Saparmurat Niyazov

1940 – 2006

Saparmurat Niyazov was a Turkmen politician and dictator who ruled Turkmenistan from 1985 until his death in 2006, first as first secretary of the local Communist Party and from 1991 as the country's first president. He renamed himself Türkmenbaşy ("Father of all Turkmen") and turned the country into one of the most extreme personality cults of the post-Soviet era—erecting a gilded statue of himself in Ashgabat that rotated to face the sun, renaming months of the calendar after his mother and himself, and elevating his own ghost-written book the Ruhnama into a required text alongside the Qur'an in schools. He outlawed ballet, opera, and circus performances, and held no competitive elections during his rule.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM