Ashgabat, Turkmenistan
The Turkmen parliament has declared 2003 the “Year of the Turkmen heroine Gurbansoltan Niyazova, the mother of the first and eternal president of Turkmenistan.” The parliament, a rubber-stamp body that exists only to fawn over dictator Saparmurat Niyazov, praised his late mother as “a spiritual and moral ideal to which all women and mothers should aspire.” Niyazov, who brutally suppresses all political speech and has his opponents tortured, has already renamed the month of April after his mother and declared her birthplace a national shrine. She died in an earthquake in 1948, when he was just 8.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Israel intercepts 2nd Gaza aid flotilla in a weekSpeed Read The Israeli military intercepted a flotilla of nine boats with 145 activists aboard along with medical and food aid
-
Gold tops $4K per ounce, signaling financial uneaseSpeed Read Investors are worried about President Donald Trump’s trade war
-
Bondi stonewalls on Epstein, Comey in Senate face-offSpeed Read Attorney General Pam Bondi denied charges of using the Justice Department in service of Trump’s personal vendettas
