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“We know about the existence of Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, but we don’t have access. “Everything is blocked here,” says Byashim Ishanguliev, a fruit seller in Turkmenistan, one of the most secretive countries in the world, where the state has almost complete control over the Internet.
Avoiding these sanctions is a hurdle in this hydrocarbon-rich former Soviet republic in Central Asia.
“Some people manage to connect to the VPN but it is temporary (as) that will also be blocked,” says the 19-year-old in a market in the capital Ashgabat.
“The Internet is slow, so if someone succeeds in downloading the video, An interesting clip or movie, we all watch it together with friends, he explains.
However, these drastic measures are insufficient for the country’s President Serdar Berdimujamedov.
The president in mid-January announced his intention to “strengthen the country’s cyber security”, following in the footsteps of sanctions imposed by his predecessors, his father Gurbanguly Berdymuzamedov and the late Saparmurat Niyazov.
Major messaging services are restricted: no WhatsApp, Viber, Signal or Telegram. Instead, the government created an app under its control, BizBarde.
For online video, authorities launched Belet Video, a kind of alternative to YouTube that removes any content that might reveal the world outside Turkmens, whether news or entertainment.
no option
“There is no media panorama”Summary for AFP Ruslan Miyatiev, editor of the Turkmennews news site banned in his country.
Journalists from the Netherlands point out that Turkmens only see “propaganda to promote Berdymuzamedov’s personality cult”.
“And to prevent this parallel reality created by the media from collapsing, the rulers block the Internet,” he says.
Turkmen media, all state-owned, disseminate only official information, with special emphasis on thanks and promises of praise to the country’s officials.
For Yusup Bakhshiyev, a 38-year-old civil servant from Ashgabat, “Turkmen television is very boring, uninformative, It’s the same show over and over again.
He used to have access to more foreign channels via satellite, but he says that is now impossible.
He recalls, “Staff from the mayor’s office came to my house and asked me to remove the antenna because it was ruining the city’s architecture.”
After this he joined Turkmen Cable Television.
“With this, the state controls information and receives income from subscriptions,” he says.
Some Western networks such as France 24, BBC and Euronews are authorized, but have small audiences in a country where English is rarely spoken.
“Worst of the worst”
Every day, Turkmen watch programs in which Berdimuhamedov scolds his ministers, plants trees in the desert or receives enthusiastic applause.
His father Gurbanguly, the “protective hero” (Arkadag) and “Head of the Turkmen Nation” With immense privileges, he is becoming increasingly eccentric towards his cult of personality. Sometimes he is seen playing sports, with a gun in his hand or as a musician.
Sometimes the matter reaches the point of absurdity. The Arkadag newspaper once reported that Arkadag (Gurbanguly) traveled to Arkadag (the city founded in his honor) to congratulate the victorious footballers of the Arkadag team.
The American NGO Freedom House, which analyzes civil and political freedoms, placed Turkmenistan in the “worst of the worst” category with a score of 2 out of 100, which is lower than North Korea which has a score of 3.
Turkmenistan also ranks one of the last places in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom rankings.
But none of that worries Oksana Shumilova, an employee of a construction company in Ashgabat, who is happy with the country’s stability.
A customer with the inevitable photo of the president on the cover of the newspaper Turkmenistan Neutral, assures AFP that he has a “A sense of stability and peace” When he reads it because “it doesn’t contain any critical articles or negative information.”
