War against smoking

Turkmenistan: Determined to Stub Out Habit by End of the Year

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When he was a teenager, Bekmurad Khodjayev used to hide from his parents to smoke. Fifty years later, the Turkmen pensioner is still hiding, but this time from the police.

"I smoke in my apartment. But if I feel like smoking in town, I find a place without surveillance cameras to avoid a fine – an alleyway, a dead end, behind some tall bushes or trees, a deserted spot," the 64-year-old builder said.

The reclusive Central Asian state of seven million people, where the rate of smoking is already very low, has vowed to eradicate the habit by the end of the year.

Khodjayev said he had already been fined for smoking near his home. "Since then, I try not to get caught any more," he said.

The target of going tobacco-free was set in 2022 by the country's supreme leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, a former dentist.