Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Turkmenbashi: The Dictator Who Declared Himself Jesus

Episode Date: March 28, 2019

In Part Two, Robert is joined again by David Bell to continue discussing Turkmenbashi, the craziest man to ever rule a country! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated

two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh my god, oh my god, the episode started and I don't have an introduction. Dave, Dave, what do I do? How do I introduce the episode? Oh, no. What is the show? What are we doing? It's, oh god, it's behind, you're behind something. The music? Yeah, this is behind the music, a show where we tell you everything you don't know about the greatest pop hits of the 1990s.

Dave, this is part nine of our series on All Star, the hit smash mouth song. Now, what do you think they meant with the line, get your game on, go play? Well, I think it could mean a lot of things, Roberts. Sophie almost threw pop tights at me there. I'm Robert Evans, this is behind the bastards, of course, the show where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. I am, I've switched out my bubbly for a Dr. Zevia, much better drink. Can I get a little? Yeah, can you wait a pour? Over the, over the expense of recording equipment into your Lacroix. Oh, hold on, I got a sweater. I can mop that up with your sweater, Dave. This is great.

I think we're okay. We're fine. It wasn't on. I almost spilled my drink, cleaning that up. We're okay, it's all right. We're doing great. I don't know why people put us in a room together. Sophie's really close to throwing those pop darts. Great podcast content. And great Lacroix. The people in their cars really enjoy that. Daniel, our audio engineer, is not livid. This is the fourth set of thumbs up he's given us, which is a good sign. We're on the right track. Sophie's punching her fist. I guess let's talk about the dictator of Turkmenistan some more. Let's get back into it. So as you might guess, 9-11 was a very dangerous time to be both a New Yorker and an ostensibly

Muslim dictator in a country anywhere near Afghanistan. Neither of those were safe things to be. Niazov made what was in retrospect the major mistake in the 1990s of engaging in substantial trade deals with the Taliban, mainly so he could run pipelines through their country. As soon as the towers fell, Turkmenbashi reversed his stance on the Taliban and agreed to let the Pentagon use his country as a gigantic airstrip to prepare for the invasion of Afghanistan. Smart move. I haven't kept up on the invasion of Afghanistan since the early 2000s, but I assume it went well. It seems like the kind of thing that would get handled pretty quickly. You know what I love about our wars is the defined endpoints. That's the best part about

how we do war in America. We're like lost the TV show of countries. Now helping America bomb a neutral country has always been a lucrative endeavor for the dictators who let us do it. Turkmenbashi benefited mightily for his help. During Clinton's time, Turkmenistan had barely rated $600,000 a year in military aid. By 2003, after giving the U.S. access to Turkmen airspace and some land rights, that aid topped $19.2 million. Yeah, it's like a 30-something times increase. So smart decision letting us bomb other people from your country right after 9-11. It's an easy fix. Now President Bush was happy to offer this dictator a security alliance, which Nizov used to crush what little resistance remained to his

reign. There really wasn't much though, and when Turkmenbashi finally saw a major unrest, it would come in the form of one of his highest officials, Boris Shikmododov. At that time, the Turkmen ambassador to China, which is a really important job in Turkmenistan because China is kind of like your big trading partner in that area. Pretty important to be in good terms with China. So this guy is a high-up official. His nightmare came to life when his ambassador to China, Boris Shikmododov, resigned and began denouncing his regime. He claimed that Turkmenbashi had ordered dissidents tortured and executed, that he'd rigged elections, and that he'd embezzled billions of dollars in government funds to his personal bank account. Now Turkmen,

yeah. He's not wrong. He's not wrong. Yeah. And Turkmenbashi responded by accusing Boris of embezzling tens of millions of dollars, which is also probably not wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Probably both embezzling. Oh yeah. This is just, everything's blowing up now and everybody's pointing fingers. It's like that gif of Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man. Yeah. That's what's happening here. Now Shikmododov went to Europe and became the international symbol of resistance to Nizov's reign. Nothing happened for a while and no resistance rose up from inside the country, but Shikmododov was sort of a thorn in his side, like always going around the world talking about how terrible things were in Turkmenistan and trying to get people. This is the period where

