Turkmenistan is known to have one of the most tightly controlled Internet environments in the world. But even in such an inhospitable atmosphere, there appears to be enough web energy to give life to a few TikTok influencers in the country. 

A Central Asian lifestyle website, WeProject.Media, recently published a list of 10 Turkmen creators on TikTok worth following, saying they post “interesting, entertaining and informative content.” The top content creator listed, who goes by the name Gulchynar Tach, has an astounding 2 million followers. The videos posted on Gulchynar Tach’s channel could perhaps best be described as saccharine. But the mere ability of a Turkmen citizen to attract such a large number of followers seems to defy the laws of authoritarian physics governing the flow of information.

Other TikTok creators listed by WeProject had much smaller followings. The second highest follower total, 150,000, belongs to a pair of posters, likely sisters, going by the moniker Double Mood. They must belong to the very small circle of Turkmen citizens who can travel abroad frequently as their TikTok channel features lots of snippets of them glamming in foreign locales, including New York’s Times Square and Barcelona. Many others on the Top 10 list also enjoy the luxury of foreign travel, an indication that they likely have connections to the country’s business and political elites.

Turkmen leaders keep a close eye on social networks, having long viewed the Internet as a dangerous source of foreign influence capable of undermining their totalitarian grip on society. A 2021 study found that Turkmenistan had one of the slowest  Internet speeds of any nation in the world. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of foreign websites are blocked, and “restrictions on social media sites, cloud storage services, and VPNs have intensified,” according to the watchdog group Freedom House.

“Private discussion and the expression of personal views are highly restricted due to intrusive supervision by state security services, including physical surveillance, monitoring of telephone and electronic communications, and the use of informers,” according to Freedom House’s country report on Turkmenistan for 2024. “Users often face disruption to the internet. According to Turkmen.news, in April 2023, over 3 billion internet protocol (IP) addresses – about 75 percent of all IP addresses in the world – were blocked in the country.”