Saparmurat Niyazov, the “President for Life” of Turkmenistan who died yesterday aged 66, led his country from 1985, when it was still a Soviet republic. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, he turned it into one of the most repressive former Soviet states.

Niyazov, who liked to be referred to as “Turkmenbashi the Great, Father of all Turkmen,” was the most eccentric of despots. He renamed a town, a meteor, and the month of January after himself, and April (and bread) after his mother. In the center of the country’s capital, Ashgabat, he ordered the erection of a huge gilded statue of the “One and Eternal” leader that rotates to face the sun.

There was no end to Niyazov’s caprice. He declared a national holiday in honor of melons and another in honor of the horse. He banned livestock from the country’s capital so as not to overpower the smell of dahlias named after him, and slapped prohibitions on (among other things) circuses, ballet, opera, video games, listening to car radios, lip-synching to songs, smoking, and newscasters wearing makeup,

In addition to decreeing that adolescence lasts until 25, and that old age does not begin until 85, Niyazov wrote his own holy book, the “Rukhnama” (“Book of the Soul”), and gave it equal status with the Bible and the Koran. When the country’s former chief mullah, Nasurallah Ibadullah, resisted, he was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Niyazov’s image was everywhere, from the estimated 10,000 statues littering the country to portraits on banknotes, vodka bottles, packets of tea, and even his own brand of scent.

But the comical aspects of Niyazov were a distraction. Beneath the superficial buffoonery was a brutal dictator who killed, imprisoned, or tortured anyone who dared raise a voice in criticism. Human Rights Watch recently described Turkmenistan as a country where “abuses are widespread and include violations of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights.” An estimated 20,000 dissidents are currently locked up.

Niyazov’s power rested on his grip of the country’s huge oil and gas wealth, which allowed him to ignore international calls for economic and political reform. Turkmenistan has the world’s fifth-largest natural gas reserves, but its 5 million people remain mired in poverty. Food is rationed, there is a 60% unemployment rate, and unreliable water and power. Niyazov used the proceeds from gas sales to build huge palaces, waterfalls, and other vainglorious monuments.

These included the finest racecourse in the region, as well as its largest mosque, called “Spirit of Turkmenbashi.” Among other flights of fancy were a huge man-made lake in the Kara Kum desert, an extensive cypress forest to change the desert climate, and the world’s largest handmade carpet, which is 300 meters square and titled “The 21st Century: The Epoch of the Great Saparmurat Niyazov.”

Saparmurat Atajevich Niyazov was born at the small village of Kipcak, on the outskirts of Ashgabat, on February 19, 1940. His father died in World War II and the rest of his family perished in an earthquake that leveled the capital in 1948. He was raised in an orphanage and later by distant relatives.

After studying engineering in the U.S.S.R., Niyazov worked at a power station near Ashgabat from 1966. Active in the Communist Party from 1962, he rose through the ranks before being chosen to be head of the party in Turkmenistan in 1985. He was named president of the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic in October 1990.

Niyazov was not in favor of Turkmenistan’s independence, but when it became inevitable he embraced the new nationalist ideology as fervently as the old. After being elected president of the new independent Turkmenistan in 1992 with a reported 99.5% of the vote, he set about driving opposition figures into exile or imprisonment.

In 1994 a reported 99.9% of voters supported a referendum allowing him to remain in office for a second fiveyear term without having to face new elections. In 1999 he was made “President for Life” when 2,000 hand-picked members of his “People’s Council” asked him during a televised meeting. At first he appeared to decline, but then “changed his mind” after hearing the deafening applause.

Niyazov pursued a strongly nationalist agenda, banning access to Russianlanguage press outlets, replacing Cyrillic with a new Turkmen alphabet, and requiring any resident Russian or Uzbek wishing to marry a Turkmen girl to pay a large fine. These and other measures led to an exodus of some of the country’s most educated citizens and gravely damaged its education system.

He supported the American-led war against terror in neighboring Afghanistan, allowing coalition aircraft to use Turkmen airspace and humanitarian agencies to pass through to deliver aid. Because of his friendly attitude and their hopes of profiting from Turkmenistan’s oil and gas reserves, Western visitors (who included the former Canadian prime minister, Jean Chrétien, and the Prince of Wales) did not seek to highlight his record on human rights.

Indeed, some Western diplomats even tried to present Niyazov as a modern-day Kemal Ataturk, dragging his country into the modern world by authoritarian methods before allowing democracy. Earlier this year the European Commission and the trade committee of the European Parliament voted to grant Turkmenistan “most favored nation” status after Niyazov said he would enter a “human rights dialogue” with the European Union.

Niyazov claimed on independence that Turkmenistan would be the new Kuwait. By 2001 this was modified into a promise that every family would have “a house, a car, and a cow with calf.” This undertaking was then dropped for the slogan “The 21st century is the Golden Age of the Turkmens” and a “plan” to fill the country, renowned for its deserts, saline marshes, and sweltering heat, with paddy fields full of rice.

An alleged assassination attempt on Niyazov in 2002 sparked a severe crackdown, leading to dozens of arrests. A former foreign minister, Boris Shikhmuradov, was named as the mastermind of the alleged plot and sentenced to life in prison after a Stalinist-style televised show trial in which he claimed he was a drug addict and had hired mercenaries for the attack. Another 32 “conspirators” were sentenced to life imprisonment before their trials got under way.

Niyazov was given the Hero of Turkmenistan award five times, and in 2003 was officially elevated to the status of prophet in a declaration from his ministers that read: “God awards such strength, such greatness, such fate, only to those he favors and sincerely loves as God’s messenger.”

In 2004 Niyazov fired 15,000 health personnel and, the following year, ordered the closure of all hospitals outside Ashgabat, saying that anyone who needed treatment could come to the capital. Turkmenistan’s child mortality rates soared and life expectancy plunged.

Yesterday Turkmen state television reported that Niyazov had died of sudden heart failure. It was known that he had been taking medication for a cardiac condition and had undergone heart surgery in Germany in 1997.