RFE/RL's Turkmen Service is the only international Turkmen-language media reporting independently on political, economic, cultural, and security issues from inside one of the the world’s most reclusive countries.
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov's administration recently declared a national holiday for alabais, a dog breed dubbed "wolf crushers" for their ferocity. They are taking a ruthless approach to preparations.
Police in authoritarian Turkmenistan are reportedly further tightening controls over information as the secretive country downplays the coronavirus pandemic and clamps down on brewing discontent over years of economic turmoil.
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has appointed his son Serdar to the posts of deputy prime minister and chairman of the Supreme Control Chamber, renewing speculation the 63-year-old autocrat is grooming his son to be his successor.
A delegation of the Afghan Taliban has visited Turkmenistan for talks with the Turkmen Foreign Ministry focusing in part on security issues surrounding the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural-gas pipeline project.
The Turkmen national currency, the manat, has lost some 10 percent of its value on the black market as citizens scramble to buy what little foreign currency is available.
The inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington was watched and followed in countries around the world. But not in Turkmenistan.
Three Turkmen border guards were killed when their military helicopter crashed into a high-voltage power transmission tower near the border with Iran, eyewitnesses said.
Authorities in Turkmenistan's eastern region of Lebap have instructed employees of state organizations, schools, medical institutions, and schoolchildren to carry personal medicine boxes with them containing, among other items, bottles of licorice-root syrup to tackle possible "lung disease."
Prominent Turkmen composer Rejep Rejepov has died of COVID-19 in the Central Asian nation, where authorities continue to deny the presence of the coronavirus within the country's borders.
Turkmenistan's mercurial president says the herb licorice might cure COVID-19 and has ordered his scientists to examine the plant's potential to treat the disease. It comes amid a mandatory nationwide vaccination campaign against the flu and those who refuse to get immunized could lose their job.
As winter arrives in Central Asia, Turkmen rural households have been warned to pay their energy bills on time or lose access to essential food subsidies.
Britain's ambassador to Turkmenistan, where an authoritarian post-Soviet government has never officially registered a single coronavirus infection, has said he "need[s] to recuperate" from COVID-19.
An independent Turkmen news website says a resident of Ashgabat has been sentenced to four years in prison because he shared a photo of the World Health Organization (WHO) delegation taken by his friend in the Central Asian nation's capital in July.
The traffic police directorate in Ashgabat has says it has started accepting applications from women looking to get or extend their driver's licenses almost two years after imposing unannounced constraints on female drivers in the male-dominated Central Asian country.
Many Turkmen citizens avoid hospitals when they get sick. That's because Turkmenistan's hospitals often don't have heat, blankets, food, or even basic medicines -- and patients are expected to provide everything themselves.
Man's best friend is now Turkmenistan's latest hero.
Authorities in Turkmenistan, the only Central Asian nation that has not officially recorded a coronavirus case within its borders, have banned trips across the country without "extenuating" reasons.
Dursoltan Taganova, a migrant worker in Turkey, became the face of the Turkmen opposition abroad when she was detained at a rally in front of the Turkmen Consulate in Istanbul to protest Ashgabat’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Two months into the abrupt cancellation due in some schools of classes normally offered in Russian, students and parents are struggling to adjust. And Turkmen authorities apparently don't want to hear about their problems.
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