the U.S. is overthrowing a couple of dictators, so he's trying to be like, overthrow this guy. Maybe put me in charge. Overthrow this guy. Right. He's one of those people. Okay. Seems like it. He may have been. Again, this, yeah. It just goes back to the, there's corruption. Yeah. I'll do it. I'll fix the corruption. Yeah. No, don't have anyone ever be in charge of anything because people are bad at being in charge of countries. Yes. Have people be in charge of, like, it makes sense for a person to be in charge of a power plant. Mm-hmm. Makes sense for people to be in charge of a factory or a restaurant. When there's like one goal. Yeah. Gosh, people shouldn't be in charge of something like a country. It never works out. Yeah. It's bad 100% of the time. Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry. My radical politics, infecting this history podcast. No, burn it all down. Burn it all down. Burn. No, just burn all the leaders down. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Burn the leaders down. Use the ashes of their bodies to grow potatoes. Oh, yeah. That's delightful. I feel like if there's one thing we need more of its potatoes. It would be like, you could sell a brand dictators. Oh my God, Dave, you nailed it. I know I did. I felt that one coming from my gut. It would be perfect. It's one of those jokes that, like, shifts the firmament of the universe. It's so appropriate. Oh, boy. That tickles me. Oh, we got to go into business. We got to go into business. I wonder where they buried Saddam. Ooh. I mean, could find out. And if we don't, we could lie

and say we did. Exactly. Because who's going to know? Yeah. Exactly. Perfect. Oh, man. I even know some people we could bribe in that part of them. Anyway, once Turkmenbashi had kind of put the kibosh on this, essentially accused this guy who had, you know, risen up against him of being corrupt, he sort of figured that was it for a while. And he went back to his favorite pastime of being a lunatic. In August of 2002, at the annual session of the People's Council, Turkmenbashi announced that he was renaming all of the months. I mean, why not? At this point, why not? Why not rename the months? Yeah, fuck it. January was renamed. Can you guess what he called he named January? I assume after himself. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. January was Turkmenbashi.

February was Flag. April was named after his mother. Okay. Apparently because the month April signifies growth. And May was named after his favorite poet. Now, as a fellow writer, Dave, you know how creative flow works. Once you're really focused and you're putting out good work, you don't want to stop sometimes. You know, even if you like finish the project, you just start something else because you're like, well, I'm never, I'm, you know, it's rare to get in this headspace. You really want to take advantage of it. And I think Turkmenbashi got caught up in that headspace a little bit because right after renaming all the months, he decided to rename all the days of the week. Sure. Yeah, you got to keep that going. You might as well. Now, Monday

was renamed Beginning Day. Tuesday was Young Day. Should have been Fun Day. Should have been Fun Day. Wednesday was Good Day. Thursday was Blessed Day. Friday was Mother Day. Saturday and Sunday were Soul and Recovery Day, respectively. Recovery Day makes sense. Recovery Day makes sense, especially since Saturday, Soul Day was also the day that everyone in the country was supposed to read his book. So you really need some recovery after that. Now, after no debate, the Parliament and the People's Council ratified all these changes to the names of the days and months. This basic method, Turkmenbashi making a declaration and then changing suddenly huge aspects of daily life in an instant, happened with increasing regularity in the early 2000s.

When Turkmenbashi learned that the traffic police were extorting bribes from motorists, he fired them all and replaced them with army recruits. Sure. Sure. That's gonna work out, right? That's pretty fine. A bunch of new guys with guns. Directing traffic with no training. I don't see how that could fail. I don't see how that could work out badly. He also continued to shower Turkmenistan with the blessings of his wisdom. Here's the book Inside Central Asia. Inspired by what he believed to be a semi-divine revelation, he decreed that the life of a Turkmen consisted of nine stages of 12 years each, starting with childhood and progressing through adolescence, youth, maturity,

what he called the prophetic stage, and then from age 61 to 62, the inspirational stage, which just happened to be his age at the time, wisdom and old age followed, ending with the Oghuz Khan stage at age 109. Oghuz Khan was the legendary founder of the Turkmen nation, their Romulus. He divides life up in all these stages, ending at 109. That's how long you're supposed to live. He's at this point, he's now defining aging. I'm surprised he's not personally naming every citizen at this point. He's pretty close to that. A big lion outside. I did run into a bummer of a fact. It's not related to him, but it's related to culture in Turkmenistan. It's one of those places where people don't want to have too many girls,

because there's a lot of social cachet and having too many boys. One of the most common names for girls is literally the word enough. Jesus. If you've had too many girls, you've named your girl enough, or there's another one that translates like, please God stop. Why even? Yeah, it's pretty fucked up. That is fucked up because it's like, you know, is that like they're setting a reminder? Like, okay, this is the last one. They're telling God, like, we're done. We have enough girls.

