Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is a landlocked country in Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Iran, with the Caspian Sea on its western side. The Karakum Desert covers most of its 488,100 km² (188,500 sq mi), and the Kopet Dag range rises in the south. Ashgabat is the capital, and Turkmen, a Turkic language written in Latin letters since 1993, is the official language.

Written history starts with the conquest of the area by the Achaemenid Empire of ancient Iran. In the 8th century AD Turkic-speaking Oghuz tribes arrived from Mongolia and formed the core of the Turkmen people, and later served the Seljuk Empire. Merv grew into one of the great oasis cities of the Islamic world and a stop on the Silk Road. Russia annexed the territory in 1881. It became the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic in 1925 and independent when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.

Saparmurat Niyazov was the first president of independent Turkmenistan, until his death in 2006. Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow succeeded him in 2007, and the presidency passed to his son in 2022 in an election that observers judged neither free nor fair. The government tightly limits the press and religion. The United Nations recognized the country's permanent neutrality in 1995. Natural gas is the main resource, with the vast Galkynysh field and pipelines to China and Iran, and irrigated farms grow wheat and cotton.

The ruins of Ancient Merv, the old town of Konye-Urgench and Nisa draw visitors, as does the Darvaza gas crater, known as the Gateway to Hell, which may have caught fire after Soviet drilling in 1971. Ashgabat was rebuilt with hundreds of buildings faced in white marble. Turkmen carpets, hand-knotted in colorful patterns that differ from clan to clan, are often mistaken in the West for Bukhara rugs. Men wear the tall sheepskin telpek hat, and horse racing is a popular pastime.