Turkmen ruler Saparmurat Niyazov, whose elaborate cult of personality pervaded every aspect of life in the gas-rich Central Asian country, was laid to rest on Sunday in a lavish funeral attended by foreign dignitaries and throngs of tearful mourners.
In a carefully scripted ceremony held under tight security, Niyazov’s body was laid in an open casket for public viewing in one of the ornate presidential palaces he commissioned in Ashgabat, guarded by four soldiers with his widow, Musa, and adult children seated alongside.
Funereal cello and violin music — Bitter Destiny, a work by a Turkmen composer — was played in the palace and throughout the capital through loudspeakers while thousands of black-clad mourners, many of them in tears, stood for hours in line for a chance to pay their last respects.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan were among the foreign leaders who filed past the coffin, while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a senior United States official, Richard Boucher, were also scheduled to attend the ceremonies.
With the world’s fifth-largest known natural gas reserves, Turkmenistan is a crucial link in European energy supplies and Niyazov’s death on Thursday sparked international fear of a power struggle in the ex-Soviet republic that could have repercussions far beyond Central Asia.
Apart from crowds waiting outside the palace to file past the body of the ”Great Turkmenbashi”, or ”Leader of All Turkmens”, as he referred to himself, Ashgabat was at a standstill with no traffic or people on the streets and entrances to the capital blocked by security forces.
The only businesses allowed to operate were florists and grocers and even they had security personnel — uniformed police officers and plainclothes agents dressed in black — posted nearby. — AFP