Turkmen police is dad’s army

TURKMENISTAN has named a police unit after the authoritarian president’s father.

Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov, a central Asian autocrat and former dentist, follows in the footsteps of the equally dictatorial Saparmurat Niyazov, who died in 2006, in naming public institutions after his parents.

The police unit will now be known as the Myalikguli Berdymukhamedov unit. During Niyazov’s time, the Women’s Union and Veterans’ Association were named after his mother and father respectively, indicative of a cult of personality in the Stalinist mould which continues in the former Soviet republic.