On the same day Britain's royal family was caught photoshopping a portrait of the queen and her family, Turkmenistan's government released two visuals to promote the country's "national garden planting season" that was launched on March 17.
One image depicts Turkmenistan's president, Serdar Berdymukhammedov, alone with a wheelbarrow as tree planters toil in the background. The other visual shows exactly the same likeness of the Central Asian ruler alongside his father, former President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. The younger man had been cut and pasted into one or both of the scenes.
The cut-and-pasted image is only the latest in a decades-long practice of Turkmenistan's authoritarian government releasing altered visuals to illustrate their presidents' activities.
A deep dive through Ashgabat's state media shows manipulation of photos appears to be as widespread under Serdar Berdymukhammedov, who became president in March 2022, as it was under previous presidents.
In this equestrian image released in June 2021, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, who was Turkmenistan's ruler at the time, was in the process of raising his son's profile ahead of the younger Berdymukhammedov being named president.
The photo features lighting that appears to differ between the men's faces. But the giveaway detail that the image was doctored is a small gap in the shadow cast behind the hoof of the horse. The animal may have been pasted into the scene.
Kate Mallinson, an associate fellow at Chatham House and an expert on Central Asian politics, told RFE/RL the continued use of Photoshop in press releases from Ashgabat is a hangover from the Soviet era, when reality was routinely airbrushed, coupled with a climate of fear in government offices today.
"The sword of Damocles hangs over any official who is seen to use initiative," Mallinson said. "Heavily photoshopped images illustrate a cautious government (staff) that is fearful of the wrath of the Berdymukhammedov family."
In such an atmosphere, staff are likely to simply keep doing the job they've always done rather than raise a hand to point out absurdities.
In this image released in October 2020, then-President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov is depicted at a memorial ceremony for victims of a 1948 earthquake in Ashgabat. Flags stream gloriously in the wind at the top right of the picture, while the soldiers' flags hang loose at ground level.
In the above picture of Turkmenistan's current president that was published by state media in April 2023, Serdar Berdymukhammedov holds a festooned horse at the opening of an equestrian center.
The image shows the telltale signs of alteration between the legs of the horse. While the pattern of paving stones on the right of the image recede naturally, the bricks degenerate into blurry and irregular lines on the left. It is likely the horse was pasted into the frame from another photo and the image editor was faced with the difficult task of "cloning" the paving stone pattern into the space between the horse's legs.
Perhaps the most baffling photoshopped public relations imagery to come from the current president's office is an ongoing series of pictures showing Berdymukhammedov seated at a desk in front of emblems of Turkmenistan. The same image is repeated in multiple iterations so similar that online image search engines mistake them as being identical.
Some versions of the image show the Turkmen ruler seated at a white desk, while most show him behind a polished wooden desk.
Piles of books and the subject's hand position are slightly different in many variants of the image, suggesting the young leader has either posed for a virtually identical image dozens of times since taking office, or another man has repeatedly sat for the image and the president's face has been superimposed with imaging software.
In April 2022, the independent Turkmen news outlet Chronicle of Turkmenistan highlighted images of the new President Berdymukhammedov meeting with Rustam Minnikhanov, the head of Russia's Tatarstan region. In photos released by the Tatarstan administration the photo captures the Turkmen leader with an awkward facial expression.
In contrast, images of the meeting released by Turkmen state outlets show a more flattering version of the Central Asian leader's face. A power outlet on the wall to the left of the two men has also been removed from the Turkmen-handled version of the images.
In 2019, RFE/RL published a report documenting heavy image editing by the office of Kazakhstan's president, Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev. More recent images released by the Kazakh leader appear to show the office's retouching has been significantly toned down.
Mallinson says the use of reality-distorting photoshopping by the Turkmen government is partly due to the closed nature of the country's regime.
"Unlike other former Soviet countries, the Turkmen government does not use reputational management or PR firms," she said, adding that Ashgabat "must make do with what they have."
