Turkmen Leaders' Lavish Trips Don't Sit Well With Civilians Mired In Poverty
Some 2,500 people in Turkmenistan’s Balkan region were mobilized this week to clean the streets, repaint buildings, and plant flowers along the sidewalks ahead of a “possible visit” by authoritarian ex-President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. But ordinary Turkmen are not happy, saying such efforts are a huge burden when they are in a struggle to make ends meet.