History of Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan was a passing point for numerous migrations and invasions by tribes, which gravitated towards the settled regions of the south, including ancient Mesopotamia, Elam, and the Indus Valley civilization.

During this early phase of history, the majority of Turkmenistan's inhabitants were adherents of Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, and the region was largely dominated by Iranian peoples.

Genghis Khan and Mongol invasions devastated the region during the late Middle Ages, but their hold upon the area was transitional as Timur Leng and Uzbeks later contested the land.

Later, the Russian Revolution of 1917 would ultimately transform Turkmenistan from an Islamic and nomadic tribal society to an industrialized and urbanist Leninist socialist republic during the Soviet era.

He was succeeded by Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow in an election devoid of meaningful political competition and opposition, and Berdymuhamedow reversed many policies by Niyazov that were considered eccentric, including Niyazov's pervasive cult of personality and the country's near total international and socioeconomic isolation, passing several economic reforms and making limited moves towards a multi-party system, although each party represented in the legislative body was under the regime's direct oversight, and open dissent against the government still faced widespread repression.

Scant remains point to early human settlements east of the Caspian Sea, possibly including Neanderthals, although the archaeology of the region as a whole is underresearched.

Most of the present-day Turkmenistan was occupied by BMAC-related societies and the Dahae (also known as the Daae, Dahā, Daoi and similar names) – a tribal confederation located immediately east of the Caspian.

Many Hellenistic art works have been uncovered, as well as a large number of ivory rhytons, the outer rims decorated with Iranian subjects or classical mythological scenes.

During the 4th to early 7th century CE, much of the population was already in settlements around the fertile river valleys along the Amu Darya, and Merv and Nisa became centers of sericulture (the raising of silkworms).

Central Asia came under Arab control after a series of invasions in the late 7th and early 8th centuries and was incorporated into Islamic Caliphate divided between provinces of Mawara'un Nahr and Khorasan.

Using this city as their base, the Arabs, led by their commander Qutayba ibn Muslim, brought under subjection Balkh, Bokhara, Fergana and Kashgaria, and penetrated into China as far as the province of Gansu early in the 8th century.

By the 10th century, the Oghuz had expanded west and north of the Aral Sea and into the steppe of present-day Kazakhstan, absorbing not only Iranians but also Turks from the Kipchak and Karluk ethnolinguistic groups.

[12] Oghuz expansion by means of military campaigns went at least as far as the Volga River and Ural Mountains, but the geographic limits of their dominance fluctuated in the steppe areas extending north and west from the Aral Sea.

Accounts of Arab geographers and travelers portray the Oghuz ethnic group as lacking centralized authority and being governed by a number of "kings" and "chieftains."

The name Turkmen first appears in written sources of the 10th century to distinguish those Oghuz groups who migrated south into the Seljuk domains and accepted Islam from those that had remained in the steppe.

The city-state of Merv was an especially large sedentary and agricultural area, important as both a regional economic-cultural center and a transit hub on the Silk Road.

The Mongol leader ordered the massacre of Merv's inhabitants as well as the destruction of the province's farms and irrigation works which effectively ended the Iranian dominance in urban areas and agricultural communities of khwarezm.

[4] In addition to the new political arrangements, historical sources suggest that a large tribal union called the Salor confederation remained from the original Oghuz tribes and into modern times.

Of these tribes, the Yomud split into eastern and western groups, and the Teke migrated to the Ahal region near the Kopetdag Mountains and eventually into the Murghab River basin.

The poets and thinkers of the time such as Devlet Mehmed Azadi and Magtymguly Pyragy became a voice for an emerging nation, calling for unity, brotherhood and peace among Turkmen tribes.

In September of that year, Qajar Iran signed the treaty of Akhal with Imperial Russia which officially recognized the territory that today incorporates modern Turkmenistan as part of the Russian Empire.

The Transcaspian Railway was started from the shores of the Caspian in 1879 in order to secure Russian control over the region and provide a rapid military route to the Afghan border.

In 1885 a crisis was precipitated by the Russian annexation of the Pandjeh oasis, to the south of Merv, on a territory of modern Afghanistan, which nearly led to war with Britain.

This led to much larger numbers of Slavic settlers flowing into Turkestan than had hitherto been the case, and their settlement was overseen by a specially created Migration Department in St. Petersburg (Переселенческое Управление).

The best-known Military Governor to have ruled the region from Ashkhabad was probably General Kuropatkin, whose authoritarian methods and personal style of governance made the province very difficult for his successors to control and led to a revolt in 1916.

In 1908 Count Konstantin Konstantinovich Pahlen led a reforming commission to Turkestan which produced a monumental report detailing these abuses of power, administrative corruption and inefficiency.

[17] President Berdimuhamedow has called for reform of education, health care and pension systems, and government officials of non-Turkmen ethnic origin who had been sacked by Niyazov have returned to work.

[20] On March 20, in a decision of significant symbolic weight in the ongoing rejection of Niyazov's personality cult, he abolished the power of the president to rename any landmarks, institutions, or cities.

[23] On May 16, in what was described as one of his boldest moves up to that time, Berdimuhamedow sacked a high-ranking security official who had been instrumental in building and maintaining the late president Niyazov's extensive cult of personality.

[32] In February 2017, president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov was re-elected for a third term in office, after receiving 97.69 percent of all votes according to official results, following a tightly controlled and largely ceremonial election.