At every stage, entrepreneurs looking to import flowers or food products are forced to pay bribes to facilitate the controls and obtain the necessary licenses and permits. A delay in the process would deteriorate their goods, causing significant losses.

Residents of the area have become accustomed to the salt layer, which emerges in the spring, rendering arable land infertile. When locals utter the words shor yerler (“salty marsh” in Turkmen), their intonation resembles one of resignation, as if talking of a terminally ill patient.

“On the last day as a free man, he was offered the opportunity to say goodbye to his family and friends. He phoned several close colleagues and friends and told them: ‘If there is water and a slice of bread, I will return’,” a former colleague said.

The low turnout prompted the embassy staff to call up the deans of universities in Minsk attended by Turkmen students to “urgently send them to vote.” The diplomatic staff said the students would otherwise face “severe repercussions.”

Fearing a potential leakage of information abroad, hospital directors hinder any desire doctors may have to develop professionally, thus impeding scientific updates to domestic medicine. Doctors are often required to show their passport in order to verify that they have not traveled abroad.

Turkmenistan has suffered an acute food shortage since last autumn. Sources in the provinces have reported of long lines by state-owned owned stores, with customers trying to buy basic foodstuffs, such as flour, bread, sugar and vegetable oil.

he selected area lies between the Keshi neighborhood and the trolleybus depot of the Turkmen capital. Residents were told they can autonomously pull to pieces their homes and sell off any resulting building material before the deadline of March 15.

Large-scale layoffs, economic uncertainty, increasingly absurd prohibitions and regulations have pushed residents of Turkmenistan to seek fortune elsewhere. Importantly, in recent months the number of ethnic Turkmens has grown among the people looking to move abroad.

While the grandeur of the capital city may still be visible, the peripheral regions are reliving the crises of the nineties, with residents standing in long lines to buy flour, bread, vegetable oil and other essentials.