Inside the World's Craziest Dictatorship

Our Discord Community (FREE): https://discord.com/invite/Efbjh7Qj4V 📚 Review our sources ►https://pastebin.com/C4vRLYTU 💻 Check out our other socials ► linktr.ee/2and20 ✋ Get in touch ► [email protected] Turkmenistan is one of the world’s most isolated and repressive nations. It receives fewer foreign visitors each year than North Korea and holds one of the worst human rights records anywhere on Earth. Independent media is completely banned and political dissidents disappear without a trace. Almost no one has managed to get inside to tell its story - until now. We posed as tourists to obtain visas, visiting this bizarre country on an organized tour to observe the situation on the ground. We found a land of contradictions: where marble palaces stand beside decaying infrastructure, and vast oil and gas reserves coexist with miserable poverty. Since Soviet times, Turkmenistan has been ruled by a series of eccentric dictators who have shaped the state in their own image - building gold statues of themselves and constructing monuments to chase Guinness World Records while their people toil in the cotton fields. From the first president Turkmenbashi to his successor Gurbanguly Berdukhamedov, the country has gone from weird to weirder. But today, Turkmenistan’s newest president - Serdar Berdymukhamedov - shows some tentative signs of opening up to the outside world and trying to sideline his father's influence. We ask why this is and what it could mean for this hermit kingdom. Will Ashgabat continue down the totalitarian road to nowhere, or is a Turkmen Spring around the corner?" 00:00 - Intro 01:26 - Welcome to Crazyland 08:07 - The Dear Leaders 13:28 - The Price of Power 18:54 - The Dictator’s Dilemma 22:29 - Conclusion Includes music by Tom Fox – tomfox.site