Turkmenistan, which is more "closed" than North Korea, has a probability of visa refusal exceeding 80%, becoming a "social terrorist" country!
Turkmenistan, located in the southernmost of the five Central Asian countries, as one of the most non-existent "little whites" in the former Soviet Union member countries, borders the Caspian Sea in the west, the Iranian plateau in the south, and Afghanistan and Uzbekistan in the east.
Faced with the condescending oppression of the Hindu Kush Mountains and the Pamirs, the entire north opened up to Central Asia, becoming geographically a "crossroads" between Central Asia and the Middle East.
However, this did not make Turkmenistan become "left and right", but led to its increasing "self-isolation", and gradually formed a "Korean-style" centralized and closed state.
Even more "closed" than North Korea, except for formal diplomatic reception, almost all foreigners, including tourists, are rejected.
Although foreigners who want to enter Turkmenistan must first apply for a visa, it is difficult to obtain even the tourist visa, which has the least gold content, mainly spending money, and the visa refusal rate exceeds eighty percent.
Most of the 20% who pass by luck are transit visas for a five-day period, and the passage activities within their territory need to follow the prescribed routes and be supervised, and even face strict inspections from the beginning of entry.
No foreign newspapers, magazines or other printed materials are allowed to be brought into Turkmenistan.
So what is "unseemly" about Turkmenistan, which makes it so "hostile" to the outside world, is it that the Turkmens under the centralized "rule" live in dire straits?
This is probably a conclusion that many Western media have long been determined in their minds.
But in fact, although Turkmenistan is "closed" and indeed "centralized", the people's life is relatively rich, which is not to say how high the absolute income of Turkmens is, but the living expenditure is really low.
Not only is daily water and electricity supplied free of charge by the state, flour, meat, sugar and side foods are sold at low prices through state subsidies, and even gasoline is as cheap as 5 cents a liter. Coupled with the free medical and educational policy, Turkmens' happiness at the level of social life has begun to catch up with the high-welfare state of Europe.
And in this way, Turkmenistan belongs to the "muffled rich" behind closed doors, and there is nothing wrong with even if it is closed.
And Turkmenistan was approved by the United Nations as a "neutral country" in 1995.
The possible political influence and interference of other countries in their own countries was completely avoided, and domestic politics followed a more closed path.
This has also led to the frequent strange incidents of its previous presidents.
How "strange" is Turkmenistan, which is "closed and centralized", to put the country in a sleeve, and on what basis is it rich in oil that refuses to contact with the outside world?
Because Turkmenistan was "ruled" by Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, it is not unusual for it to retain some "centralized" characteristics at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
However, after the gradual stabilization of the country's situation, it still continues to embark on a completely extraordinary "closed" road.
Because most of the former Soviet Union allies, including Russia, at that time, turned to the West, politically and ideologically chose to believe in Western-style democracy, and economically accepted the West's "flickering" shock therapy, and as a result, they were all treated "half-dead".
However, the path chosen by Turkmenistan is not only slightly "other", but also sober.
Niyazov, who became president in his capacity as chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Turkmenistan at that time, knew that with Turkmenistan's own conditions, it would be difficult to sustain economic aid without the Soviet Union.
Although Turkmenistan as a whole has a land area of nearly 500,000 square kilometers and basically no plateaus and mountains, the whole country is a lowland.
But more than 80 percent of the country is covered by the Karakum Desert, except for a small part of the Caspian Sea in the northwest, the southernmost corner, and a narrow strip of land along the Kopet Mountains bordering Iran, where the capital Ashgabat is located.
The whole country belongs to an extremely typical temperate continental climate, with cold winters, hot and extremely dry summers, poor precipitation, and even some areas can not dry up evaporation, showing a negative state.
Such harsh natural conditions make the arable area of the country less than 2%, and it has naturally been difficult to feed too many people.
So although Turkmenistan had 3.6 million people when the Soviet Union collapsed, it has grown to only about 6 million people
。 Fortunately, God closed one door and inevitably opened another window, Turkmenistan, which is all desert, is like Arabia, and under the desert is full of oil and gas.
After the collapse, Niyazov quickly controlled the "situation" and decided to open gasoline development to the west in exchange for foreign exchange to get rid of economic difficulties, and as a result, he got out of the quagmire in 3 years and maintained 10 consecutive years of high-speed economic growth, which is the real rich "flowing oil".
After that, the material life of the people was greatly improved, and the support for Niyazov was also unprecedentedly high, which gave birth to Turkmenistan's mentality of "not asking about world affairs", and only then did it become a "neutral country".
Moreover, Turkmenistan's foreign contacts only pursue economic ties and refuse any political and cultural exchanges, so that Niyazov, who is revered as the "father of the nation", gradually lost himself in the expansion of power.
Why did Niyazov, who saved Turkmenistan's economy, put the country on the road of "self-isolation", and how can his successor do better?
When Turkmenistan, under the "control" of President Niyazov, relied on the development of oil and gas resources, the economy went all the way.
The old nun, who had extraordinary self-feeling ability, began to try domestic reforms in a closed state, not only becoming more and more closed, but also developing in the direction of personality cult and even metaphysics.
First of all, in order to avoid external political interference, Turkmenistan, which has adopted a "neutral" national policy, directly issued a ban, prohibiting foreigners from entering the country at will, and even more so that Singaporeans are not allowed to go abroad at will, almost completely closing the channels of internal and external exchanges.
And later the rise of the Internet did not take the initiative to access, until now the vast majority of Turkmen still cannot understand the outside world through the Internet.
This approach did have advantages when the political situation was not very stable in the 90s, after all, the surrounding Iran and Afghanistan were not easy to mess with, and Islamic extremism was serious.
Turkmenistan, on the other hand, wanted to maintain secularization, but at the same time did not want to be further Russified or completely Westernized, so it simply rejected all foreign ideas and exchanges, and with the expansion of the president's power, this path began to move out of a bizarre style.
President Lao Ni first changed his term of office to life, and then made his "golden" statue across the country.
In countries with a population of only a few million, more than 16,000 statues of former presidents have been built, and these "rich gold" statues are also equipped with a photosensitive automatic rotation function, which can always face the sun side by side.
At the same time, Niyazov also abolished libraries, shortened 15 years of education to 10 years, and accelerated university in one to two years.
and a complete ban on dramas, songs and dances left over from the Soviet era, and even the compilation of "divine books" that collect historical myths and personal spiritual interpretations, forcing students and civil servants to memorize, and later Niyazov forced the whole country to quit smoking because of his lung disease.
After his death due to illness, his successor Khamedov was equally authoritarian and quite bizarre.
Because he liked white, he painted all the buildings all over the country white, and replaced all the statues of the former president to become his own larger golden statues.
Last year, he also ceded the "big throne" of the presidency to his son Former Vice Prime Minister Jimedov Jr., who returned from overseas, making him one of the most powerful post-80s generation in the world after Kim Jong-un.
But how long Turkmenistan's closed and relatively wealthy roads will go is very difficult to say.