Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow

Biography

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow was born in 1957 in Babarap, in the Ahal region of Soviet Turkmenistan, the only son among six children. He graduated from the Turkmen State Medical Institute in 1979, practised as a dentist, earned a doctorate in medical sciences in Moscow, and by 1992 was teaching dentistry at the institute. In 1995 he was put in charge of the health ministry's dentistry centre.

Under President Saparmurat Niyazov he became minister of health in 1997 and in 2001 one of the deputy chairmen of the cabinet, responsible for health, science, education and sport. When Niyazov died in December 2006 the State Security Council made him acting president, the constitutional bar on an acting president standing for office was lifted, and he won the February 2007 election with an official 89 percent of the vote.

In his first years he reversed some of Niyazov's more eccentric policies, restoring a tenth year of schooling and reopening rural libraries, but he kept an authoritarian system and built a personality cult of his own. He was re-elected in 2012 and 2017 with about 97 percent, and rights groups ranked the country among the most repressive in the world.

In 2021 he was elected chairman of the People's Council. He stepped down as president in March 2022, and his son Serdar won the snap election to succeed him; the following year the People's Council was re-formed as the top leadership body with him at its head and the title of National Leader of the Turkmen People.