Turkmenistan’s despot finds a worthy successor: his son

IT IS TRUE that he is two years past his country’s official retirement age. But at 64 Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Turkmenistan’s president, is still a spring chicken by the standards of his contemporaries. Islam Karimov ruled Uzbekistan until his death at 78 in 2016. Nursultan Nazarbayev, the former president of Kazakhstan, was the same age before he made way, in 2019, for a younger leader. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s 69-year-old president, shows no sign of slowing down.

So it was a shock when, in a speech on February 11th marking his 15th anniversary as president, Mr Berdymukhamedov announced the “difficult decision” he had made. It was time, he said, to give “young leaders” a chance, as long as they “have been brought up in a spiritual environment and in accordance with the demanding needs of modern times”. A snap election will be held on March 12th.