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Abstract
This paper presents one case study of state-sponsored cultural activities that occurred throughout 2014, Turkmenistan's Year of Magtymguly, the 290th anniversary of this Turkmen poet's birth. Such activities constitute examples of public culture; they can organize representations of a society's past and present to reaffirm for participants the values and power structure of their society and revalidate its philosophical underpinnings. After examining this Turkic poet's iconicity, this paper compiles 2014's celebratory events from disparate sources, complementing broader general literature on Central Asia's spectacles of public culture and their role in nation-building and identity-formation. Rather than merely resulting from any top-down decision specifying required activities nationwide, the year's events involved numerous synergies as artists, museum and theater administrators, composers, and other cultural-sector workers benefited by responding to the potential of aligning their work with a theme as broad, as widely appreciated, and as eligible for various forms of support as this one. In addition, Turkmenistan's strong central leadership benefited from this widely shared and highly visible celebration, especially emphasizing one element within Magtymguly's eighteenth-century vision, an end to his people's tribal conflicts within a unified Turkmenistan under one leader.
Highlights
This paper attempts to interpret observations, admittedly including many made first-hand by the author as participant, regarding the highly coordinated series of cultural activities that took place in Turkmenistan in 2014, designated the Year of Magtymguly by the International Organization of Turkic Culture (TURKSOY) (Gadimova 2014) and enthusiastically celebrated through many state-sponsored events in Turkmenistan
Looking back at 2014 in his New Year's address of 1 January 2015, Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov concluded that the "declaration of 2014 as the Year of Magtymguly at the international level strengthened the pride of the Turkmen people and their national values and spiritual and cultural heritage" (State News Agency, 2015)
On 31 January 2014, the State News Agency of Turkmenistan announced that Berdimuhamedov held an "enlarged meeting" with the Cabinet of Ministers, provincial governors, provincial deputies of culture, and heads of mass media organizations and research institutes to discuss plans for the celebration of the 290th anniversary of Magtymguly
Summary
This paper presents one case study of state-sponsored cultural activities that occurred throughout 2014, Turkmenistan's Year of Magtymguly, the 290th anniversary of this Turkmen poet's birth. Such activities constitute examples of public culture; they can organize representations of a society's past and present to reaffirm for participants the values and power structure of their society and revalidate its philosophical underpinnings. After examining this Turkic poet's iconicity, this paper compiles 2014' s celebratory events from disparate sources, complementing broader general literature on Central Asia's spectacles of public culture and their role in nationbuilding and identity-formation.
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