When rumors of the president’s death made the rounds, the sole ruler rolled a few donuts at Hell. The bad speculations should be refuted, so the Turkmen state television showed an abundance of energetic recordings of the head of state: on horseback, shooting, bowling, in the gym and in the jeep on the edge of a burning desert crater – at the “gate to hell”. Aerial photos of President Gurbanguli Berdymuchamedov, circling and powerfully raising dust, only a few meters from the fire pit, were apparently intended to calm and impress the people. The series of pictures was more than two years ago. Officially, the shoot was supposed to promote motorsport in the country against the spectacular backdrop of the Karakum desert. Now the dictatorial president wants to close hell.
For more than 50 years, flames have been shooting out of the 20-meter-deep desert crater. When Turkmenistan was still part of the Soviet Union, engineers made test drillings in the desert in 1971, but they went wrong. The drills hit a gas cave, the ground gave way, and the equipment fell. Gas leaked out. To prevent dangerous vapors from spreading, the authorities decided to flare the gas. It was thought at the time that the flames would go out after a few days. Instead, a kind of eternal fire developed over a length of about 70 meters. The gas abundance of the Central Asian country is so great that a natural end to the fire is not in sight.
Turkmenistan is a dictatorship in the style of North Korea, President Gurbanguli Berdymuchamedow, here at a parade in September, has a bizarre cult around himself.
(Photo: Alexander Vershinin / AP)
President Berdymuchamedov did not particularly like the term “gate to hell”, so in 2018 he renamed the fire hole “the glow of Karakum”. But now he is concerned about the health of people living nearby, about the environment – and he is also concerned about lost income. “We are losing valuable natural resources for which we could obtain substantial profits to use for the welfare of our people,” he said after a cabinet meeting on state television. The news service Bloomberg, however, soberly points out that Turkmenistan is one of the largest emitters of the greenhouse gas methane.
About 350 people live near the crater in the desert town of Darwasa. It is almost 270 kilometers from the Turkmen capital Ashgabat to here, a journey that runs over an unpaved sand track for the last few kilometers. On the website of a Russian adventure company it is said that there are no paid parking spaces around the crater, no souvenir stands, but also not a soul around. The only café where you can have a bite to eat is several kilometers away. Nevertheless, the Darwasa fire crater, the “gateway to hell”, has established itself as one of the country’s greatest attractions in recent years. However, tourists do not come in droves, especially not from abroad.
Only white cars are allowed to drive in the capital – because the president wants it that way
Turkmenistan is one of the most isolated countries, a dictatorship in the category of North Korea. On the list of media freedom at Reporters Without Borders, the country ranks 178th out of 180. Berdymuchamedow has a bizarre cult, for example, only wants white cars on the streets in the capital, and he not only had a gold monument erected for himself, but also his favorite breed of dog – the Turkmen variant of a sheepdog.
After all, in 2013 the Canadian George Kourounis was allowed to abseil down to the bottom of the crater for 17 minutes in a special fire-resistant suit to look for microorganisms that could survive at such a temperature. “It’s like another planet,” said Kourounis in a BBC interview, “there is no place like this.” And that’s why it amazes him that Berdymuchamedow wants to close the fascinating attraction now. He tried that before in 2010 when he visited the burning crater. At that time, however, he was not yet the almighty president of Turkmenistan. On the other hand, nature is often more difficult to control than an entire country.