Right. Oh, jeez. Yeah. Yeah. But that one, that one's not on Turkmenbashi. I think that's just some culture needs to wake up a little bit on women's issues, maybe. That's just it. Yeah, people are terrible. People are terrible and have been forever and are everywhere. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Now, on the 25th of November, 2002, attackers in three vehicles ambushed

President Niazov's motorcade, firing on it with machine guns. Several of his guards were wounded as they fought off the attack. President Niazov, inside his armored vehicle, reportedly did not notice he had been attacked until he arrived at the office later that day. Oh, I'm glad. I'm glad he's all right. You're glad you were where I could see. Yeah, I was worried a little bit. In the immediate wake of the attack, Turkmenbashi declared that the shooters were, quote, hired, given weapons, and sent to carry out the shooting. They got high and tried to carry out

their orders. Punishment will be brought to them, but they are not the ones who bear the main responsibility. You want to guess who bears the main responsibility? Is it that guy? It's that guy and a bunch of Turkmen dissidents who all lived in foreign countries. Okay. None of whom lived in the country. I mean, this is smart. He thought of it. It's a good opportunity to pin the blame. Well, and it may not have actually happened. Oh, okay.

I mean, the shooting itself happened. Okay. He didn't notice apparently, so it didn't happen for him. Yeah. Yeah. And he declared Boris Shikhmuridov to be behind it all, but Radio Free Europe, which is just so there's, is a U.S. government-funded organization that reports from inside non-democratic countries with no press freedom, but it is a government-funded country. So it's one of those things where they're definitely towing the U.S. government line, but they're also often have good sources inside countries like Turkmenistan, but take it with a grain of whatever you take a U.S. government-funded journalism institute. Right. You know. Anyway, Radio Free Europe

talked to all of the accused dissidents and also to several other sources in the country, and they posited a counter theory about what happened. The former deputy prime minister and national bank had denied any role in the attack and said the assassination attempt, which allegedly took place as Neozov was being driven to work, seemed strange. Neozov has two vehicles, a Mercedes and a Jeep. Both have double-plate armor. These vehicles cannot be destroyed by machine guns or even rocket-propelled grenades. Think for a minute. The alleged attackers let Neozov go by, then they block their road in front of the police following Neozov. If the plan had worked, it wouldn't have been

for eliminating Neozov. So basically, the allegation is that he faked an assassination attempt. It's a false flag. It's an inside job. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which, yeah, maybe. Right. I mean, he saw 9-11, and he was like, well, that's a false. Yeah, exactly. And we all know that 9-11 was an inside job. Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Because jet fuel cannot melt steel beams. No, I can't melt anything. You can't melt. It's just jet fuel. Like, that's why I use it for hair pomade. Oh, you can drink it. You can drink it? Yeah.

Oh, man. Yeah, that's what most doctors say. A pint of jet fuel a day keeps your insides from becoming steel beams. I mean, you certainly won't have any other worries medically after that. After drinking your daily pint of jet fuel? Yeah. Your problems are all set after that. Yeah. So if Niazov's goal was to use the assassination attempt as an excuse to crush the tiny amount of resistance that remained in his own country, it worked. Shik Muradov turned himself in to stop his family from being horribly tortured, or at least horribly tortured any more than they'd already been horribly tortured. A few days later, he showed up on state TV, clearly drugged, and admitted to attempting to orchestrate a coup. He thanked Niazov for the

mercy that he'd shown in not executing them all, and also thanked the great leader for his compassionate spiritual guidance. That's a real bummer. That's a real bummer. You're watching that on TV like, I think we got to get out of this kind of thing. I think we might need to leave this country. Yeah. He told state news, quote, among us, us being the conspirators is not one normal person. We are all nobodies. I am not a person capable of running a country. I am a criminal, only able to destroy it. Yeah, it's one of those things. I don't really know. This is like, it's the third act. This is like the dark moment before the hero is able to like beat the dystopian leader.

