EVEN in death, Saparmurat Niyazov, the president of the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan, is proving true to his reputation as the world’s most eccentric dictator.
In what is likely to be remembered as central Asia’s grandest funeral, Niyazov — who ordered his countrymen to call him Turkmenbashi, the father of all Turkmen — was being buried today in a gold-domed mosque that he had built for himself at a cost of £50m.

 
 
The mosque, the largest in the region, houses a marble mausoleum where Niyazov, 66, who died last week from a heart attack, was due to be laid to rest. The walls are decorated with gigantic quotations from the Ruhnama, or Book of the Spirit, which the president wrote and expected all his people to read. He claimed that paradise awaited anyone who read it three times.

The mourners in Kipchak, his native village near the capital Ashgabat, were likely to have more worldly matters on their minds as they bade farewell to the despot, who had a giant gold statue of himself placed on a revolving plinth so that it would always face the sun.

Envoys from Russia, Ukraine, China, Iran and the United States will use the gathering to vie for influence over rival clans now jostling for power. At stake are Turkmenistan’s huge gas reserves, the fifth largest in the world.

All Turkmen gas sold abroad is exported via Russian pipelines. The US may now press for another pipeline to be built under the Caspian Sea in a move that would undermine Russian influence.

The void left by Turkmenbashi, who ruled with an iron fist for 21 years, opens the way to violent clashes between the clans. Sergei Markov, a political analyst close to the Kremlin, fears civil war could erupt if countries interested in Turkmen gas, especially Iran, the US or Russia, stoke the tensions by supporting or arming favoured factions.

The struggle appeared to be well under way last week. Ovezgeldy Atayev, the parliamentary speaker who, under the constitution, should have taken over as acting president pending elections, became the subject of a criminal investigation.

His place as interim leader was taken by Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov, the deputy prime minister and a former dentist who took an active part in a campaign by Niyazov to ban gold teeth. He put the army on high alert and closed the borders.

Niyazov’s son Murad, a powerful figure in the country’s gas industry, is a possible successor. There is also his daughter Irina, who is said to know most about his estimated £1 billion fortune.

For now, at least, the man holding most power is Akmurad Redzhepov, the head of the security service.

Since coming to power in 1985, Niyazov had turned the impoverished state of 5m souls into a dictatorship as repressive and isolated as North Korea. He banned facial hair because he thought it smacked of Islamic extremism, and cinemas, ballet and the opera because they might undermine Turkmen culture.

Make-up was also forbidden, apparently on the grounds that Turkmen women were beautiful enough.

“We’re unlikely to miss his eccentricity or his despotism,” said a western diplomat. “But if the power struggle turns violent we may yet come to miss the stability which came with his iron hand.”