Undercover in Turkmenistan | Full Documentary | TRACKS

if anyone was ever to hold her competition to find the craziest bigpeter in the world who would you vote for obviously the dreaded King jr. North Korea would be a candidate good old Colonel Gaddafi in Libya but it was up to me it wouldn't be a contest there's only one winner and that is the man they call Turkmenbashi or as he likes to call himself [Music] [Music] every dictator needs somewhere to dictate a country a manner and Turkmenbashi territory is Turkmenistan with took menaced and you'll be thinking somewhere dangerous is the answer slap in the middle of Borat country that's Kazakhstan up there down here Afghanistan Uzbekistan over here and this is Iran so when it comes to location location location this place is an estate agents nightmare [Music] no one's made a film about Turkmenistan before because you're not allowed to the country belongs to a notorious control freak president Turkmenbashi and he's got it sealed up tighter than a jar of gherkins [Music] Turkmenbashi means the leader of the Turkmen and if there's one thing the leader of the Turkmen doesn't like its foreign journalists sneaking into his country and filming it without telling him which is exactly what our plan is [Music] [Music] our cover story is that we're a bunch of guys on a stag wing ridiculous I know but you try thinking up a better reason why a film crew sized gang of blokes would wish to blunder about the drinking dens of Turkmenistan taking pictures and whispering things into their cameras hello greetings from the British pub in Ashgabat where as you can see there's table football to be played pool tables everything a man could need in a British pub thank you this as well the British pubs a surprise and so is our hotel it's nice but the guidebook says it's bugged so I switch rooms a few times to fool whoever's watching and I commence my mission which is to separate the facts about Turkmenbashi from the fictions [Applause] money here is pulled the mass of disco workout the exchange rate basically you get zillions of these or quit and doesn't go very far the biggest denomination is 10,000 mass which i think is worth about 25 P let's see here if you look on the man hat I'm indeed all the notes have it there's a portrait of the president let's talk on Bashi okay now look at him bad with his hair okay and look here's a map I bought the map of took Minister see look at his hair yeah that's the president now look at this picture here they see this is the image of him is everywhere see the difference from which I conclude given that this note was printed in 2003 I conclude that the president dyes his hair [Music] Turkmenistan has a nasty reputation I feel pretty brave just coming here as for filming the place let's just say I didn't sleep too well last night the hotels packed us off on a tour of ashgabat the gleaming white capital that Turkmenbashi has been building in the desert he started with nothing now he's got this [Music] not finished yet the cultural center and the new library 70 set off all of them gasps mystery boiling out she's like a cigarette lighter yes therefore miss a macabre after a couple of streets it's clear that this is one of the silliest places on earth how many white elephants can you get into a capital city this many [Music] the white stuff is marble imported from Italy mile after mile of it in every direction over there with the huge gold nugget sitting on the roof is the presidential palace which no one's allowed to film that thing their shapes like Dan dares rocket is the arch of neutrality it's 75 meters tall and on top there's a gold statue of Turkmenbashi in a Superman cloak the statue is motor amazed and revolves throughout the day to face the Sun but the weirdest monument in Ashgabat is this giant statue of a book not any old book this is the president's book because it the rock naama or book of the Spirit and inside this grabby cover of lollipop pink and lime green are Turkmenbashi collected thoughts everything he wants his people to know and understand you have to answer questions on the roof nama to pass your driving test in Turkmenistan the TV is always going on about it you can even get it in Britain it seems the first second volume the spiritual life of all German people you see this map shows where this book was sent to sent into the libraries of 162 countries so who can say it was translated into more than 36 foreign languages so all these places on the map but those are places that just recently a copy got blasted into space in a Russian satellite so now the Martians can read the ratnamma too [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I've been shopping bought a bottle special Turkmenbashi vodka which as you can see how about you Sam pulled a bit foam and all these other foodies on sale in flash go bad look at that totally bad she played her pictures with it on maps exercise books nice at all lapel pins that you stick to your jacket but I think I'm most proud of the book got a copy of the book little Hanauma school kids have to pass only levels on this book they're even crosswords in the newspapers and based entirely on this it's a very very special book to understand this country at all you have to somehow try and understand this so I'm gonna have to read it all for you and I mean it's a unusual cover I think you'll admit I've never understood the thinking behind these mad personality cults that dictators the door what exactly is it they're trying to achieve by plastering their faces over everything it needs serious investigation [Music] poor strong once every bushy there's only one circling but she won [Music] don't tell me that doesn't look a little bit like the young Cassius Clay go on it does doesn't it it's in this is our just an exercise before school King Smurf what's gone all these months of the year right rather notoriously Turkmenbashi has changed all the months of the