Yeah, I feel like that's not going to be the thing that happens. That's only a thing that happens in movies. I know. But it's just so overtly evil at the moment. It is. And like Shikhmuridov, it's one of those things. To raise to that position in the government of Turkmenistan, he's probably pretty corrupt himself. But he also seems to have been a legitimately courageous guy. And like, obviously this dude needed to be like, I don't know if he would have been good or not, if like the dictator had been replaced. But I mean, generally, yeah, generally speaking, if they're like, let me take over, it's probably not going to just be the cycle beginning again

with a new face. That is what the odds say. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, he also did turn himself in to save his family. So maybe he was a decent person. Yeah, I mean, that's that's not an easy choice. I guess not. Because you know you're getting tortured. Yeah, but if you like your family, if you don't like your family, and it's like, fuck him. Yeah, he's not a total sociopath. Yeah, a total sociopath would not have turned himself in. Yes. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know. Shikhmuridov, sorry that you got sentenced to prison for the rest of your life. On TV, Niazov explained that he had shown mercy to all of the conspirators because only Allah decides death. Wow. I'm surprised he

hasn't taken that up too, that he could decide death. Yeah, because he's deciding. He's deciding a lot of things. And he did. He did have a lot of people executed. Okay. Yeah, he did have a lot of people. Okay, so he's just a liar. He's definitely a liar. Okay. Now, next Niazov clamped down on civil liberties even more. He ordered the secret police to monitor public conversations. He also asked citizens to report anti-national talk. Being Turkmenbashi, he also did something insane and banned anyone in the country from listening to the radio while driving in their car. His reasoning was that the noise would obscure subversive conversations from the eyes of hidden police. It really seems like these are moments in his life where he's like being driven

around here's the radio and it's distracting. He's like, you know what? No more radio for anybody. For anybody. Yeah. Fuck the radio. Yeah, I hate the radio now. Put it on the list. Ballet, radio, smoking, movie theaters. Make sure that puppet theater is still running. Who are the people running the puppet theater? I want to know about them. I bet they really need a cigarette. Yes. Or they were like, they're probably very passionate about puppets, and then he declared them. They're like, that was the time. If there's just one puppet loving man who was like, this is the country I was born to be. Oh, yeah. And they exist. There are puppet loving people. There are puppets like Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Yeah, I had been really successful

here. I had a neighbor who kept asking me to come over and watch a puppet show. That's unsettling. Yeah. I was like, that, that, that, I know. You're going to get murdered. It was, I was living in this terrible apartment and this, our weird neighbor was like, look, I do puppet shows every week if you guys want to come. And it was just like, no. No. I don't want to die. I'm young. I feel like the word no enters your mind as soon as the word puppet show enters your ears. I did have one roommate go and I was like, how was it? And he was like, it was weird. It's what, it's what it sounds like. It's what it sounds like. Yeah. Our neighbor's puppet show. Yeah. Speaking of puppet shows, I don't. As you might see here. You know what isn't a puppet? Busy bone dog treats. The only dog

treats currently sitting on this table. Yeah. They look good. You could probably eat them. I felt like this was the time for an ad plug. I also feel like the bones on the front of that kind of look like tampons. There's even a string coming out of one of them. Oh, good God. They really do. They're teaching the dog. Why is it, why is there a string coming out of that? Okay. It is an arrow. Okay. All right. That was an unnecessary digression. Speaking of unnecessary digressions, actually speaking of necessary. I was about to say it's pretty necessary. You know what's necessary? During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were

right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of goods. He's a shark, and on the good and bad ass way, and nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me

from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me, about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app,

Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus,

it's all made up? Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and we're back. Okay, so when we last left off, Neazov had just banned the radio. Sure. I mean, not the weirdest thing he's banned. Not the weirdest thing he's banned. Yeah. The next and last period of Neazov's life was a golden age for bad ass laws. He required universities to test all applicants on their knowledge of his dumb book, the runama. He reorganized the justice system so that prisoners could only be released when they'd sworn an oath upon his book. In 2004, he demanded that the runama should be used in mosques alongside the Quran. I'm not one for burning books for obvious runama, maybe. Yeah, but it feels like we need to get

rid of this book. I mean, I guess it's probably pretty clear to the listeners, but in case you haven't had a lot of experience with Muslims and Islam, I can't imagine anything more blasphemous than what this guy's done. Oh yeah. That's pretty hardcore blasphemy. Yeah. Now, the national mufti that you like, Islamic religious leader for the nation of Turkmenistan, objected to this random dude's book being made a requirement alongside the holy book of the faith. He was instantly arrested and declared to be a part of the coup two years ago. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds about right. Retroactively. Retroactively. Part of a coup. Responsible for the coup. Now, during a tour of small villages that same year, 2004, Neazov was allegedly angered that none of the local

libraries had enough people in them. He ordered all rural libraries across the country shut down. This may have been due to the fact that Turkmenbashi described all writers who were not himself. He considered it a personal insult that anyone would want to read any book besides the runama. Sure. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, it fits. Yep. Also in 2004, he declared July 10th a melon holiday and April 27th, horse day. Nice. Yeah, we got a horse day in there. Horse day. Yeah. He banned beards because he was worried. Sure. Sure. He was worried about Islamic fundamentalists titing amongst the populace. I think he saw a guy eating soup. No, I don't want that. No more beards. So his tired assistants like, yeah, I got it. No more beards. All right, we'll put it out.

