1000 Manat 60th Birthday of President - Mother

Issued to mark the 60th birthday of Saparmurat Niyazov — the self-styled "Turkmenbashi," or Father of all Turkmen — this coin belongs to a broader cult-of-personality coinage program that proliferated under his rule throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Niyazov renamed months of the calendar after himself and his mother, banned opera, and commissioned gold statues of himself that rotated to face the sun. The "Mother" designation references Gurbansoltan Eje, his mother, whom he elevated to near-mythological national status despite her death during the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake.