Turkic peoples
The Turkic peoples are Eurasian peoples residing in northern, central and western Eurasia who speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family.[Turkic people, Encyclopædia Britannica, Online Academic Edition, 2008] These peoples share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds. The term Turkic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people and includes existing societies such as the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Uyghur, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, and Turkish people, as well as historical societies such as the Xiongnu, Kipchaks, Eurasian Avars, Bulgars, Huns, Seljuks, Khazars, Ottomans and Timurids.["Timur", The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001-05, Columbia University Press.][Encyclopaedia Britannica article: Consolidation & expansion of the Indo-Timurids, Online Edition, 2007.][Turkic people, Encyclopædia Britannica, Online Academic Edition, 2008] (also see the List of Turkic states and empires)
Many of the Turkic peoples have their homelands in Inner Asia, where the Turkic peoples originated from, but since then Turkic languages have spread, through migrations and conquests, to other locations including present-day Turkey. While the term Turk may refer to a member of any Turkic people, the term Turkish usually refers specifically to the people and language of Turkey.
Geographical distribution
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China.
Some 180 million people have a Turkic language as their native language;[Turkic Language family tree entries provide the information on the Turkic-speaking populations and regions.] an additional 20 million people speak a Turkic language as a second language. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish proper, or Anatolian Turkish, the speakers of which account for about 40% of all Turkic speakers.[ More than one third of these are ethnic Turks of Turkey, dwelling predominantly in Turkey proper and formerly Ottoman-dominated areas of Eastern Europe and West Asia; as well as in Western Europe, Australia and the Americas as a result of immigration. The remainder of the Turkic people are concentrated in Central Asia, Russia, the Caucasus, China, northern Iraq and northern and northwestern Iran.]
At present, there are six independent Turkic countries: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. There are also several Turkic national subdivisions[Across Central Asia, a New Bond Grows - Iron Curtain's Fall Has]
Spawned a Convergence for Descendants of Turkic Nomad Hordes in the Russian Federation including Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Chuvashia, Khakassia, Tuva, Yakutia, the Altai Republic, the Altai Krai, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachayevo-Cherkessiya. Each of these subdivisions has its own flag, parliament, laws, and official state language (in addition to Russian).
The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in western China and the autonomous region of Gagauzia, located within eastern Moldova and bordering Ukraine to the north, are two major autonomous Turkic regions. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea within Ukraine is a home of Crimean Tatars. In addition, there are several Turkic-inhabited regions in Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Bulgaria, F.Y.R.O.Macedonia, Greece,Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and western Mongolia.
In the age of nationalism, Turkic speakers were among the first Muslim people to take up Western ideas of liberalism and secular ideologies. Pan-Turkism first sprang up at the end of the nineteenth century in the Russian Empire and was advanced by leading Turkic intellectuals like Crimean Tatar İsmail Gaspıralı, Azerbaijan philosophers like Mirza Fatali Akhundov and Tatar Yusuf Akçura, as a reaction to Panslavist and Russification policies of the Russian Empire. The first fully democratic and secular republics in the Islamic world were Turkic: the ill-fated Idel-Ural State established in 1917, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918 (both annexed and absorbed by the Soviet Union), and in 1923 Republic of Turkey. In 1991 Azerbaijan became an independent Azerbaijan Republic.
The Turks in Turkey are over 55 million | |