He banned circuses. Hold on. Hold on. You can't be pro puppet show and anti circus. Especially being pro horse and anti circus. Yeah. Well, I sort of get that. If you see a circus, you're like, oh, God, those poor horses. Okay, that actually might make a little bit of sense. But like puppet shows and circuses, it's all in the same ridiculous spectacle. Like it's all the same circle of like, these are the things that are used for entertainment in hell. Yeah. Yeah. Like circuses, puppets. Yeah. Yeah. So basically, anytime the president expressed a mild dislike for something, it was essentially banned. Now, he was not passing laws against these things. He wasn't saying it's forbidden to have a beard. He wasn't saying it's forbidden

to do this or that. He would go on TV and basically express his dislike for a certain thing. And then everybody would have to stop doing it because it's a police state. Right. So like, that's the way this works. And a good example of how it proceeded was Turkmenbashi's hatred of gold teeth fillings. He denounced them in a speech staying quote, I watched young dogs when I was young. They were given bones to gnaw. Those who view whose teeth have fallen out did not gnaw on bones. This is my advice. What? Gnaw on bones. Take out your gold teeth. Wait, wait. Yeah. He didn't like gold teeth. He like expressed that he didn't think they looked good, that natural teeth looked better, and that people should gnaw on bones if they want their teeth to be healthy.

Okay. So he's like against just missing teeth in general. No, gold teeth and specific. Okay. So you can lose a tooth and you can get like a replacement that looks like a normal tooth, but not gold. Okay. But not gold. Yeah. So here's how a telegraph article that interviewed several people in the country who had to get their teeth replaced, described what happened next. Quote, in Turkmenistan, Anizov lifestyle tip is as good as law. In a Pavlovian response to his remarks, which were broadcast repeatedly on television, people rushed to swap their gold teeth for porcelain. Ms. Tullivia, a 32 year old laboratory technician, had been sent home from work because of her offending teeth. As universities, government departments and state run companies

humored their president for life. I have had gold teeth since I was 18, Ms. Tullivia said. It was my dowry from my parents when I got married, before I was really proud of my teeth. They showed me as a success, but now I cannot work and have them. As her husband hovered protectively, each crown, bloodied and flecked with pieces of tissue, was carefully saved to be melted down later by a jeweler. The couple he confided were not quite sure what to do. Perhaps we have enough for a ring, he pondered. Or maybe earrings. Until he bans those. Until he bans earrings and rings, yeah. I love that they call it lifestyle tips, like this is goop, like it's Gwyneth Paltrow as a dictator. It is kind of Gwyneth Paltrow as a

dictator. This guy's like, you know what, cigarettes are bad for me. Nobody gets to smoke. Cigarettes are out. Cigarettes are out. So are gold teeth. She wants some bones. Gwyneth isn't Gwyneth Paltrow, she's big into the bone broth, right? Probably. She looks like she's being into the bone broth. This is a dictatorship of Gwyneth Paltrow. That's exactly what's going on in fucking Turkmenistan right now. We're doing the early 2000s. So when local meteorologists weren't correct about a forecast, Niazal fired the head of the meteorology department and also banned TV reporters from wearing makeup, quote, because it masked their natural wheatish color, making them look white and masked the difference between the appearances of men and women.

