Abstract
This paper analyzes the political culture in Turkmenistan as a framework of the suppressed media environment in the country. Building on the concept of political culture the study focuses on the transformation of the media landscape in the period from 1991 onwards in the comparative perspective of the political culture under the first President of Independent Turkmenistan Saparmurad Niyazov and his successor Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov.
I support that interaction of the Turkmen political culture and the personality of the political leaders is the key factor in defining the dynamics of the media landscape in the Turkmen society. In contrast to the existing discourse on non-dynamic or static authoritarian mood in Turkmenistan, I argue that some gentle and slow transformation is going on in the political system, in the media sphere in particular, although tough control and media censorship is maintained.
The study explores the impact of political culture on the behavior of media in the country, it analyses what moves the journalists to follow the political culture they live with. This analysis is based on monitoring the content and style of the Turkmen official media outlets of the period under study, as well as interviews with journalists and average people in Turkmenistan conducted since 2017.