamedov's book "Social and Economic Development" is now required reading in universities, displacing the previous cult book Ruhnama sponsored by the regime of past dictator Saparmurat Niyazov. The government has devised a new subject called "Era of Revival," after the president's propagandistic reform campaign, in which buzz words like "e-government" and "innovation" are used to describe much the same thing once promoted by Ruhnama: state control and civic conformity. Meanwhile, the blogger complains, the book does not explain why prices rise despite fixed currency exchange rates and why $30 billion is spent on construction while health care is in an absymal state.
"Plus, no one seems to doubt the fact that a person who has a diploma of a professional dentist also has deep knowledge of macroeconomics and sociology on the level required to govern the country," the blogger quips acidly.
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