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50 free Turkmenistan trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Turkmenistan is one of the strangest and least-visited countries on Earth, a desert republic on the Caspian run by a father-and-son presidency, and this quiz covers it all: the Oghuz Turks and the Seljuks, medieval Merv when it may have been the biggest city in the world, the Teke tribes who beat Persia and Khiva, the Russian conquest at Geok Tepe, the Soviet republic and independence in 1991, and Saparmurat Niyazov, the 'Head of the Turkmens', who renamed the months, wrote a holy book and put his face on everything. Easy questions ask for the capital, the desert, the neighbours and the sea; the harder ones want the flame that has burned since 1971, the gas field second only to South Pars, the number of white marble buildings in Ashgabat, the horse with a metallic coat, the holiday devoted to melons, the word Niyazov abolished for bread and the year Turkmen switched to Latin script. There is also the flag woven with carpet patterns, the Karakum Canal, permanent neutrality, methane leaks and a black-market manat. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the country, its capital and its rulers, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Turkmenistan is one of how many independent Turkic-speaking states?
Six
With Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Turkmen is close enough to Turkish that Turkish television is widely watched.
Q 02Which desert covers more than 80% of Turkmenistan?
The Karakum
Its name means 'black sand'. Some spots get only 12 mm of rain a year, and the Repetek reserve recorded 50.1 °C, the Soviet Union's all-time high.
Q 03Turkmenistan's western border is formed by which body of water?
The Caspian Sea
The shoreline runs 1,748 km. Since the Caspian is landlocked, the country counts as landlocked too, though the Volga-Don Canal gives ships a route out.
Q 04Which country lies along Turkmenistan's southern border, separated by the Kopet Dag mountains?
Iran
Afghanistan is to the south-east and Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to the north. The Kopet Dag is prone to earthquakes, including the 1948 disaster.
Q 05The Darvaza gas crater, nicknamed the 'Door to Hell', has been burning since which year?
1971
Soviet drilling punctured a gas cavern and the roof collapsed. In 2022 the president ordered the fire put out; it is still Turkmenistan's most famous sight.
Q 06Who ruled Turkmenistan as 'President for Life' from independence until his death in 2006?
Saparmurat Niyazov
He styled himself Türkmenbaşy, 'Head of the Turkmens', and built a personality cult compared to Kim Il Sung's. He closed every hospital outside the capital in 2005.
Q 07What was Niyazov's spiritual guidebook, treated like scripture in schools and mosques, called?
Ruhnama
'Book of the Soul'. Knowledge of it was needed to pass a driving test, and its quotations were carved on the walls of a mosque, to many believers' dismay.
Q 08Among Niyazov's eccentric decrees was renaming the months of the year. September was renamed after what?
His book, the Ruhnama
He finished writing it on 19 September 2001. January became Türkmenbaşy after himself, and April took his mother's name, Gurbansoltan.
Q 09Niyazov replaced the Turkmen word for which everyday item with his mother's name?
Bread
His mother and two brothers had died in the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake, and her memory was woven into the state cult.
Q 10How is Serdar Berdimuhamedow, Turkmen president from 2022, related to his predecessor?
Son
Gurbanguly, a former dentist and health minister, took over in 2007 and handed the presidency to Serdar in a 2022 election judged neither free nor fair.
Q 11In which year did Turkmenistan declare independence from the Soviet Union?
1991
Niyazov, then the communist boss, had wanted to keep the USSR together but called a referendum in October 1991 as it fell apart around him.
Q 12Turkmenistan's green flag carries a vertical stripe of what, celebrating the country's most famous craft?
Carpet patterns
Five guls, one for each major tribe, run down the hoist. The crescent and five stars stand for the five regions and the pillars of Islam.
Q 13Turkmen hand-knotted carpets are commonly, but wrongly, sold in the West under what name?
Bukhara rugs
Bukhara was merely the market they were traded through. Each clan has its own gul motif, so a rug's pattern tells you who wove it.
