Türkmenbaşy

The city was made by Russian sea power. In 1869 a Russian force landed on the bay and built the fort of Krasnovodsk, a Russian rendering of the older name Kyzyl-Su, 'red water', as the bridgehead for the conquest of the Turkmen lands. It was an unpromising site with almost no fresh water, but it had a deep, sheltered anchorage. From 1879 the Trans-Caspian Railway was pushed eastwards from the Caspian shore towards Kyzyl-Arvat, Ashgabat and eventually Samarkand, first to move troops and later to carry cotton; its terminus was moved north to the harbour here, and the port became the hinge between the Caspian shipping lanes and Central Asia, with a train ferry running to Baku by 1905.

The Second World War made it a bottleneck of a different kind. Men, machinery and evacuees moved through the harbour, and in 1942 much of the Polish Anders' Army and many civilians were shipped out through Krasnovodsk to Iran. Oil from Cheleken and the desert fields nearby was refined in the town, and the refinery grew into the largest in the country, while fresh water was brought in by tanker and later by pipeline and desalination.

In 1993 the town was renamed Türkmenbaşy, the title taken by the first president, Saparmurat Niyazov. The refinery was modernised, a new seaport complex was completed on the bay in 2018, and under his successor, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, the state developed the Awaza resort zone along the shore to the west, a line of hotels intended to turn the coast into a holiday destination. The ferry link to Azerbaijan keeps the old role alive: this is still the place where Turkmenistan meets the sea.

Türkmenbaşy is the most outward-looking town in a closed country. The Yomut Turkmen of the western steppe are the main local people, and their carpets, in deep reds and plum tones, are prized by collectors. The coast also produced something unusual in Turkmen life: a seafaring and fishing tradition, with families who lived by the Caspian rather than by herds and oases.

The railway and the port brought Russians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians and others, and the town has kept a mixed, slightly Soviet air that distinguishes it from the interior. Russian is still commonly spoken, the architecture of the old centre is nineteenth-century Russian, and the rhythm of the place is set by shift work at the port and the refinery.

Custom otherwise follows the national pattern. Weddings are the big public occasions, with large gatherings, music and a bride in heavy embroidered red. Pilgrimage matters: the desert shrines of the province, above all Gozli Ata, draw visitors from across the country, and they are approached quietly and modestly. Since the creation of Awaza a new habit has grown up — the summer seaside holiday — and for many Turkmen families a week on this coast is the year's main trip away from home.

About 85,000 people live in Türkmenbaşy, which makes it a small town holding a disproportionately important job. The port, the oil refinery, the railway and the state institutions that go with them provide most of the work, and shift patterns at the refinery shape the day. Awaza adds a seasonal layer of hotel and service jobs that swells in July and August and shrinks to almost nothing in winter.

Housing runs from the low streets of the old centre to Soviet blocks stepped up the hillsides, with the newer and better-serviced buildings closer to the shore. Water is the town's oldest problem: there is no river, and supply depends on pipelines and desalination from the sea, so it is valued and greenery is limited to what can be watered. Dust, wind and summer humidity are part of ordinary life.

The bazaar is the social centre in the morning, the promenade in the evening when the heat drops and families walk by the water. Younger people often leave for Ashgabat or abroad for work, a pattern common across the country. Fishing continues on a reduced scale, affected by falling Caspian water levels and pressure on sturgeon stocks, and the sea's shrinking shoreline is a subject of local concern as well as national policy.

The Caspian gives this town a menu unlike the rest of Turkmenistan. Fish is grilled over charcoal, fried, or smoked and dried, and appears in stews and pilafs; carp, bream and kilka are the everyday catch, and the old sturgeon fishery is now tightly restricted. Fish cooked with rice, apricots, raisins or pomegranate juice reflects the shared kitchen of the whole Caspian basin.

Otherwise western Turkmen food rules. Ishlekli, a large round meat pie of mutton, onion and pepper sealed in dough and baked in ashes, is the dish the region is known for, cut into wedges to share. Palow — rice with mutton, carrots and onions cooked in a cast-iron cauldron — is the celebration dish; chorba is a mutton and vegetable soup, and dograma, bread and meat torn into broth, is eaten at festivals. Shashlyk grilled on skewers is street food, and gutap, thin fried pastries filled with meat, pumpkin or greens, are sold at the bazaar.

Chorek, round bread baked against the wall of a tandyr oven, accompanies every meal and is treated with respect. Green tea, gök çaý, is drunk all day, often with melon in late summer; chal, fermented camel's milk, and gatyk, a thick sour yoghurt, are the traditional cooling drinks of the hot months.