The Secret Mission Of The World's Weirdest Regime To Trump's Backyard

On Feb. 15, a plain-looking white Turkmenistan government Boeing 737-700 with a green falcon mascot painted on the tail landed at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and parked on the tarmac. Three days later, a second, similarly painted Boeing landed and parked next to the first. The strange sight of two government aircraft from a Central Asian country most Floridians couldn’t find on a map eventually drew the attention of a local TV news station, who sent a reporter to sniff out what was going on.

He mostly came up empty. “Much still remains unclear why this Turkmenistan aircraft had an extended stay here,” the reporter for Local 10 said. Perhaps Turkmenistan may be interested in striking deals with American companies for joint agricultural or industrial projects, he speculated, and cited an aviation watchdog source that the second aircraft may have been needed because the first one appeared to have wing damage. (Turkmenistan’s ruling family has a fleet of five sumptuously customized Boeing airplanes for personal use, including a Boeing 777 jumbo jet, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.)

The newscast’s online story posted later in the day reported that “Local 10 news cameras captured the boarding of a VIP passenger” before the jet departed. It is possible, the reporter speculated, that the passenger was Turkmenistan’s strongman ruler, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, who nominally handed Turkmenistan’s presidency to his son in 2022 but is well known to still be the effective head-of-state.

In fact, the Turkmenistan foreign ministry had quietly posted to its website overnight that Berdimuhamedov had “started” a visit to an unspecified destination in the United States to “open a new chapter in the history of [the] bilateral partnership.” The duration, purpose, and any specifics of the visit went unmentioned, although it said the visit was “one of the key events of the year.” The tersely worded release stated, “The visit of the National Leader of the Turkmen People to the United States continues.”

South Florida sees a lot of foreign government delegations since President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, especially from Latin America. But the Turkmenistan aircraft stood out not just because a Central Asian delegation or the sight of side-by-side government jets were unusual; it stood out for its secrecy.

For the initial three days after the first jet had landed in Fort Lauderdale, Turkmenistan’s foreign ministry, never verbose, had announced nothing, and nobody, it seemed, had seen Turkmenistan officials in any of the usual VIP haunts where officials seek out Trump world meetings in downtown Miami or Palm Beach.

“There’s a world of parallel diplomacy here. We have a lot of people coming through South Florida trying to do interpersonal diplomacy,” said Aaron Rosen, president of the World Affairs Council of Miami. If there’s a head of state in town, “We usually know about it.”

Turkmenistan was one of the 15 states formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and is widely considered the most repressive of the bunch; Freedom House ranks it below North Korea and Gaza. Turkmenistan’s first president, Saparmurat Niyazov, started a bizarre, all-encompassing cult of personality which included renaming the days of the week and publishing an autobiography meant to replace the Quran. Berdimuhamedov came to power after Niyazov’s death in 2006 and ended some of his predecessor’s performative displays of generosity, such as free gas for everyone and rows of free vegetables unfurled across city sidewalks. But he continued his pervasive police state repression, the obliteration of civil rights, the manic cladding of buildings with white marble.

Turkmenistan is arguably more closed off from the rest of the world than North Korea, and there are few sources of information about its affairs except for exiles and a few diplomats and academics who have visited. Which is another reason that there is a lot of speculation and not a lot of information about just what Berdimuhamedov was doing in south Florida.

Berdimuhamedov’s arrival coincided with a weekend trip to Florida by Trump. But if Berdimuhamedov had hoped to have face time with the U.S. president, as Central Asia analysts subsequently speculated, his timing was off. Trump’s motorcade left Mar-a-Lago on Feb. 16, just after the sun had set, less than 24 hours after Berdimuhamedov landed, and Trump flew to Washington, D.C. to inaugurate the Board of Peace.

