Most people outside of Central Asia know little about the gas-rich desert nation of Turkmenistan. The former Soviet Republic has virtually no independent media and just a handful of bookstores. Foreign journalists and scholars are rarely granted visas to visit. So it's no surprise that presidential elections this month in a state sometimes compared to North Korea are little more than a show staged to buttress President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov. On this edition of Global Journalist, a look at