Turkmenistan

The Holy Hell: 250 BCE – 651 CE

Ancient Zoroastrian priests try to run Central Asia with an iron fist long before Arab armies arrive. Their sacred texts demand the death penalty for MSM (Men who have Sex with Men) and see gay men as demon worshipers. The Zoroastrian anti-'gay' laws are most prevalent in the rural borderlands.

Gays on The Streets: 328 BCE – 224 CE

The actual citizens living in the ancient oasis cities completely ignore the religious loons. Ancient Greek travelogue writers, like Sextus Empiricus (We're not making that up), document that urban populations and nomadic tribes accept open male partnerships as completely normal and lawful. No gay executions in cities are recorded during this time.

Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Arabe 3929, fol. 122r.

Islamic Bisexual Rules: 1082 CE – 1100 CE

Classical Persian guides lay down explicit bisexual rules for regional society. Famous eleventh-century handbooks like the Qabus-nameh openly instruct young noblemen to split their desires between women for marriage and young men for pleasure. These documents serve as 'proto-novels' and define the social boundaries of the era.

The Reign Of Sultan Ahmad Sanjar: 1118 CE – 1157 CE

Powerful Sultans ruling medieval oases like Merv turn the keeping of androgynous 'ghilman' (male pages) into a prestigious status symbol. Ruling classes commission romantic poetry celebrating the physical beauty of these young male companions. The ancient kings view male romance as a divine art form rather than a deviant criminal offense.
Evidenced in the Seljuk imperial poetry archives

Source: Wikimedia | Sultan Sanjar of Ancient Merv

The Bacha Bazi Bazaars: 1200 CE – 1800 CE

Outside the palace gates, lower classes develop a far more exploitative market system known across Central Asia as Bacha Bazi. Impoverished families frequently sell their adolescent sons to wealthy merchants to be used as 'male dancers'. This traps the youth into a world of performing to an audience of potential customers of sexual services across Silk Road oases. Central Asian Bacha Bazi culture

Source: Wikimedia Commons, Vasily Vereshchagin, 1868.

"A beautiful youth, the cupbearer of the feast, turns the heads of the elders with his graceful dance and snares a thousand hearts with his curls."
Classical Regional Diwan Archives

Western Explorers Shocked: 1873 CE – 1876 CE

When Western diplomats arrive in the nineteenth century during the geopolitical "Great Game", they are absolutely stunned by the brazen visibility of this local male 'entertainment' network. American explorers fill their personal journals with detailed accounts of heavily made-up adolescents performing suggestive dances for rooms packed with adult men. These foreign reports provide the first outside documentation of the region's sexual economy. American diplomatic travel journals

Source: Wikimedia Commons, Samarkand.

"These batchas, or dancing youth, are a recognized institution throughout the whole of the settled portions of Central Asia."
Eugene Schuyler Turkistan Record

Russian Colonial Excuses: 1884 CE

Imperial Russian forces weaponize this widespread male-centric culture as a convenient justification of their bloody invasion of the region. Tsarist commanders frame the local traditions as barbaric and degenerate to pretend that European conquest is a moral rescue mission, using this local culture to claim racial superiority. Tsarist colonial campaign declarations

Colonial MSM Laws: 1886 CE

The annexation of Merv officially imports Russian anti-MSM laws and slams the door on centuries of local tradition. Imperial forces formally criminalize male sodomy as a state crime which drives the entire openly 'gay' culture underground for the first time. While this outlaws the abusive Bacha Bazi culture, it also criminalizes normal gay men at the same time without distinction. Imperial Russian penal restrictions

Soviet Erasure: 1924 CE – 1926 CE

When the Bolsheviks consolidate power across the newly drawn Soviet republics, the relaxed local attitude toward male intimacy faces total annihilation. The communist regime officially criminalizes male-to-male relationships with harsh labor camp sentences, framing it as a decadent bourgeois disease. Soviet secret police launch massive regional purges to completely scrub the ancient oasis culture from local memory. Early Soviet republican penal codes

1934: Soviet Racketeering

Joseph Stalin doubles down on this oppression by criminalizing male homosexuality across the entire Soviet Union. The terrifying efficiency of the Soviet secret police turns individual gay encounters into a goldmine for state blackmail and forced labor camp sentences. The result is an already traumatized gay community stunned into paralysis for decades to come. Stalinist anti-sodomy crackdowns

2026: Denial & Division

Opinion: The dictatorship in Ashgabat rules on a bed of lies and its erasure of Turkmenistan's gay history is just another cover-up used to divide and rule - the populace being brainwashed and taught to believe the state's revisionism. Fabricating the lie that vicious anti-gay laws are an ancient historical fact keeps the regime's propaganda machine alive and kicking. They claim they are protecting a culture of ancient 'morality' from modern Western contamination. But we know the truth. The records are there to be read. You cannot lock up sexual orientation. You can't kill it. The next generation will appear again and again in the natural manifestation of life itself.
Turkmenistan's Legal Parameters