The board is Trump’s effort to form an international organization that he can control and direct to tackle challenges like rebuilding Gaza. According to Ruslan Myatiev, an exiled Turkmenistan journalist who works with underground reporters inside the country, Berdimuhamedov had been avid about wanting to join Trump’s alt-United Nations, but balked at the $1 billion ante to become a founding member. Myatiev and his Turkmen sources believe Berdimuhamedov may have hoped to sidestep the steep price of entry by going to Mar-a-Lago and waving lucrative business deals to people influential with Trump. Turkmenistan has natural gas (the world’s fourth largest reserves, which it currently sells almost entirely to China), a smattering of unexploited rare earths, an appetite for American-made heavy machinery, and a deluxe golf resort that could be expanded — all known Trump infatuations. (In an unattributed statement, the State Department said that “the United States is excited about the momentum we're building with [the] five countries” of Central Asia, including Turkmenistan.)

“Joining the Board of Peace fits with Turkmenistan branding,” said Edward Lemon, research assistant professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. “This would be high on the agenda for the trip — they want this kind of symbolic recognition.” There’s also the serious matter of keeping up with the post-Soviet neighbors: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia are all inaugural Board of Peace members.

“He can take a billion out of the government budget — government money and his money are the same. But a billion U.S. dollars — that’s a lot of money to go missing for Turkmenistan,” said Myatiev.

Trump had left town, but Berdimuhamedov still had plenty of opportunities to advance his agenda in Florida. “The timing of the visit, at least in terms of Trump’s schedule, may have been a little inopportune,” said Eric Rudenshiold, who served under Presidents Trump and Biden as National Security Council director for Central Asia and is currently a senior fellow at the Caspian Policy Institute. “But I don’t think it was a trip wasted, certainly.”

Even without making it into Mar-a-Lago, “The Beach” — as that area of South Florida inundated by Trump administration people and allies is called — is rich hunting grounds for deals. Policy and patronage, crony diplomacy and high-stakes networking have converged in the stretch of Florida waterfront Trump frequently calls the center of the universe, where high-ranking government officials, cryptocurrency lobbyists, venture capitalists and private equity operators, casino moguls such as Miriam Edelstein and Steve Wynn, and Trump family members ricochet between golf courses, steak houses and private residences along the Palm Beach billionaire row coastline on South Ocean Boulevard.

“This is definitely South Florida’s moment in the sun,” said Rosen, the Miami World Affairs Council president.

That apparently was not lost on Berdimuhamedov. “He came looking to make bank,” said Rudenshiold. “He met with a lot of the real heavy hitters, Trump guys, big money people. I think he’s kind of emblematic, a symbol of what’s going on down there: the most reclusive country in the region, one of the most reclusive countries in the world, coming to The Beach to make deals.”

It is difficult to exaggerate the fish-out-of-water, sheer otherworldliness of Berdimuhamedov tooling around golf courses and horse farms in West Palm Beach or taking a lunch meeting in a Miami-Dade County glass office tower. Turkmenistan’s political leaders very rarely travel outside Central Asia, and the few trips they do take are for the most part to Russia and Turkey.

In fact, Turkmenistan’s entire population of almost 8 million people rarely travel anywhere. The government frequently refuses to issue passports to citizens, tries to force them to return if they do make it abroad, and has been known to send police onto commercial flights to haul off random travelers before take-off from Ashgabat, the country’s cold desert capital.

The rarity of Turkmenistan passports showing up at international airports is nearly matched by the lack of other countries’ passports entering the country. Sharing long borders with Iran and Afghanistan, Turkmenistan does not encourage international tourism. “We’re talking about a country that in a good year grants 1,500 visas,” said Luca Anceschi, a professor of Eurasian studies at the University of Glasgow.

