Product Description
SCWPM.#1 - TBB.#B101 - Date: ND (1993)
Grade: Unc. - Signature: 1
Description: - Colour: Brown.
Front: Ylymlar Akademiyasy (Academy) building; native crafts.
Back: Coat of arms; Ilarslanyn Yadygarligi mausoleum building.
Solid security thread. - Watermark: Rearing Arabian horse.
Printer: (TDLR). - Size: 120 x 60 mm. - Material: paper.
General information:
After 69 years as part of the Soviet Union (including 67 years as a union republic), Turkmenistan declared its independence on 27 October 1991.
President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov, a former bureaucrat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ruled Turkmenistan from 1985, when he became head of the Communist Party of the Turkmen SSR, until his death in 2006. He retained absolute control over the country after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On 28 December 1999, Niyazov was declared President for Life of Turkmenistan by the Mejlis (parliament), which itself had taken office a week earlier in elections that included only candidates hand-picked by President Niyazov. No opposition candidates were allowed.
Since the December 2006 death of Niyazov, Turkmenistan's leadership has made tentative moves to open up the country. His successor, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, repealed some of Niyazov's most idiosyncratic policies, including banning opera and the circus for being "insufficiently Turkmen". In education, Berdimuhamedow's government increased basic education to ten years from nine years, and higher education was extended from four years to five. It also increased contacts with the West, which is eager for access to the country's natural gas riches.
