Turkmenistan

A desert republic on enormous gas reserves, and among the most closed countries in the world. The Karakum covers about four-fifths of its territory, and its Turkmen population was organised into tribes whose identity still shapes politics and appears in the carpet designs on the national flag. The Teke tribe's defeat by Russian forces at Geok Tepe in 1881, where thousands of fleeing civilians were killed, completed the Russian conquest of Central Asia. The Basmachi revolt resisted Soviet rule into the 1930s. Soviet planners cut the Karakum Canal from the Amu Darya to grow cotton, which watered the desert and helped destroy the Aral Sea. Independence in 1991 was followed by the rule of Saparmurat Niyazov, who took the title Turkmenbashi, renamed months and days after himself and his mother, closed hospitals outside the capital, made his book the Ruhnama compulsory in schools and driving tests, and built a gold statue that rotated to face the sun. His successors have moderated the cult without opening the country. The state declared permanent neutrality at the UN in 1995 and has largely kept out of regional blocs. Gas exports go mostly to China. The Darvaza gas crater has burned for decades. Ashgabat is the capital and holds a world record for white marble buildings. The country has about seven million people. Akhal-Teke horses, bred there for millennia, appear on the state emblem. Merv, once among the largest cities in the world, lies in ruins in the east. The country holds the fourth largest proven gas reserves on earth.

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