Ashgabat is more a simulacrum of a city, a veneer of wealth and orderly urban planning. Virtually the entire built environment — humongous golden statues, opulent fountains shooting ovals of water out of sunbaked, endless facades of gold- and marble-clad government offices and uninhabited apartment buildings — exalts the cult of personality of its leaders: Berdimuhamedov, his son and various ancestors, and his psychopathic predecessor, Niyazov. The other Central Asian countries that emerged from the Soviet Union have remained autocratic and have struggled with many of the same issues as Turkmenistan, including corruption, wealth disparity and underdeveloped extraction-based economies. But none have descended into Turkmenistan’s vacuum-sealed unreality, routinely labeled in travel articles as the “weirdest country in the world.”

Despite that, in Florida, Berdimuhamedov made the rounds with Trump confidants, which was first reported in regional outlets and subsequently confirmed in Turkmenistan state media.

Those meetings included one with Steve Wynn, the former CEO of Wynn Resorts, former Republican National Committee finance chairman, and Trump ally, according to regional news reports and the Turkmenistan foreign ministry. Ashgabat has several pint-sized casinos (Turkmenistan citizens are barred from entry) and while Wynn was banned from the gaming industry in Nevada as part of a court settlement in 2023 stemming from sexual harassment accusations (Wynn denies the allegations and has admitted no wrongdoing), he is allowed to make gaming investments outside the state.

Berdimuhamedov also met with John Reese, CEO of Nicklaus Companies, the golf course design firm founded by golfing champion Jack Nicklaus which was behind Turkmenistan’s existing golf resort, which caters mainly to South Korean golfers. Berdimuhamedov’s son, Turkmenistan’s president, met with Reese while in Washington in November for a White House conference with the presidents of the five Central Asian countries that were part of the Soviet Union. That previous meeting with Reese concluded with Turkmenistan’s U.S. embassy releasing a typically anodyne statement that “the head of state expressed confidence in the expansion of cooperation with Nicklaus Companies, aimed at promoting the development of golf infrastructure and popularizing this sport in Turkmenistan, and wished John Reese further success in his work."

Neither Wynn nor Reese responded to requests for comment sent to their lawyers and corporate offices.

Another bold-faced name that Berdimuhamedov stopped in on was Isaac Perlmutter, the Israeli-American billionaire investor and former CEO of Marvel Entertainment, according to Caspian News and the Turkmenistan foreign ministry. Perlmutter has made numerous donations to Trump’s campaigns, and his foundation is on the list of donors contributing to Trump’s East Wing ballroom construction. Berdimuhamedov also met with William Koch, the reports said. Koch split in 2016 with his industrialist megadonor brothers to support Trump and is a member of Mar-a-Lago. Perlmutter and Koch also did not respond to requests for comments on their meetings with Berdimuhamedov that were sent to corporate and legal offices.

Myatiev, the exiled Turkmenistan journalist, said he is skeptical that Berdimuhamedov’s trip led to any concrete business deals, suggesting that the ex-president heard merely “sweet talk.” Myatiev said he thinks Berdimuhamedov was trying to gain Trump world favor by making “much smaller offers — a golf course, buying a few machine harvesters from John Deere, a new jet from Boeing. He probably thought all these gentlemen would say a word to Trump’s people. It seems like it doesn’t work like that,” he said.

The bigger money is in Turkmenistan’s gas reserves and, to a lesser extent, its unexploited rare earths and critical minerals, including bromine, iodine and sulfur. Across Central Asia, China and Russia dominate. The U.S. has been essentially a non-factor across the region, accounting for a few percentage points of international business.

There are signs that this could be changing during the second Trump administration. The U.S. has made some small moves, such as backing a tungsten project in Kazakhstan and the Financial Times reported that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump bought a stake in a critical mineral mine in Kazakhstan with U.S. government support.

Business deals in Turkmenistan require a high level of fortitude. “Were deals getting done? It was hard,” said Doug deWysocki, the former director of the U.S.-Turkmenistan Business Council, who led business delegations to Ashgabat. “There were a couple of companies that were trying to strike when the iron was hot. The Turkmen saw it and wanted it and boom, it happened. But otherwise, it was a slow burn.” (DeWysocki’s successor at the council, Eric Stewart, met with Berdimuhamedov in Florida, according to Caspian News; Stewart declined to comment for this article.)