year so January famously has been renamed it's now called turkmenbashi so my birthday for example we the 12th of turkmenbashi going down the line of it Jenny very much April April had been renamed after his mother that's his mother so that's good about salt tan and all the way through so if you look at September September has been renamed but all hamana after the book so let's say you want to go on holiday we'll come back from holiday on the 4th of September and what you should be saying is about holiday on the 4th of the Nama now once you get ahead of it it very easy to learn and I think what is important is that all the rest of the months it will be named after you know poets famous places in to understand some of the buildings that he built so it's a comprehensive rewriting the Central Asian calendar we've decided to fork out 80 pence each on a two-hour flight to the Caspian Sea to a place the president has named after himself Turkmenbashi it falls to few men in history to name cities after themselves and frankly Turkmenbashi should have done better than this Turkmenbashi the city turns out to be a dump [Music] support that and this is also an informal Carrie a station so it's saddles on the right side the hotel's fine though five stars they all are unfortunately the only tourists around here are us and we're only pretending [Music] but what a magnificent view we have to ourselves of the Caspian Sea I love the television they've got here it's basically free state channels [Music] they're all the ones with little gold profile of the president in the corner and ones devoted to business are the one to music [Music] and this mother strange one to mostly about the president's book but he's our such a character this wonderful story about him on the music channel sacking or the cameraman because they were making the Toberman women look too fat which I can believe camera was a very important and then a nice act the way the men because the weather men were always getting the weather wrong and we all know how frustrating that is most recently there was a thing in the paper about makeup artists making women's faces to white so the powder they put up to stop the glistening and the president didn't like that either quite rightly he said Turkmen women don't need powder on their faces was their natural good enough but I'll take to that the lads have decided they want a dip in the Caspian we get driven out to a beach made largely of broken bits of old building there used to be a village here but the president knocked it down he has big plans for another hotel I'm too sensible to go in the water but the soundman Mike and the director James do a good job of keeping up our cover as a silly bunch of blokes on a stag week that's the president's summerhouse over there the one sticking out into the sea it must be nice out there Turkmenbashi hotel cha'aka taking it home as a souvenir so the hotel is in the city of Turkmenbashi which is the most important port in Turkmenistan and it used to be called crass Navas which is Russian if my Russian serves me correctly for rich waters now two reasons for coming here one is to find out more about Turkmenbashi which is my mission here as you know but the other one is to try and get some caviar which of course took many status famous for as are all the Caspian States now look what I managed to get in the market this morning it's the best Beluga in Turkmenistan and this did a lot cost me about 25 pounds there's a lot of money right but I reckon in Selfridges in London it would have cost me about seven or eight hundred pounds so it is of course absolutely illegal to take any of this home or export it and I'm not I'm not the kind of dye the brakes that off so of course what I'm here I'm going to eat all this whole dream of trying to take it back in movement and would be undemocratic could be wrong [Music] it's good to be back in Ashgabat I'm getting to like the place I like all the stands they're the final frontier of global wackiness the places that normality forgot no McDonald's no Tom Cruise no Jade Goody heaven one reason why ashgabat is so clean is because the president has banned dogs I'm entirely with him on that cinemas are banned too so our circuses car radios and ballet the president's decided that none of them are Turkmen enough and all of them are unnecessary instead he's opened a museum devoted to the Turkmen carpet this whopper here is the largest carpet in the world and that means that people said put your carpet I will read your soul like a book when I read your carpet I read your soul put your carpet there's also a giant puppet theater made out of mountains of white marble to me the puppets look out of their depth on this grand marble stage but I'm not a Turkmen and look here it's a theme park in the middle of Azkaban its theme is the Turkmen fairy tale it's due to open next year the locals have already dubbed it Disneyland in the desert which is some people's image of the whole country [Music] one of the stories about Turkmenbashi that I heard before I came here was that and it really took all my fantasy I have to say is that he banned makeup you told telling women they cannot use makeup why because turkmen women are so beautiful they don't need make-up women aren't cutting up I mean this is Muslim society but no one's wearing burkas hiding their faces and they seem very free and buoyant I mean in work bloody hard harder than a member of them but nevertheless you know they're not overtly visibly repressed and I wonder why and of course the answer as all the answers are is in here in the great man's book the ratnamma sisterhood Turkmens faces reflect the light of our families and sunlight which is the torch light of God should fall on their faces and this should not be prevented so that's when you see all these going around an endless flowing robes showing their faces so that the light of Allah can fall on them [Music] to find out