Daily Times

Ashgabat, Turkmenistan: Turkmenistan leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov dropped on Friday the strongest hint yet that he intends to step down, with his son widely tipped to succeed him in the tightly controlled Central Asian country.

Berdymukhamedov, 64, said he reached “a difficult decision” about his leadership because of his age and that the country needed “young leaders”.

“The road to governance at this new stage in the development of our country should be given to young leaders who have been brought up in a spiritual environment and in accordance with the high requirements of our time,” Berdymukhamedov said, in quotes relayed by the state information agency.

Berdymukhamedov offered no timeframe for stepping down but said he wished to remain in politics in his role as chairman of parliament’s upper chamber. Gas-rich ex-Soviet Turkmenistan is one of the world’s most repressive, secretive states, and little is known about how the regime makes day-to-day decisions.

Strongman Berdymukhamedov is its main face to the public, with his pastimes including horse riding, mass cycling, composing songs, and authoring books making him an internet sensation.

In recent years his 40-year-old son Serdar Berdymukhamedov has enjoyed a meteoric rise to become the second most powerful official in government with a broad purview over the economy as vice-premier.

Friday’s session in parliament’s upper house marked the 15th anniversary of the first of three crushing electoral victories for Berdymukhamedov senior in his career as president, with no real opponents competing in any of them.

A former dentist and health minister, he succeeded the country’s founding autocrat president Saparmurat Niyazov — styled Turkmenbashy, or Father of the Turkmen — when Niyazov died in December 2006.

The younger Berdymukhamedov last year replaced the family patriarch as head of a symbolically important national horse association in a switch analyst viewed as a warm-up for a succession.