The president regularly casts blame for Turkmenistan’s troubles on his cabinet of lickspittle loyalists. Public arrests like this week's, however, are rare.
The resignation is the highest-profile departure to date for the new government. A spokesman for the prime minister insinuated that the official might have been under the influence of the former regime.
The Eurasian Economic Union is having a summit in Yerevan on October 1. But it’s not clear whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is going to grace the Armenian capital with his presence.
According to UN statistics, there may be up to 87,000 stateless people in Uzbekistan. Many are ethnic Uzbeks who fled Tajikistan’s civil war in the early 1990s.