ASHGABAT - Tying the knot with a Turkmen just got cheaper as Turkmenistan's authorities have scrapped a requirement that foreigners marrying Turkmens pay the state 50,000 dollars (38,000 euros), a senior marriage official said on Monday.
Turkmenistan's autocratic President Saparmurat Niyazov this weekend issued a new marriage law omitting the payment rule originally portrayed as a way to protect Turkmen women from unscrupulous foreigners, an official at one of Ashgabat's largest registry offices said.
The new law merely requires that foreigners have lived in Turkmenistan for a year, making no mention of the fee that was to be used to support any offspring in the event that the foreign partner left their Turkmen spouse.
"The law has been corrected... foreign citizens wanting to marry a Turkmen citizen will no longer have to pay this sum," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
It was not immediately clear whether anyone had paid the 50,000 dollar-fee -- which was non-refundable.
"As far as I remember there hasn't been one such marriage in Turkmenistan due to the size of the payment required -- foreigners prefer to marry Turkmens in neigbouring countries like Turkey, Russia, or Uzbekistan," the official said.
The marriage fee was among a number of eccentricities that have been associated with Niyazov's 14 year-presidency.
The Turkmen leader has built a personality cult around himself and his deceased parents, mixing in elements of Islam and nomadic folklore and suppressing all dissent.
Recently however Niyazov said he would hand over power at presidential polls in 2009 -- perhaps in response to the ousting of the presidents of three former Soviet republics in the last 18 months, those of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
04/25/2005 17:41 GMT