Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is a Turkic state in Central Asia. Formerly the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, a republic in the Soviet Union, Turkmenistan declared independence on October 27, 1991. The population of Turkmenistan is largely Sunnī Muslim, with Muslims representing between 87% and 93% of the population. A small population of Eastern Orthodox Christians, the state religion of the preSoviet Russian Empire, also exists. Islam spread to Turkmenistan during the Islamic conquests of the seventh century, with most Turkmen practicing a form of popular folk Islam that is integrated with the tribal social organization of Turkmen society.

Islam became prominent in Turkmenistan due, in large part, to the missionary activities of Sufi dervishes and shaykhs in the 11th through 14th centuries. The adulation of these holy men combined with pre-Islamic religious traditions of shamanism and ancestor worship to form a distinctly Turkmen form of Islam. Central to the Turkmen form of Islam is the concept of the öwlat, translated alternately as “honor group” or “holy lineage.” Traditionally, there are six öwlats in Turkmen society: Khoja, Seyit, Shïkh, Magtïm, Ata, and Müjewür, and each traces its lineage back, through the Sufi missionaries who helped convert the Turkmen to Islam, to one of the first four caliphs of Islam. Members of an öwlat are revered by the Turkmen, and they give spiritual guidance, blessings, and healing, as well as serving as mediators in both intertribal and intratribal disputes.

Under the Soviet Union, Islamic institutions such as mosques and religious schools were closed or destroyed, and Islam was discouraged as part of the general antireligious policies of the Soviet state. These policies had a profound effect on Islam in Turkmenistan as they isolated Turkmen Muslims from the greater Islamic world and destroyed many of the more institutionalized elements of the religion, further increasing the unofficial and localized character of Turkmen Islamic practices. In response to economic distress and religious persecution, Turkmen Muslims took part in the Basmachi Rebellion, an ultimately unsuccessful Central Asian Islamic uprising against the Soviet Union during the 1920s. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Islam experienced a revival, influenced and supported by the state. Islamic belief has become [Page 1313]an important aspect of Turkmen nationalism and national pride, and being Muslim is a crucial element of modern Turkmen identity.