Paper long abstract:

President Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedow - a former dentist - has promoted health as an essential component of Turkmenistani national identity. He has emphasized it over the last three years, while Turkmenistan has been going through its most serious economic and social crisis since independence, largely due to government mismanagement of the economy, Berdymuhamedow's expensive vanity projects, and the fall of world oil prices. Through policies requiring a healthy nation, Berdymuhamedow uses a paternalistic approach in posing as the healer of the nation. Propaganda touting the capital's hospitals as equipped with state-of-the-art equipment is supposed to demonstrate the country's progress and modernity in reaching international standards. At the same time, average citizens are often unable to afford basic healthcare - if the services they need are even available.

This approach raises at least two fundamental questions. First, this paper will show that the concentration of resources on select showcase projects intended to substantiate the official discourse on a healthy nation, combined with an excessive authoritarian management which has consisted, among others, in tampering with medical statistics, such as infant and maternal mortality rates, and in concealing data on infectious and contagious diseases contribute to further weaken the already feeble health system by widening the gap between its real capacities and the needs of the population. As reported by local unofficial sources, this has been feeding Turkmenistanis' resentment, and might impact significantly the development and the social stability of the country.

Second, it will examine the stakes and impact of both public and private international engagement with authoritarian regimes like Turkmenistan, an issue widely debated among theorists of foreign assistance. By focusing on supplying modern equipment, as solicited by the local government, foreign actors risk actually weakening the health system by diverting attention from the real needs of the local population, legitimizing the official discourse on nation building, and thus becoming complicit in the construction of a Potemkin state in today's very fragile Turkmenistan.