The National Memorial complex “Halk Hakydasy” has been developed on the western side of Ashgabat. The Earthquake Monument of Turkmenistan and memorial to the victims of WWII are within this complex. This Earthquake monument, completed in 1998, to the memory of people killed in the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake. The monument is represented with the huge bull statue holding the Earth on his back. The ancient Turks believed “that the Earth was held on the back of a “giant bull”, the Earth is too heavy and bull sometimes shifted his legs and played with his shoulders” and this is how they explained the reason why earthquakes happened.
Opposite the Earthquake monument is an elegant war memorial of Turkmenistan, built in the 1970s in honor of those who died in World War II. Four tall tapering columns of red marble surround an eternal flame, like petals shielding the heart of a flower. To the side of this composition is a red marble arch, beneath which kneel two combatants, watched over by a grieving female figure.