Central Asia watchers believe Berdimuhamedov wants to pursue building a long-proposed trans-Caspian gas pipeline via Turkey to Europe and has been making trips to Azerbaijan, an unavoidable geography for the pipeline to traverse. Called the “middle corridor,” it would allow Turkmenistan to sidestep Russia and Iran as transit countries and sell to Europe directly. Rudenshiold called it a “tectonic” development, although a raging Iran and the Russian Navy present potentially devastating security threats.

But Anceschi, the Turkmenistan expert at the University of Glasgow, doesn’t think these small investments presage more U.S interest. “This is a post-America Central Asia,” he said, pointing to the 1990s as the last time the U.S. was relevant to the people of the region, “when the U.S. was pushing human rights. Of course it’s no longer about values but how can we bomb Iran better. Trump not doing anything is in line with his predecessors not doing anything, going back at least to Obama.”

“The deals the U.S. wants consist of Central Asians buying planes and equipment from the United States,” said Lemon, the professor at Texas A&M University. “That’s been the big shift: It was the U.S. investing in Central Asia; now it’s supposed to be Central Asia investing in the U.S.”

Still, there’s one person in the Trump administration who might be trying to change that.

A month before Berdimuhamedov flew to Florida, he and his son, the nominal president, met with Sergio Gor, the U.S. ambassador to India and Trump’s Central Asia envoy, in Ashgabat. The Turkmenistan foreign ministry released a short statement that the meeting concluded with everyone expressing best wishes.

Gor was born in the Soviet Union, in the Uzbek city of Tashkent, but emigrated as a child to Europe. His family eventually reached the United States, and he graduated from high school in Los Angeles and from George Washington University in Washington.

Before becoming ambassador to India and Central Asia envoy, Gor served as the director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office for the first 10 months of the second Trump term and was known for installing loyalists across the executive branch. Gor scuffled publicly with Elon Musk over the nomination of Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator, with Musk calling Gor “a snake.” Before that, Gor had partnered with Donald Trump Jr. on a publishing venture that produced books by Trump allies like Kari Lake and Charlie Kirk, and the president himself.

The U.S. embassy in New Delhi did not respond to a request for comment.

In his diplomatic roles, Gor is peripatetic, bouncing between New Delhi, Central Asian capitals, Mar-a-Lago and the White House. “It is remarkable that in a short period of time, Gor seems to be everywhere,” said Milan Vaishnav, senior fellow and director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Dining with the richest man of India, socializing at cricket matches, attending the swearing in of a politician in a very remote part of India. He’s seen as a man about town.”

Gor had no diplomatic experience prior to becoming ambassador and envoy to Central Asia. He has taken an oligarchic business style and access diplomacy approach to his new international roles. “We’ve sort of moved to what was once former Soviet politically — the big guys who have titles are essentially oligarchs,” said Richard Hoagland, a former career diplomat who served as ambassador in Kazakhstan and charge d’affaires in Turkmenistan. “Why would Sergio Gor be the one traveling to Central Asia? He came out of nowhere — not a name in foreign policy at any level. Now he’s not only ambassador to India but envoy to Central Asia. Why? Because he has business interests there. He’s snooping for business.”

Gor has defenders. “I happen to know Sergio Gor for a very long time,” said Ezra Friedlander, a lobbyist who represents Azerbaijan. “But I found him to be very savvy.”

Turkmenistan has announced no business deals or any other outcomes since the Local 10 newscast cameras captured a bundled up figure believed to be Berdimuhamedov boarding his back-up Boeing, presumably jetting back to Ashgabat. In Central Asia, however, where nearby China beckons with massive investments and Russia offers the comforts of shared cultural touchstones and the intimacy of once belonging to the same country, Turkmenistan still has some cards to offer the U.S., especially these days.

“I think this may be the dawn of Turkmenistan’s moment,” said Rudenshiold.