Turkmenistan: It’s my party, and I’ll go if I want to

It is party time in Turkmenistan as the president marks his milestone 63rd birthday – the age at which the Prophet Muhammad is believed to have died. Foreign-based opponents to Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s regime, however, decided to mark the eve of the occasion, on June 28, in less celebratory manner, by gathering for protest pickets in places like the UN headquarters in New York and the Turkmen Embassy in Washington. Similar demos have been organized in Istanbul and Northern Cyprus, which both have sizable Turkmen diasporas. The pickets are small, but that they are happening at all feels like a Rubicon has been crossed. Turkmens who have lived abroad even for decades have almost all...