aged to become secular and adopt European-style clothing. The alphabet in use for the Turkmen language was changed from the traditional Arabic script to Latin and finally to Cyrillic (Niyazov later changed the alphabet back to a Latin-based one). However, bringing the Turkmens to abandon their previous nomadic ways in favor of communism was not fully embraced until as late as 1948. Nationalist organizations in the region also existed during the 1920s and the 1930s. The Ashgabat earthquake of 1948 killed over 110,000 people, amounting to 2/3s of the city's population. The national policies of the Soviet Union, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s, actually promoted "the invention of Turkmen traditions". Turkmen was enjoying preferable treatment in the Soviet administration and educational system and during the Stalin years the republic had become more national in form including the establishment of Turkman as the official language.
Independence
When the Soviet Union began to collapse, Turkmenistan and the rest of the Central Asian republics first heavily favored maintaining a reformed version of the state, mainly because they needed the economic power and common markets of the Soviet Union to prosper. Nevertheless, Turkmenistan declared independence on 27 October 1991, albeit one of the last Soviet republics to secede. Turkmenistan gained official recognition on 25 December 1991, a day before the final dissolution of the Soviet Union. Turkmenistan joined the U.N. the following year.
In 1991, Turkmenistan became a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, an international organization of former Soviet republics. However, Turkmenistan reduced its status in the organization to "associate member" in August 2005. The reason stated by the Turkmen president was the country's policy of permanent neutrality.
The former leader of the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, Saparmurat Niyazov, remained in power as Turkmenistan's leader