what makes Turkmenbashi tick and where he gets the money for all that marble he's been importing from italy we get ourselves some wheels and hit the desert [Music] we're heading for the dead center of Turkmenistan and since the desert takes up 95% of this country we're heading for the center of everything the guy driving claims there are eight different types of desert in Turkmenistan but it all looks the same to me it's a very long drive which gives me plenty of time to attack the rock nama [Music] this is one of the craters huh yeah it's biggest fun it's amazing please just stay on the opposite side of wind okay it smells which ways the wind Louise so this is a good place here [Music] [Music] [Music] so this is where the president gets his money natural gas propane using out of the sand in infernal quantities [Music] forty years ago the Russians set fire to it by accident now no one knows how to put it out if you've ever wondered where hell is stop wondering now because I've found it you can see I'm going to stay on best side and you can take a picture from here and you can see how it's big okay yeah the other side yeah okay the Russians were here for a hundred years lording it over the Turkmen first as Tsarist s-- then as communists they finally left in 1991 when the old Soviet Union fell to bits and Turkmenistan suddenly found itself independent [Music] the trouble was it had never been a country before and didn't know how it was done someone needed to invent the new nation and guess who stepped forward [Music] I'm not really completely pissed and singing polish songs in the Turkmen desert who are wearing a reading shirt that's just my cunning cover you know what having tried our drivers with drink and sneakily softened them up what do they really think of their president the answer surprises me yeah that's why his portrait here that's why it's good vodka good yes we like our present why not because gas city water are free the salt almost free the gasoline you see you see that almost free 2 cents per liter it's nothing but it's nice to see that people really love him now people love him here of course I was 11 years old before the I don't know exactly the situation then since 1991 everyone happy you know he was building the new factories makes people so freely no I mean positive positive yeah it's a very positive country so gas is free water is free electricity is free petrol costs 2 cents a liter and everybody loves the president is that what he really thinks or is he playing to the camera I wish I knew I can't sleep keep tossing and turning and thinking about all the things I've seen what's up confusing just thing in the book in his book you like these little stories this little story is that somehow illuminate what he's thinking about where's this thing in the book he says a bunch of a bunch of blind men go to feel an elephant to try to understand it and half of the blind men feel the trunk and they think an elephant is soft and drapey but the other half of the blind men go and feel his leg and they think the elephant is hard and tough and I could column and took my bat he says that people's perceptions have turkmenistan up I like that different he's right you know he's right go away [Music] on the drive back to ashgabat I see the desert in a new light as a huge book without any punctuation when a place consists of this much nothingness creating a country out of it is a hell of a challenge where indeed do start we pull up at a typical yourt for a typical lunch what's typically on the menu camel's milk mmm delicious ladies ladies yours yes mostly the people here shepherds this is what took menaced and should be and always has been until now a slab of desert sprinkled lightly would no magic yurt dwellers horse rustlers and carpet makers it takes a particularly powerful imagination to envisage a country made out of these unlikely raw materials and it takes a real tough guy to push the plan through and grab the unravel back in Ashgabat I decide to find out more about Turkmenbashi not about this extra large Turkmenbashi made of gold who sticks himself on the tops of buildings he's just acting tough I'm after the inner man the hidden Turkmenbashi the lonely orphan whose story I've been reading in the Nama president when he's a young man his real name is support Murat Nia's off born just outside ashgabat in 1940 when he was two the Germans killed his father his mother and the rest of his family perished soon after in an earthquake that measured 10 on the Richter scale 170,000 people died ashgabat was destroyed this is Turkmenbashi monument to the earthquake the big bull is nature getting angry the little boy is him the Communists took in the lonely orphan and became his family little sappin mah Rodney Azov was good at being a communist and in 1985 Gorbachev made him first secretary of Turkmenistan me as off liked the job so much he decided to keep it forever after independence he made himself president and started calling himself Turkmenbashi the leader of the Turkmen a few years later his title got upgraded to bayit Turkmenbashi Turkmenbashi the great [Music] so it's a Harry Potter ish tale of an orphan in his destiny where I come from Potter is a work of fiction here he gets to be President and he fills the country with statues of the dad he never knew and of his mummy and his brothers as a stand-in for the hometown he lost he builds himself a white marble city a mirage in the desert and in that city he gets to waste as much bath water as he wants would be [Music] just when I had Turkmenbashi in my grasp we get booted out of ashgabat the tour operators have insisted that we visit Turkmenistan's most popular tourist destination indeed it's only tourist destination the famous ancient city of Merv mirth used to be a crucial hub on the Silk Route but these days it's a long way from anywhere and on the road to no [Music] so on the left side and on in front of us you can