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PRINT AND BROADCAST MEDIA IN TURKmenistan are anything but free. Like almost everything in the republic, the media remain tightly controlled by the authoritarian regime in Ashgabat. Aside from a handful of independent publications that fleetingly appeared in 1991, the media are still as much a creature of the state as they were in the Soviet era. Still, that element of continuity should not obscure the fact that Turkmenistan's media promote a different message now than in the pre-independence period.