Turkmenistan: People Cleared to Smarten Up Capital

Walking through a sleepy district of downtown Ashgabat, the Turkmen capital, we suddenly found ourselves in an area that had been completely devastated.

If we'd come here a few days before, we would have found streets lined with modest, one-story houses with children laughing in flower-gardens. We were too late – all that was left was ruins, here and there a wall still standing, and everywhere the roar of excavators and other heavy machinery.

In the chaos, we ran into a handful of residents trying to dismantle what was left of their outbuildings to save the bricks and wooden plank. They – and many more like them – had just been summarily evicted to fulfil the grand plans of President Saparmurat Niazov to build a Disneyland-style amusement park

“I am 80 years old, I grew up here, I got married and brought up my children here, and my grandchildren have grown up in this place," Soltan-edje, an elderly woman, told us. "My whole life – an era, you might say – has gone by, and now in my old age, a man comes along and tells me we can’t live here any more and we have to leave.

"I cried, I begged him to have some respect for my age, and said we had no other home…. And in reply, he told me this was to become a children’s park."

Soltan-edje is bewildered at the idea. "Who will be made happy if our children are left without a roof over their heads?” she asked.

All the land between Bitaraplyk and Garashsyzlyk streets is being cleared to make a park, one-third of which will be the theme park everyone is calling "Disneyland", although it has no connection with the real thing.

The urgency with which the area has been cleared comes straight from the top: President Niazov, otherwise known as Turkmenbashi or Leader of the Turkmen, announced the scheme in November, and ordered the park to be ready by February next year.

Ashgabat's mayoral administration jumped to attention, and drafted in teams of conscripts from the military to start work on the demolition. The soldiers set about flattening the houses without bothering to find out whether their residents had anywhere to go.

The 200 families forced out so far have received no compensation for the loss of their homes, and most have had to seek refuge with relatives or friends.

According to one official in the mayor's office, the authorities cannot compensate the owners because – from a legal point of view – the houses never existed in the first place.

Many people who built their own homes in this and other parts of Ashgabat in the Soviet period never managed to complete the tortuous bureaucratic procedures needed to get their housing registered as legal. Some who were successful found that their children were nevertheless denied inheritance rights.

The reality seems to be that in a complex and often arbitrary legal environment, most people did their best to comply with the law but often relied on custom and practice to stay living where they were – until now.

One former resident of about 50, who asked not to be named, told us what happened to him, his wife and five children, "The local administration told us to leave the house before the deadline – and not to make any trouble, otherwise we’d be sorry. An official told us that compensation or alternative accommodation was out of the question, because all that we had built here decades ago was viewed as illegal, despite the [residence] registration marked in our passports and all the documents confirming that this was our private property."

The man has taken his family to live with their elderly parents. "It is horrific for me to realise that at a stroke, just like that, my family and I have lost the roof over our heads," he said. "At my age, it is very late to be starting a new life.”

Public demonstrations against Turkmenbashi's regime are rare, and are dealt with harshly. So it is not surprising that this man told us that "no one has dared to protest because no one wants to go to jail. The whole eviction process has been closely monitored by special [police] forces – just look around, they are still here".

At least one resident has taken the case up with the authorities. The man, now elderly, originally came to Ashgabat to help rebuild the city after the devastating earthquake of 1948, so perhaps he thought he deserved some respect.

"When they told me my house was to be demolished, I went to the head of the city administration [the mayor]," he recalled. "After he'd listened to my story, he told me they were going to build a Disneyland and a park with a big lake there. Then he advised me to go back to where I was born…. I left empty-handed, and now a distant relative has taken me into her house. I don’t know what to do now."

The park development is just the latest project in the Turkmen capital's ongoing facelift. New buildings in marble and plate glass are being thrown up all the time, lending the city a superficially modern aspect.

However, many of the new buildings – a row of differently-themed flashy hotels looking somewhat forlorn on the city outskirts, where town meets desert – jar with the city's traditional appearance, where old Russian houses sit side by side with small Turkmen homes.

In the last seven years, at least 30 high-rise apartment blocks have been thrown up, intended to house the elite rather than the average Ashgabat resident. In December, Turkmebashi ordered another 30 to be built by the end of October this year.

The sense that all this construction work is designed for show rather than for the benefit of the locals is heightened by the authorities' habit of riding roughshod over residents' rights when they want to redevelop their land.

The massive construction programme – funded out of revenue from gas and cotton exports, in an otherwise impoverished country – has meant big contracts for Turkmenbashi's foreign partners.

Such companies have generally steered clear of commenting on Turkmen president’s domestic policies. But a senior official from a western European company, who asked to remain anonymous, did express some concern about being associated with uncaring attitudes.

"The estimate for each project that requires the demolition of old buildings includes a provision for considerable sums of money to compensate the owners," he said. "However, when we tell this to our Turkmen clients, they often reply that the project needs to be made cheaper and more cost-efficient and cheap – 'you do the building work and we'll deal with the residents'. We are forced to comply, even though it does tarnish our international image.”

In the latest project, work continues apace to tear down houses to make way for the fun-park. Another 600 more homes are reportedly earmarked for demolition, which will leave hundreds of families homeless.

The man who had no luck complaining to the mayor has now given up, "Where our houses once stood they’ll soon have a lake – filled with our tears. I am afraid that if I complain again then they will declare me mentally ill, old though I am, and lock me up in a psychiatric hospital.”

Ovez Bairamov and Murad Novruzov are pseudonyms for journalists in Ashgabat.