It really is just every, every little thing that bugs him. He's just always on TV. He has opinions about everything and everyone's scared to like, they're not laws, but everyone's scared to not to do something the president doesn't like. Right. But at this point, it's, it's almost like, it's almost like he has a, like a show and he's just trying to fill time. So he's like, all right, what do I, what do I not like? What am I pissed about today? His makeup, makeup, makeup anymore. Yeah. I don't even think he's that passionate about this stuff at this point. He's just trying to make content. Yeah. Yeah. Turkmenbashi's commands generally came during TV interviews who would say something, express an opinion, and suddenly it was the way things

work. In one interview, he ordered the education ministry to watch the hairstyles of students. Young men should not be allowed to wear, to have long hair in addition to the beard ban. All goatees also had to go, which is the first time I'm on, you know what? All right. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get rid of those. I mean, yeah. I'm getting to that age where if I look at college students, I'm just like, uh, change all that. Change all that stuff. Get rid of all of it. You know, when I think about what situations might justify the deployment of like a fire hose against people, it's every time I've walked past a frat house. Sure. Just, just hose them out. Yeah. Empty that building. Oh yeah. Pressurized water. Yeah. Like because, yeah. Yeah. You just need

to clean it. You just need to clean it and the people inside it. Yeah. It's that or if people are on fire. That's it. Yep. Those are the only two circumstances, frat houses or burning to death. Now, as a cost cutting measure, Niazah fired 15,000 healthcare workers and replaced them with untrained military recruits, figuring that what worked for traffic police would work just as well for nurses and EMTs. Now, did it work for traffic police? No. Of course not. What are the EMTs going to do? Whatever untrained 19 year olds know how to do. Oh no. Who would think that? He's old enough to know like it. Well, he goes to a German doctor. He doesn't go to doctors in Turkmenistan. Oh yeah. He also closed down all of the hospitals outside of the Capitol,

saying that anybody who had a medical emergency could just come to the Capitol. Yeah. That's fair. In 2005, Niazah opened a gigantic horse track near the Capitol, the largest in Asia, because he'd gotten really into horses. Solid. Solid. That telegraph reporter was in town during the opening of the race track, and his description of it is quite a lot of fun. The attention to detail is remarkable. Along the approach road, teenage conscript soldiers in khaki boiler suits robotically place whitewashed stones and small circles around the trunks of newly planted fir trees. At the center, there are swimming pools, therapy centers, and state-of-the-art

veterinary facilities for the animals. In Ardagh, the president's stallion is almost as prominent in Turkmenistan as his patron. Niazah is busy cultivating the myth that he is reviving an ancient breed of horse. The Akhal teke is his personal claim to restoring national greatness. In fact, to criticize the money lavished on the Akhal teke horses is to commit the offense of parasite defined in the national criminal code as questioning the policy of the president. Wow. So don't get angry at his horses or you'll go to prison. I bet Gwyneth Paltrow likes horses too. I bet she would do all of the things he's done. So key to a great nation, statues and horses. What else could it be Dave? Yeah, it's fair. Yeah. In addition to building a palatial race track,

Turkmenbashi ordered hundreds of homes bulldozed in the Capitol so he could build a series of massive white marble apartment buildings he'd designed himself. The buildings were never occupied because no one in the city could afford them. The owners of the homes previously on the land were again not compensated for their loss. Yeah. Turkmenbashi declared himself a landscape artist next and promised to create a forest in the desert that would last a thousand years and improve Turkmenistan's brutal climate. To achieve this goal, he planted a massive cyphrus forest around a fake lake he had built in the desert. How'd that go? Well, Paltrow visited shortly after the forest was planted and he observed that quote, although Bashi's trees,

mostly a type of juniper, were two or three feet high when planted, the forestation was not a success. Drip irrigation had been rigged for them, but they were baked by the sun and blown flat by the wind. A full third had that peculiar rust red hue, the vivid color of an evergreen's death. He's just, man, he's spinning out of control at this point. He's just really trying everything. I'm going to make a forest. I'm going to make a forest now, motherfuckers. He's great. Next, he built an ice palace outside of the capital city. Is it in the desert? Yeah. Yeah. So at this point, he's just like, fuck reality. What a nice palace. Yeah. He built a 130 foot tall pyramid. He built the largest mosque in Asia, which he named the spirit

of Turkmen Bashi himself. A lot of this stuff, by the way, I feel like are things that Nicolas Cage has done as well. Yeah. Like I feel like the Venn diagram, like there's a large crossover between the two. I feel like if Nicolas Cage built a mosque, it would be less blasphemous than this. Yeah. He would show more respect for the religion. And of course, this gigantic mosque was again festooned with quotes from the Koran and from Turkmen Bashi's equally important book, the Ruknama. Turkmen Bashi insisted that Turkmen visit the mosque as a regional equivalent to the Hajj, which is the Muslim requirement to go to Mecca if you possibly can. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. He just put himself right on that level. Yeah. Yeah. This is also around the time when