see the last disease sixth seventh centuries [Music] when we finally get there it's obvious that that ruthless vandal history has beaten us to it Merve looks as if it's been flattened by a herd of stampeding elephants there's almost nothing left from the days when much of the known world was ruled from here [Music] so many ancient civilizations here in Merve just left bits of them behind everybody came through here the our kids at the cellar sits Alexander the Great Abdullah Colin can all of them left behind these in palaces broke and fortresses and I don't know if there isn't a lesson there for certain somebody I know about the transience of great empires to me there's something to be learned from and place like this [Music] [Music] we're spending the night in a town called Mary nice name horrible place even the indefatigable Turkmenbashi seems to have given up on Mary the hotel looks fine but isn't I have a terrible night and keep thinking about the damned ratnamma I managed to finish the book so I could now pass the turkmenistan driving test I'm sure one of the few people who could and you know I know things from it it's certainly not a good book but it does have a residence and he's if you insert one what's he gonna go for all that stuff it's all about how great the Turk ones are how they've got to build this nation and our nation needs to have spiritual underpinning because as he says in the book you know our country needs national ideals just as a train needs a railway track [Music] at the back of the bus I'm not happy with myself I'm getting to understand Turkmenbashi mission maybe even to admire it and that can't be right [Music] Amnesty International's been keeping an eye on this place and doesn't like what it sees dissidents keep disappearing foreign newspapers are banned the internet doesn't work not much gets into here and nothing gets out the trouble is no one's actually given us any problems you can get the BBC news on the hotel telly and if the Turkmen are being might only oppressed this certainly good at hiding [Music] the best photo of the president is this one right it's absolutely everywhere when you come in on the aeroplane head Turkmenistan he's there staring at you he's on all the Front's of the buildings like this he's absolutely painted all sides of lorries and posters absolutely everywhere this particular image of the president it was interesting thing about this image is this big smile on his face he's very keen to project an image of a smiling benign leader and the King today is his passage in the Romana there's a whole chapter about how important it is to smile think it says here let me see what I've worked for in your smiling faces videos on the smile is a sign of love smiling faces bear a secret lighting says those smiling at my spirited people are closer to me I'm glad them twice as much as I all grant to others the smile is their reflection of the human soul and so it goes on on and on there will never be any whimpers or a smiling face oh that's obviously what he likes this particular image of himself so much and he's not wrong you certainly not wrong it is nice to smile [Music] last year took menaced an band child-labor a few years before that the death penalty was abolished the gargantuan arch of neutrality might look wickedly ostentatious but it wasn't actually erected to commemorate Turkmenbashi resemblance to Superman it was erected to celebrate the national decision taken in 1995 never to go to war and never to join with anyone else who goes to war just outside Moscow bad in the Hills if the presidents built this enormous walkway endless set of stairs and the idea is that every now and then people go on this health walk as it's called today is a special health day so hundreds of Keon students and politicians trudging up and down something I like is that the president always makes sure that his cabinet go up here at least twice a year as well and these middle-aged men trudge up here they've got to do it in 90 minutes the whole eight kilometers and President himself of course he just goes to the top and arrives there by helicopter which is putting people in that place isn't it but what an excellent way to spend a Saturday morning going up eight kilometers of stairs why why today so busy because day of [Music] how to find this road so far not so difficult I will just stop long way to come here see you at the top [Music] [Applause] [Music] so what have I learned was I expecting a brutal regime that oppressed its people crush their spirit and cut them off from the rest of the world yes I was but have I found it no not at all instead I found this incredibly jolly and peaceful and eccentric and very very interesting place and of course the president's crazy schemes aren't at all realistic I hate to think how much it must have cost to carve this walk of health right through the mountains of ashgabat but it's spending all that money on this really worse than spending the money on Trident or spending it on sending all those troops to Iraq I don't think so and I think took Menace Dam has got a bad press the press it really doesn't deserve am I being terribly naive are awful things happening behind the scenes maybe but I've been to some heavy places and this isn't one of them I've looked hard no I can see out there is a happy dictator playing with his train set whoopee whoopee whoopee [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: TRACKS

Views: 322,267

Rating: 4.6558394 out of 5

Keywords: TRACKS, tracks travel channel, tracks travel, turkmenistan documentary, the happy dictator turkmenistan, the happy dictator full documentary, north korea documentary, undercover in turkmenistan, undercover in north korea, undercover in north korea documentary, undercover in north korea national geographic, undercover in tibet documentary

Id: wmyNAcKcWa8

Length: 47min 54sec (2874 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 02 2018