Okay, so a few weeks ago this clip came across my recommended feed.
I became obsessed.
It is Vladimir Putin getting a puppy in 2017. But that is just the beginning. I start wondering,
wait why is Putin getting this particular puppy? Who is this guy?
And why in the world is he holding the dog like this?
The time magazine headline for this video actually made me dumber,
and even though this moment went kind of viral, nobody really explained why Putin had this puppy.
If they did, they focused on Putin's love of animals.
But i think that this guy is the real story. I found out the whole answer about the puppy,
the holding, and the relationship.
And it taught me something about Central Asian history, and autocrats, and yeah, puppies, too.
Ta da! Listen, I'm a fan of this dog now, but i really think we need to give some context here.
So this right here is an alabai puppy and this is Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow
in 2017. He was the president of Turkmenistan.
So what is Turkmenistan?
I'm going to admit to you, I didn't really know. Here it is on a map and I'm going to oversimplify
a lot here, but as a "-stan" you should think of the herding nomadic desert culture of, like,
Afghanistan. Think of the Caspian Sea and, most importantly, Russia.
Turkmenistan was part of the USSR. Today that relationship is also affected by the economics
of natural gas reserves in Turkmenistan that Russia wants to get its hands on.
The capital city, Ashgabat, is actually pretty tiny by world standards. But it has this immense,
bizarre architecture fitting of Soviet grandiosity and the cults of personality that emerged
in the wake of the USSR in some countries. Cults of personality — think North Korea,
where a leader's personal quirks are sort of elevated into policy.
The first president of Turkmenistan started this trend, and in 2006 that policy continued.
I'm not treating new ground here when i say that our friend Gurbanguly is kind of weird. John
Oliver actually did a whole piece on him. "And specifically, it's president
Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow." At first, I felt a little bad when i
discovered that i was on John Oliver's turf, but then i saw that he actually cited in his video
an article that I wrote in 2015! So it's come full circle, John. Who's
the funny British man now, huh? That's right. If you check out the state-run youtube channel
for Turkmenistan, you can scroll for like two minutes and you will find some truly weird stuff.
Car racing, why not? But we are focused on
the puppy. And there's a lot to work with.
Okay, so what is this dog and why is Berdimuhamedow holding him like that?
There is an answer. The alabai has become a pretty
important dog in Berdimuhamedow's Turkmenistan. Some people call it the central asian sheepdog,
and listen it's a pretty intense dog. One of its nicknames is wolf crusher.
"Another nemesis of the wolf, a defender of livestock and a fierce protector of
property and families." (Very scary dog barking).
Gurganbuly's son Serdar, who took over in 2022, he's on the same page. He's the head of the Alabai
association. Gurganbuly even installed this giant gold statue and even released a video
claiming to have worked on the design for it. He started on the plan in 2017 which is, yes,
the same year that that Putin clip came out. And fortunately we have even more context
to this dog obsession, because Turkmenistan publishes online
english versions of the books that Gurganbuly has written about all sorts of different subjects,
including dogs. So yeah, some of the titles here:
There's a book about the horse, a symbol of faithfulness and happiness.
Medicinal plants. Sports: a way to friendship health and beauty. Uh, but then we've got
this one the one about the alabai. Oh nice, he's got a little picture
of an alabai on his desk here. Snuck in a horse picture.
Uh but you can see the subtitle here, it says national heritage, national pride.
So let's just recap here: Turkmenistan is presenting Russia with a symbol of its country,
its loyal friend. The two are bonded by that symbol and also by this business
relationship that exists thanks to natural gas. But there is one more mystery, and that is why
is Gurbanguly holding the dog like this? And so you're not going to believe this, if you go
on Turkmenistan's TikTok, you will actually find Serdar
celebrating the alabai. Guess what? He picks him up! He picks him up just like his dad!
This is not a coincidence folks. What is going on here? I was so excited when i found this:
"In 1990, a documentary film about alabais was shot. The film was rather good. There was
demonstrated a trial method used to trial the puppies. An owner took puppy..." Good grammar.
"...An owner took puppy by the back of his head and shook it. A courageous alabai will be silent,
but if it does not stand this trial and asks for help, it cannot be
considered to be a reliable one." The Berdimuhamedows are doing a test!
They were testing their dogs to see if they were trustworthy, to see if they were worthy symbols
of loyalty. So he was holding him that way for a reason. Not because he's a
he's a weirdo, but because he's performing a test of his dog.
So no, Time Magazine, this was not just an awkward moment.
Berdimuhamedow is constructing a photo op to tell the world that the relationship between the two
countries is so close that Russia is cuddling faithful and loyal Turkmenistan in its arms.
Okay, so why care about this, beyond the fact that it is a funny way to hold a puppy? First of all,
I didn't even get into this, but Turkmenistan is a brutal regime that always ranks lowly on
human rights violation lists. That means it's kind of important to understand its quirks,
even if they do seem pretty silly. That said, I can see my earlier diagram looking kind of
absurd, like i'm reading way too much geopolitical savvy into a guy who is basically just a weirdo.
The truth is, i don't know if Berdimuhamedow or his son are playing a game of chess with the
alabai and its symbology, or if they're both just kind of eccentric people who are able to
be indulged because they've got all the power. But the debate here — is the guy holding the dog
a crazy guy or a realpolitik gamesman — is a starker version of the same debate
that we are having about this guy, the one who has launched a war in Ukraine.
Is Vladimir Putin a sharp-eyed realist calibrating counter-attacks against NATO, or is he a madman?
Is his war rational or is it absurd? I don't know what's in the head of either
of these guys, but it's an important question to ask. And you need context to ask it. And it
is all connected to a dog with a t-shirt, and a statue, and a viral clip on the internet.
All right that is it for this one. Thank you for watching this video,
going down this rabbit hole with me. I really did just see this clip and I
got obsessed. I was like, what is going on here? And it turned out that the explanation was pretty
interesting to me and I was so happy that I could actually find that quote of him saying
how he held the dog by the back of the neck. How crazy is that? If you haven't been here before,
this is a personal channel where i post history videos, personal videos, stuff like that.
If you can comment with anything about Turkmenistan that you think other people
should know, I'd be interested to hear it. I learned a lot in this.
Also, if you like videos like this, please subscribe. It helps out the channel a lot.
Okay. That's it, thank you for watching and, uh, watch out for the wolf crusher,
because you do not want to get in between those jaws. No sir. Alright, bye.