This story written by Areeha Tunio originally appeared on Global Voices on February 28, 2026.
Turkmenistan’s capital, Ashgabat, does not feel like a living capital; it feels like a high-budget film set where the actors have gone missing. In 2013, the city secured its place in the Guinness World Records Book for the highest density of white marble-clad buildings — a staggering 543 structures shrouded in 4.5 million square meters of sparkling Italian stone.
Under the relentless Central Asian sun, the city is blinding — a monochromatic landscape of ivory towers and gold-leafed statues that project an image of absolute, unshakeable perfection. Videos from the ground reveal a city that is eerily “picture perfect,” yet strangely devoid of the chaos typically found in a national capital.
However, this aesthetic choice is more than mere architecture; it is a state-driven manifesto. The regime of President Serdar Berdimuhamedow, a de facto dictatorship, uses this “White City” as a visual tool to project power and stability to the outside world, masking the country’s deep isolation and economic woes. By creating a sprawling, sterile environment of “perfection,” the government attempts to manufacture a narrative of national prosperity, even as the streets themselves remain silent and disconnected from the people they were supposedly built for.
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The urban transformation of Ashgabat has come with a staggering price tag, estimated at over USD 14 billion. This financial titanism is fueled by “Blue Gold,” Turkmenistan’s natural gas reserves, the fourth-largest in the world. While the government receives 85 percent of its revenue from energy exports to China, Russia, and potentially Europe, this wealth rarely trickles down to the populace.
Instead, it is funneled into vanity projects. From the world’s largest indoor Ferris wheel to the world’s largest horse-shaped stadium, the government’s priorities are clear. This obsession with grandeur dates back to the country’s first president, the late Saparmurat Niyazov, who famously ordered an ice castle to be built in the middle of a desert. Today, this legacy continues under a rigid system where the state claims nearly 99 percent of election votes while maintaining an unemployment rate estimated at 60 percent.
The result is the “City of the Dead”: a record-breaking capital that only legally registered citizens can inhabit, leaving the new districts eerily empty.
While Ashgabat boasts the record for the most fountain pools in a public place, flowing day and night in celebration of state power, the rest of the country is parched. Turkmenistan is currently facing a worsening hydrological and humanitarian crisis.
The survival of the nation depends on the Amu Darya River, a vital artery that is rapidly retreating due to the dual pressures of climate change and regional mismanagement. In the rural provinces, water is a disappearing luxury, yet in the capital, it remains a decorative plaything, used to maintain the lush, artificial parks of the “White City.”
This disparity extends to a worsening food security crisis. Despite its marble exterior and the wealth generated from natural gas, Turkmenistan imports 60 percent of its food. The average Turkmen family is caught in a vice of hyperinflation and scarcity, often spending 70 to 80 percent of their total income on basic groceries. Literal “bread lines” have become a fixture of daily life. Citizens wait for hours in front of state-run stores for a chance to purchase subsidized flour or oil, only to be turned away when stocks inevitably run out.
While begging and scavenging for food have become increasingly common in the provinces, the state-run media broadcasts a parallel reality of abundance. Paradoxically, even as citizens struggle to eat, the regime is planning to close subsidized food schemes, claiming the population is prosperous enough to navigate a “free market.”
This systemic neglect is coupled with exploitation; thousands of public sector workers, including teachers and doctors, are forced into the cotton fields every season as manual labor to sustain the regime’s agricultural quotas. The marble of Ashgabat is, in a very literal sense, built on the parched earth and hungry labor of its people.
This glaring discrepancy between the sparkling marble-clad capital and the population struggling to make ends meet remains unchallenged due to the totalitarian rule established in 1991, when the country gained independence from the Soviet Union. Turkmenistan is one of the most closed societies on earth, equalled in its isolation and restrictions perhaps only by North Korea.
The KNB (secret police) eavesdrops on every digital move, and using a VPN is a punishable crime. Information is strictly rationed; foreign publications and libraries have been systematically shut down, replaced by state propaganda like the Ruhnama — a spiritual guide written by the former dictator, Niyazov, that was once compulsory for job interviews and driving tests.
The surveillance is also physical and highly gendered. Women have been fired from government jobs for wearing makeup, false eyelashes, or “Western” outfits, as opposed to traditional clothing. Young men are detained and forced to shave if their beards are deemed “too radical.” Even travel is weaponized; the state maintains an extensive blacklist of citizens banned from leaving the country, effectively trapping them inside the country.
Those who dare to challenge this narrative often “disappear.” The campaign “Prove They Are Alive!” documents over 120 cases of enforced disappearances, including former Foreign Minister Boris Shikhmuradov and journalist Ogulsapar Muradova, whose body showed clear signs of torture upon return. In jails like Ovadan-Depe, dissent is silenced through isolation and starvation, far away from the sparkling fountains.
To the international observer, Ashgabat serves as a modern-day “Theresienstadt” — the city Adolf Hitler used to fool Red Cross inspectors — a facade built to hide a decaying interior. Similarly, Ashgabat is a masterpiece of misdirection, a place where architectural grandiosity is weaponized to hide a nation with a 1 out of 100 freedom score.
The tragedy of the “Marble Mirage” is that it is a vanity project built on a foundation of scarcity. As climate change accelerates and the Amu Darya river continues to retreat, the lush, fountain-filled parks of the capital will become even harder to justify. It is a cautionary tale for the 21st century: a regime can import the finest materials from Italy and Turkey, but it cannot import a soul for a city that remains hollowed out by fear.
Ultimately, a nation’s greatness cannot be measured by the metric tons of marble it imports or the record-breaking height of its monuments. True prosperity is found in the well-being, food security, and digital freedom of the individuals who walk its streets. Ashghabat may glitter brilliantly under the sun, but without the foundation of human rights and dignity, it remains a fragile and empty monument to excess.
[VP]
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