Q 21The 1881 battle that crushed the last Turkmen resistance to Russia was fought at which fortress?
Geok Tepe
The Teke had defeated a first Russian attempt in 1879. Krasnovodsk on the Caspian was the Russian base and is now called Türkmenbaşy.
Q 22In 1855 and 1861 the Teke Turkmens defeated invading armies from Khiva and which empire?
Persia
Before the Russian conquest the Turkmens were feared across the region for their raids and their role in the Central Asian slave trade.
Q 23The Turkmen descend from which Turkic confederation that arrived from Mongolia in the 8th century?
The Oghuz
Oghuz groups later founded the Seljuk Empire and carried Turkic culture west into Azerbaijan and Anatolia. The name 'Turkmen' first appears in the 10th century.
Q 14The Akhal-Teke, Turkmenistan's national horse breed, is nicknamed the 'Golden Horse' because of what?
Its metallic sheen
Only about 6,600 exist worldwide. Bred for speed and endurance in the desert, it is thought to be among the oldest horse breeds on Earth.
Q 15Turkmenistan celebrates a national holiday on the second Sunday of August devoted to which fruit?
The melon
The star of the show is the huge, fragrant Türkmenbaşy melon, a crossbreed named after the first president.
Q 16Turkmenistan holds roughly what rank in the world for natural gas reserves?
Fourth
The Galkynysh field alone is second only to South Pars in the Gulf. China, via three pipelines, is now the main buyer.
Q 17Turkmenistan's biggest gas field, estimated in 2011 as the world's second-largest, is called what?
Galkynysh
Reserves are put at 21.2 trillion cubic metres. Ojak in 1966 was where the country's gas industry really began.
Q 18Which country is the largest buyer of Turkmen gas, via pipelines across Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan?
China
The first line opened in 2009. Sales to Iran were cut off in 2017 over unpaid bills, and the TAPI pipeline to India remains half-built.
Q 19In 2025 Turkmenistan was the source of most of the world's largest leaks of which greenhouse gas?
Methane
Seepage from ageing gas fields gives Turkmenistan per-person emissions far above the OECD average.
Q 20The oasis city of Merv, once perhaps Earth's largest, was destroyed by which invaders in 1221?
The Mongols
In the 12th and 13th centuries it may have held 500,000 people and was called 'capital of the eastern Islamic world'. Its ruins are a UNESCO site near Mary.
Q 24In which year did Turkmenistan switch its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin?
1993
Russian lost its status as the language of inter-ethnic communication in 1996. Turkmen is close enough to Turkish that Turkish TV is popular despite official disapproval.
Q 25What is Turkmenistan's currency?
The manat
Officially 3.5 to the dollar, it traded at around 18.5 on the black market in 2022. Azerbaijan also calls its currency the manat.
Q 26In 1995 the UN General Assembly recognised Turkmenistan's status as what?
Permanently neutral
It refuses to join military blocs, downgraded to associate membership of the CIS in 2005 and has never sent UN peacekeepers.
Q 27How many white-marble-clad buildings does the capital have, the most of any city in the world?
Over 543
The city also boasts the world's largest enclosed Ferris wheel and a Wedding Palace topped by a giant globe, all part of a hunt for obscure world records.
Q 28The capital's Alem Entertainment Center holds which world record?
Largest enclosed Ferris wheel
The Foreign Ministry sits under a globe, the Development Bank under a giant coin and the Health Ministry is shaped like a caduceus.
Q 29How many regions, or welayatlar, is Turkmenistan divided into?
Five
Ahal, Balkan, Daşoguz, Lebap and Mary, plus the capital district. The five stars and five carpet guls on the flag match them.
Q 30What is Turkmenistan's highest peak?
Ayrybaba
It rises 3,137 metres in the Kugitangtau range on the Uzbek border, far from the Kopet Dag along the Iranian frontier.