he declared himself a prophet of God. Oh man. Yeah. Wait, he hadn't done that yet? Not officially. Okay. Yeah. You got to make sure everybody knows. He had written a book declaring himself God's son, but you got to make it clear that you're a prophet of God. In 2006, when New Yorker writer Paul Thoreau visited Turkmenistan, the people of the country had just spontaneously declared their leader the national prophet. So sorry, that's how it went. Okay. I mixed up my notes there for a second. So in 2006, the Turkmenistan people declared their leader the national prophet. Did they? No. Yeah. I mean, of course they did, Dave. They love them. They love them. The president for life of Turkmenistan would not lie about the people of Turkmenistan declaring him the national

prophet. Yeah. Now, in Paul Thoreau's trip through the country, he saw portraits of the leader everywhere, quote, several of them measuring hundreds of square feet, everywhere in Ashkabat, and some he looked like a fat and grinning Dean Martin, and others he was the treculant CEO with a chilly smile. A common image showed him chin on hand, squinting an insincere bonhami, like a lounge singer, a heavy drinker, a bully and a wearer of bling, two or three diamond rings on each hand. He had Italian features and was sometimes portrayed with a stack of books, like an author on a book tour. Geez. Yeah. I just realized, I don't know what this guy looks like. Oh yeah, we got to pull up a Turkmenbashi picture for you. We'll be throwing

up on the site too. Now, as he aged, Turkmenbashi became increasingly insistent on demanding that his people smile at all times. He's that guy. He is that guy. Oh yeah, here's his picture. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's, that looks about right. Yeah, that looks about right. Looks like a big old, big old baby. Big old baby face. Baby face Turkmenbashi. Yeah. In the runama, he had written, quote, a smile can make a friend for you out of an enemy. And when death stares you in the face, smile at it and it may leave you untouched. How is that not the thing that incites a revolution? Like, hey, guys, smile more. I'd be like, all right, we're done here. I was okay with the puppets, but I'm ready to die now. Over the years, Turkmenbashi continued to drive home his point

about smiling, telling his people to talk to each other with smiles and promising there will never be any wrinkles on a smiling face. He claimed his love of smiles had been inspired by his sainted mother. Her smile is visible to me in the dark of night, even if I have my eyes shut. So that's sweet. Yeah, real sweet. He renamed ketchup. He declared, well, because the word ketchup's a foreign term and he believed it deserved a real Turkmen name. Okay, but it's not the only thing named with a foreign term. He was getting around to all of them, but ketchup was a priority. Gotta start a ketchup. Everybody loves ketchup. He really loved renaming things. What did he rename ketchup to? Oh, just a Turkmen word. Okay. I didn't catch that.

I wish it was his name. Turkmenbashi? Yeah. Oh, dear God. He also required that doctors swear an oath now on the runama rather than the Hippocratic oath. Sure. I'm surprised that didn't already happen. Yeah. I think I may have gotten my times a little bit mixed up on that one. That might have happened when he closed down most of the hospitals. Oh, okay. Yeah. So there's a lot of crazy things to keep track of an order here. It's not consistently crazy. It's this beautiful potpourri. It's the puppet shows in ketchup. And then false flag attacks that oppress dissidents and really smart policies of neutrality and renaming ketchup. Right. Yeah. Some of the stuff, it's like, oh yeah, he's doing the classic hits of a dictator. And then he's throwing in these

crazy ones. Yeah. Could you can imagine Stalin doing some of this, but he would never have bothered to rename ketchup? Right. No, fuck it. It's fine. Maybe eventually. Maybe eventually. Okay. Lenin sauce. In 2006, Turkmenbashi had constructed the Turkmenbashi Eternally Great Park. Nice. Yeah. It was an enormous wooded park with a concrete crete path up a mountain built by Turkmenbashi as part of an effort to urge his people to be healthier and exercise more often. In 2006, Neyazov declared the first Saturday in November to be health day. He demanded that all of his ministers partake in a five mile walk, starting at Turkmenbashi Eternally Great Park and going all the way up to the top of the mountain. You're making them walk. Yep. Turkmenbashi

himself did not walk. He had a helicopter fly him to the top of the mountain where he'd had a helipad installed. He made fun of anyone who took more than two hours to make the walk. That is perfect. Yeah. Classic Turkmenbashi. Yeah. At this point, he's just like, I wonder what more I can get away with. Yeah. What more can I get? That turned out to be the last thing he could get away with, because on December 31, 2006, Supramarat Neyazov, great leader of the Turkmens, God's prophet on earth, died of heart failure. Good. Good. Here's how the book- Good for hands. It was a wise choice. Really, the thing I've agreed with the most that he's done is dying of heart failure. Here's how the book inside Central Asia sums up his legacy.

