Country, Central Asia.
Area: 188,500 sq mi (488,100 sq km). Population (2002 est.): 4,946,000. Capital: Ashgabat . Turkmen make up nearly three-fourths of the population, followed by Russians, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tatars, Ukrainians, and Armenians. Language: Turkmen (official). Religion: Islam. Currency: Turkmen manat. Though there are some hills and low mountains, about nine-tenths of Turkmenistan is desert, chiefly the Amu Darya and Morghāb . Many irrigation canals and reservoirs have been built, including the Karakum Canal, which runs 870 mi (1,400 km) between the Amu Darya and the {{link=Caspian Sea">Caspian Sea . The country's chief products are petroleum and natural gas, cotton, silk, carpets, fish, and fruit. It is a republic with one legislative house; its head of state and government is the president, assisted by the People's Council. The earliest traces of human settlement in Central Asia, dating to Paleolithic times, have been found in Turkmenistan. The nomadic, tribal Turkmen probably entered the area in the 11th century AD. They were conquered by the Russians in the early 1880s, and the region became part of Russian Turkestan. It was organized as the Turkmen S.S.R. in 1924 and became a constituent republic of the U.S.S.R. in 1925. The country gained full independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 under the name Turkmenistan. It subsequently experienced economic difficulty.