Work sent me here: Turkmenistan and a couple other "stans" as well in 2000 and I worked for a Canadian company in Kyrgyzstan in the early 90's. I never had a problem other than dealing with permits for damn near everything.
The people were fantastic. I put on 15lbs in 15 days from being invited to eat with families of the people I worked with. No matter how poor these people were they fed me like it was a wedding.
Oh and I love sitting on my personal gifted Persian rug playing my handmade tar.
People are nice and someone gave you Persian rug? That's all you got? I work in immigration and have clients from all over the world. My clients from Iraq are by the far the most hospitable and generous. Iraq is still a ****hole. There's a Burmese man who, despite his poverty, is always giving a co-worker on mine little gifts. Burma is still a genocidal dictatorship.
And I have travelled. I've spent most of the adult life outside of Canada working in Asia. People all over the world are kind. That has little bearing on the fact that so many of them are poor, exploited and oppressed.
You were in Turkmenistan in 2000, one year after Saparamurat Niyazov declared himself President for Life. Niyazov was brutal, oppressive and a maniac. He had Gaddafi levels of insanity.
Let's take one freedom index from the time and see where Turkmenistan ranks.
In 2002 (the closest to 2000 I can find) Turkmenistan ranked fourth last in the world for press freedom. In the latest rankings (2010) it ranked third last, i.e. not an improvement.
Reporters Without Borders
Was this supposed to be a joke?
Turkey.
Turkey's probably your best bet. But as a democracy, it's kinda like Pakistan in that it vacillates between elections and military dictatorship. They are currently having an election actually. The sitting Prime Minister once commented that democracy was like train, you only rode it as far as you needed to, then you get off. Turkey is not a liberal democracy by any means. It still struggles with widespread human rights violations, suppression of free speech and the press and policies towards ethnic minorities that borders on the genocidal.
Qatar and Bahrain look like nice countries minus the violent protests currently going on.
Is this also supposed to be a joke?