Big brother in Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan at night - Taken close to the Oguzkent hotel

Immediately upon my arrival in Turkmenistan, colleagues began to give me advice on the various ways I could try and find the surveillance bugs which had undoubtedly been installed in my apartment. Turkmenistan is such a closed country with so few foreign visitors living outside state controlled hotels, that I thought this could be entirely possible. After spending a few hours our so sheepishly checking under things and in things and sweeping my room with an FM radio for tell tale signs of surveillance… I found nothing.

Not surprising as it turned out my neighbour was a captain with the Turkmen Police and any surveillance equipment, if any, would be probably be hard wired inside his apartment eavesdropping into mine.

Not that the idea of being listened upon really bothered me. I am a pretty boring guy and it’s not as if I am talking to myself in my apartment.

In a closed society like Turkmenistan where the government tries to keep a hold on everything, being watched is something pretty normal. Every major street corner is inhabited by a uniformed policeman and if the president is in town you can often spot the not so inconspicuous plain clothes officers with their earpieces.

To this day, I am not sure if in my apartment I was being listened upon. I suspect they rather checked my mobile communication traffic or asked my colleagues within the Turkmen government about me, what I am sure of however, is that my pizza delivery guy was an agent / informer/ co-operator for the secret police.

How I know this? Well, he definitely never confessed it to me, but the story goes like this…

Being the idiot I am, one tired day after work, I left my passport and some cash in a taxi (this passport and money would later be returned). I realized my loss at around 10pm in the evening and after searching my house and office, finally got to the police station at about 1am. All the officers at the police station where nice and helpful enough but seemed completely surprised by my visit. You see, no one is on the streets at 1am, because there is no reason to be, everything without fail closes at 11pm so by 1am, the city is super quiet.

Any way, at the police station, I was left waiting a while, I guessed, while they decided what to do with me. Then around an hour later, ‘magically’ walking past the police station was a guy who spoke English! A Turkmen guy! How lucky, almost no one speaks English in Turkmenistan! Even more surprising, he offered to take me, with the consent of the police, in the middle of the night to the Foreign Relations building to fill out all the necessary paperwork and procedures for a lost passport with a diplomatic stamp in it.

No, from the beginning, I knew this guy worked for the secret police and had been sent to guide me through the process and make sure no Turkmen citizen would be stupid enough to actually try and steal a foreign passport. Crime doesn’t exist in Turkmenistan. We got talking, and it turned out he had no job he could describe to me (although he drove a BMW) and had spent a little time abroad. He was also planning to open a new pizza restaurant within the next few months.

Again, private enterprise is strictly controlled in Turkmenistan and for him to get all the necessary permissions to open a pizza restaurant required more than one good government connection.

With my new friends help, I did all the paperwork in the various government ministries and went home to sleep. When I got to work the next day my passport had already been returned, with every cent of the 200$ I had in it. Nice huh? I also had the telephone number of my new friend from the night before and quite regularly over the next few weeks he would call up to ask me how I was, how work is, how is Turkmenistan etc, etc. All the time I made sure to give the right answers.

Not pizza but...

About two months later, he called me up to say his pizza place was now open and if I wouldn’t mind sharing this info with my friends and colleagues. I said ‘sure! but I need to try one first!’. About 30mins later, a police car delivered a fairly respectable pizza to just outside my apartment. Nice connections.

I made sure to tell my friends about this great service and ordered a pizza a fortnight from my mysterious English speaking friend. In Turkmenistan, it’s always a good idea to have good relations with people like this!

But the truth about Turkmenistan is this, there are police informers everywhere. could be your neighbour, your friend, the women who runs the little shop next to your house. I have other Turkmen friends and I am still not sure who informed on me and who didn’t. My philosophy was to try and stay on the good side of everybody. I honestly had very little to gripe about in Turkmenistan anyway but when I did, I always made sure I kept it to myself.

Did it bother me being watched? Not at all. Because I had nothing to hide, and I am sure the vast majority of governments would do the same if it was feasible, it's only in Turkmenistan due to the small number of foreigners that it is feasible to keep a tabs on every potentially troublesome foreigner.