President Saparmurat Niyazov was larger than life; in death, the forces rushing into fill that void risk destabilizing Turkmenistan, the country he ruled with an iron hand. There is the danger that instability unleashed by the struggle for power could spread beyond Turkmenistan's borders to other Central Asian states. Mr. Niyazov would have liked the thought that he could not be replaced and that his passing focused international attention on his country, even if it unsettled Turkmenistan and the region.
Mr. Niyazov came to power in 1985 when he was appointed first party secretary of the Republican Communist Party, a member of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's new generation of Central Asian leaders. He survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and the removal of his patron. He was elected president of the newly independent country of Turkmenistan in 1992 with 99.5 percent of the vote. Two years later, an astounding 99.9 percent of voters agreed to let him remain in office for a second five-year term without elections. Four years after, Parliament removed all term limits; Mr. Niyazov still had the People's Council, a handpicked rubber stamp assembly, name him president for life shortly after.
While consolidating power, Mr. Niyazov constructed a cult of personality that has few modern rivals. He had himself named the "Father Of All Turkmen," banned opera and ballet, and regularly fulminated against lip-syncing and car radios. Like many megalomaniacs he had cities named after him, as well as numerous other monuments scattered throughout the country; his face adorns the country's currency. He showed imagination by having doctors abandon the Hippocratic Oath and instead swear allegiance to him. He had the months of the year renamed -- January now bears his name, April, his mother's -- and he wrote the "Rukhnama," a book of spiritual guidance that is required reading for children.