It turned in the sunshine as a grotesque symbol of one man's megalomaniac rule over the people of Turkmenistan.

Now the sun may be going down on a golden statue of Saparmurat Niyazov in the latest move to dismantle the personality cult surrounding the late dictator, who styled himself “Turkmenbashi”, or Father of all Turkmen.

Niyazov's successor as President, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, has ordered the Government to remove the giant rotating statue from the centre of the capital. Ashgabat. to a southern suburb.

Niyazov spent $12million (£6m) on a 75m (244ft) tower called the Arch of Neutrality, placing the 12m monument to himself at the top in 1998. The gold-plated statue with outstretched arms rotated once every 24 hours so that Niyazov always faced the sun.

The statue was the most prominent of a series of vanity projects, including an ice palace and a 40m pyramid, that Niyazov built with income from Turkmenistan's huge gas reserves, while his five million people lived in poverty. He ruled the Central Asian republic, formerly part of the Soviet Union, with an iron fist for 21 years until he died of heart failure, aged 66, in December 2006.

Mr Berdymukhamedov, 51, told a meeting of ministers that the tower should be moved next to a road named Neutrality Avenue, after Niyazov's policy of maintaining Turkmenistan's neutrality in foreign relations. It was unclear whether the statue would remain at the top of the building once it has been moved.

The order came only a week after Mr Berdymukhamedov reversed another of Niyazov's decrees and restored the usual names of the months of the year.

Turkmenbashi had renamed January after himself, turned April into Gurbansoltan in honour of his mother and called other months after national heroes. He decreed that September should be named Rukhnama (Book of the Spirit) after a collection of his thoughts.

Turkmenistan was known as the North Korea of Central Asia under Niyazov.

Mr Berdymukhamedov, a former health minister and dentist, has gradually ended his country's international isolation since winning 89 per cent of the vote in its first election last year since independence in 1991.

Ban on beards

— Niyazov banned lip-synching, car radios, beards, and the playing of recorded music at weddings

— Citizens with gold teeth were told to have them extracted

— He shut rural libraries, saying that people in villages did not read

— The opera house was closed in 2001. Niyazov declared: “Who needs Tosca or La Traviata any more?”

— All hospitals outside the capital Ashgabat were closed and about 15,000 doctors were dismissed in 2005

— Compulsory education was cut by a year so that students could not qualify to study abroad

Source: Times archives

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