TURKMENISTAN: Saparmurat Niyazov even renamed the words for the month April and bread after his dead mother, writes Lynne O'Donnell from Ashgabad
As Marat Klychmamedov wandered around the stables at the Ashgabad Hippodrome chatting with the teenage grooms and studying the form, he knew the magnificent beasts owned by Turkmenistan's most famous breeder, Turkmenbashy, would be odds-on to win any of the six races on the card for National Horse Day.
For Turkmenbashy is the self-styled Great Leader of the Turkmen People, Saparmurat Niyazov, the president-for-life of the isolated Central Asian state of Turkmenistan.
A huge billboard bearing Mr Niyazov's smiling face leaning on a left hand festooned with diamond rings - gifts, it is said, from fawning foreign businessmen - watches over the track as his gleaming Akhal-Teke stallions and mares with foals are paraded before the invitation-only crowd.
A booming voice intones the greatness of the Turkmen people, their culture and their godfather, the Beyik (Great) Turkmenbashy, and young men in traditional embroidered shirts, high leather boots and enormous, white sheepskin hats whistle to goad the horses to buck and rear. The crowd cheers at the horses' names, as familiar in Turkmenistan as pop stars elsewhere.
The president's horses, stabled in a new, multi-million dollar State Equestrian Centre 15 km outside Ashgabad in the foothills of the Kopetdag mountains separating Turkmenistan from Iran, did well on the heavy, rain-sodden track, re-affirming Mr Niyazov's place at the core of Turkmen culture.
It's a position he has honed in the 13 years since Turkmenistan, with the other "stans" of Central Asia, gained its independence from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Head of the Communist Party before independence, Mr Niyazov has consolidated his grip on power with a personality cult that rivals even that of North Korea's Kim dynasty.
His portrait beams from almost every public building - becoming younger and slimmer, his grey hair rejuvenated as glossy black at his decree.
Billboards proclaim "Halk, Watan, Beyik Turkmenbashi" - The People, The Motherland, The Great Turkmenbashy - "beyik" added after a botched assassination attempt in November 2002 increased his paranoia and the repression his long-suffering people endure.
Though his quirky proclamations earn sniggers of ridicule outside the country and his personality cult is regarded, with eye-rolling, as a bad joke, for the five million people of Turkmenistan Niyazov represents a brand of repression comparable to North Korea or, closer to home, the worst excesses of the former Soviet Union.
For one prominent horse breeder, the government came calling to throw him off land he had owned and transformed into a successful stud over more than a decade.
He was summarily evicted, with no compensation, to make room for a sanitorium for senior officials. "Just like that," he said with a shrug of resignation.
Monitoring groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have detailed torture, disappearances, arbitrary detentions, house demolitions, forced labour and exile.
Religions other than Islam and Russian Orthodoxy are outlawed, political opposition is not tolerated, and some people charged with involvement in the assassination plot have died in prison.
Last month, the UN Human Rights Commission adopted a resolution, the second in two years, expressing concern over Turkmenistan's human rights situation, and the US State Department said in a February report that "widespread abuses" by police and security forces escalated after the attack against Niyazov.
The presidential vanity masks habitual fudging of official figures that add more than 20 per cent to the population, and put last year's economic growth rate at 22 per cent, though the State Department believes it was between six and 14 per cent. Unemployment is a serious problem - 50 per cent in the cities, 70 per cent in the country.
This failure to make the nation work comes against a background of huge potential wealth. Turkmenistan sits on massive reserves of oil and, especially, natural gas. Its place at the crossroads of Central Asia could ensure the country plays a central role in vital pipelines moving oil and gas to Russia in the north, and through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Gulf.
But the inertia of Niyazov's autocracy has seen plans languish, and exploration and development companies from across the globe have mostly packed up and left.
"Everything has to be signed by the one man," said a British oil contractor based in the Caspian city of Balkanabat. "Companies sign one umbrella contract that will get them into the country and hopefully get them some involvement. But when they get here, they're told point blank 'We don't follow the contract'. So nothing gets done.."
While ordinary people enjoy free electricity and water, and the cost of filling a petrol tank is negligible, the president's attempt to reinvigorate traditional Turkmen culture is causing concern among a professional class that fears the country will slip even further behind the rest of the world.
"It's all very well to have almost free gasoline, but by banning the Russian language in education, and making Turkmen the official language, the president is forcing the educated class into the wilderness, and that is not good for the country," said a Russian-speaking Turkman.
By presidential decree, Mr Niyazov has changed the names of the days of the week and the months of the year. He even changed the name for bread from "chorek" to that of his long-dead mother, Gurbansoltanedzhe, after whom April was also re-named. Most recently, he outlawed gold teeth, which for the poor of Central Asia are as much a mark of wealth as Rolexes in Hong Kong.
In a civic building boom worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Ashgabad has been transformed from a desert village into what the president claims is a world-class capital, though it is almost impossible for anyone to visit without an official invitation.
Lush public gardens surround spouting fountains, belying Turkmenistan's status as one of the most arid countries of the region. Wedding parties pause at the feet of a huge golden statue of the president, his hand raised and overcoat flowing in the style of Chairman Mao.
Towering over the city and visible from almost every corner of it, is the Monument to Neutrality, surrounded by snapping national flags and topped with yet another statue of the president.
Clad with four kilograms of solid gold, arms stretch towards the sun, which it follows - or, as the locals quip, which follows Mr Niyazov - in a 24-hour circular trajectory.
At its base stands the coup de grace of the president's Oedipal complex which has seen him decorate the city with statues of his mother as the eternally-youthful goddess of all things good.
Here, she emerges from a globe that has been splintered by the earthquake that in 1948 destroyed Ashgabad. In her arms she cradles the embodiment of hope, the golden infant Niyazov, the sole member of his family to survive the quake.
In his hometown, a tiny village called Kipchak 30 minutes' drive from Ashgabad, the biggest mosque in Central Asia is nearing completion. While the president has ordered all schoolgirls to wear the Islamic headscarf from September, he has angered some imams by ordering that his own philosophical ramblings, contained in the Rukhnama (Book of the Soul), take precedence over the Koran.