The Turkmen desperate left behind a republic where the average monthly income was $60, yet most people managed to get by on generous state subsidies for housing and basic foods, free electricity, water, and gas. We are not free, but we are not hungry. An unnamed Turkmen told visiting New York Times correspondent CJ Chivers, who noted that food was inexpensive, gasoline sold for four cents per gallon, and bazaars were filled with Chinese goods. And that is about the best that anyone can say for Turkmenbashi, the lunatic president of Turkmenistan. He was a brutal monster and a nut, but food and gas were cheap, so nobody murdered him. Yeah. I mean, it really does come down to that. I know I said it earlier, but I feel

like a lot of this is like, so we got to call ketchup something else, but gas is still cheap. Four cents. I feel like people here would put up with a lot for four cents a gallon gas. Yes. I've been saying this a lot, is that if we got red dawned when they'd land, I'd be like, so what do you have to offer? So yeah, what's y'all's plan? Things are not going great here right now. What's the... If it's not good, I'll be like, okay, go Wolverines. But first, I'd hear the pitch. I'd hear the pitch. And even if I went Wolverines, I'd probably take advantage of the free healthcare first. Oh, yeah. I haven't been to a doctor in a while.

Oh, yeah. I am falling apart. Yeah, it's a disaster. He was replaced by a dentist, by the way. Okay. Yep. Okay. Yep. The dentist banned cigarettes and had all the cigarettes in the country incinerated. Wow. Yep. So seems like things are continuing right on that path. What's his view on gold teeth? No, that I'm not aware of. Yeah. I want to know. That's another episode. Yeah. The dentist president who came next. So it's not going great for them still. Oh, again, gas prices are great. Yeah. I think gas is still pretty cheap.

Yeah. So it's not nothing. I mean, yeah. I mean, he killed people. Bulldozed homes. Bulldozed homes. Oh, man. Banned ballet in the radio. Oh, what a weird maniac. What a weird maniac. Yeah. To have a country. Oddly specific. Very oddly specific. I'd love to talk to the people who lived there, because you have to be confused by that shit, right? There's a great passage in that Paul Thoreau, New Yorker article where he recites a conversation

that his driver and his interpreter had where they were trying to figure out what the days of the week were. And they were both natives. No, no, no. This is what he renamed the day to. And then like, no, I think it was this and it was like it clearly took time for everyone to figure out. Right. Maybe it was a performance art piece, the whole thing about how arbitrary like dictatorships are. Because it's that where it's like, I guess it's it's renaming the weeks. It's like it says worthwhile is anything else we do, I guess. I did check and the timing did not work out for him to have been Andy Kaufman. Oh, OK. I was kind of I was suspicious of that.

One of these days one of them will be Andy Kaufman. Work out. Dave. Plugables. Geez. I mentioned my Patreon, patreon.com slash gamefully unemployed. We do podcasts. We are streaming. I also want to give a shout out to some more news, which I write episodes of. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Give money to some more news. Yeah. To the employee unemployed, which is Cody's. Cody's shoddy. Uh, neither of them will ban golden teeth. Yeah, that's true. I was right for bunny ears.com. Check that out. Macaulay Culkin might ban golden teeth. Oh, he already has. Yeah. OK. He's a monster. He's the Turkmenbashi event at comedy. Oh, yeah.

This has been Behind the Bastards. You can find us on the internet at BehindTheBastards.com. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram and at BastardsPod. You can find my book on Amazon.com, a brief history of vice. It's, I hurt my friends with drugs. He poisoned me. I poisoned Dave with drugs. Very irresponsibly. It was great. When I say I am the opposite of a doctor, I mean it. I am the opposite of a doctor. Yeah. It's still fun to get medical advice from you though. Oh man. Oh yeah. I've got, uh, hit me up on Twitter and I write OK and ask me medical advice. I will give you medical advice. Um, legally binding medical advice. Sure. Yeah. Absolutely.

All right. Well, that's been the podcast by a shirt to public Behind the Bastards. We've got the new Raoul Wallenberg shirts. Save lives, do crimes. I love about 40% of these. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows

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