A little while ago Monique Amsel from Paris donated a collection of mainly Central European items to the TRC. But there was also a small tunic-like Turkmen garment (TRC 2023.0477), the front of which covered with amulets of various types, including lots of coins. According to Monique, the garment was acquired in Paris many years ago.

Turkmen open-sided tunic, 1980s (TRC 2023.0477).

The Turkmen are an ethnic group who speak a Turkic language, and who live in the main in modern Turkenistan and neighbouring Central Asian lands (northeastern Iran, northwestern Afghanistan, western Uzbekistan). So what was a Turkmen garment doing in Paris?

Coins and other amulets on Turkmen tunic, 1980s (TRC 2023.0477).We had a look at the coins, and noticed that most of them originate from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, and none were younger than some forty years ago. Some of them dating back to the first half of the 20th century, other more recent.

It seems likely that the garment was made and/or decorated in the 1980s, probably in Pakistan, by Turkmen refugees from northern Afghanistan, where a civil war had erupted in 1978 following a communist coup and a Soviet invasion that started during the Christmas period of 1979.

In the years that followed almost a third of the Afghan population (some five million of an estimated total of eighteen million) fled their country, amd most of them found refuge in huge camps set up along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

I remember visiting some of these camps and the utter despair of the refugees. I also remember that the bazaar of Peshawar, the northern Pakistani city close to the Khyber Pass that leads into Afghanistan, was filled with textiles, utensils, ancient coins, and anything else that the refugees were able to sell.

It may well be that the Turkmen garment now in the TRC collection is a sad reminder of the plight of the Afghan people, that continues to the present day.

Willem Vogelsang, 21 May 2023