The ‘Turkmen Phenomenon’. The May 1989 Incidents in Ashgabat and Nebit-Dag, and the Liquidation of the Opposition in Soviet Turkmenistan

Through previously untapped archival sources, this essay reconstructs a turning point in the history of the least-known republic of the USSR. The interethnic clashes in Ashgabat and Nebit-Dag in May 1989 are key to understanding how official concerns about such conflict contributed to the consolidation of Niyazov’s regime as it used this threat to push back against perestroika in Soviet Turkmenistan. This ‘Turkmen Phenomenon’—as the liquidation of opposition was called by the KGB in 1990—laid the foundation for Niyazov’s authoritarian personalist regime for the following decades.