Do we like them?

Do we like Serdar Berdimuhamedow?

Our score: 3 out of 10. He heads a government that rights groups describe as repressive, and we found no verified good deeds of his own to weigh against that.

Serdar Berdimuhamedow became president of Turkmenistan in March 2022 after his father, Gurbanguly, stepped aside and an early election followed. It was the first father-to-son handover of power in Central Asia, and reports at the time said international monitors judged the vote neither free nor fair. That's the backstory: he's a dynasty pick, not a self-made outsider.

The father didn't vanish. In January 2023 Serdar appointed him head of a reorganised People's Council with the title National Leader, a body reported to have power over the constitution and the main lines of policy. Critics read that as the old man keeping his hand on the wheel, while the official line is that it is a new supreme body of people's power.

On the harm check, the honest finding is that the record we could confirm is about the system more than his own speeches. Rights groups say that since he took over, the authorities have kept up the crackdown on critics, and one NGO said three months in he had taken no meaningful steps to improve rights. In his inauguration speech he promised a humane state policy on rights and freedoms.

For LGBTQ+ readers the sharp point is the law. Sex between men is a criminal offence in Turkmenistan, punishable by prison, and Human Rights Watch reported in 2020 that a popular entertainer and other men were sentenced to two years on sodomy charges. That happened under his father, and we found no verified statement from Serdar about it either way, so that's a stain on the state he leads rather than a quote from him.

Nothing recent and checkable turned up for this card. Human Rights Watch said in November 2025 that the Turkmen government is among the world's most authoritarian and repressive, and that Central Asia's rights situation is worsening. Routine 2026 coverage is mostly government-run travel and meeting announcements, which aren't independent.

The good stuff is thin. We found no verified charity, no stand taken at a personal cost and no kind act, only official diplomacy such as state visits. That's a gap in what we could open, not proof there's nothing, and we couldn't read the full articles because the page fetches were blocked.