Mark Meek's Ideas: Turkestan

There is no nation called Turkestan. Rather, it refers to a region, the region of central Asia that is populated by people of Turkic ethnicity. We have already visited Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, which are considered as part of Turkestan. There are also Turkic people in Siberia.

Today, we are going to visit the remaining four Turkic countries in central Asia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and, Tajikistan. Like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, all are former Soviet republics. The suffix "-stan" simply means "nation" or "homeland".

Turkic people are much more diverse than the Arabs further south. They do not have the same language or religion. The majority of Turkic people are Moslems, but it tends to be moderate. The general attitude of the governments seems to be "We hope that our people will live as good Moslems but we are not going to enforce it by law".

Turkestan was along the Silk Road that once ran from China westward and these central Asian nations could be referred to as "The Silk Road Republics", since the Silk Road is being revived.

Turkic people are renowned as conquerors. Nader Shah, who we met on our visit to "Delhi", was actually Turkic although he was the king of Persia, which is not Turkic. Babur, the founder of the great Mughal Empire, which we saw in our visit to "Lahore And The Mughals" was also of Turkic ethnicity.

In medieval times, there was a migration of Turkic people westward. They ended up founding one of the greatest empires in history. They are known as the Ottomans. Their country is known today as Turkey, because they were Turkic by ethnicity. They are not related to the people who lived in what is now Turkey in ancient times, the Hittites and the Phrygians.

Possibly the most dreaded name in human history is that of Timur, sometimes anglicized into Tamerlane. His conquests are estimated to have resulted in the death of about one in twenty people in the entire world of the time. We saw Timur in the posting on this blog, "Why We Should Understand The Mongols". There was a succession of three empires, first the Mongols, then Timur and then the Mughals. Babur, the founder of the Mughals, is believed to be descended from Timur on his father's side and Genghis Khan on his mother's side.

Like the Arabs to the south, there has been periodic interest in a Pan-Turkic movement to achieve some degree of unity or common purpose among the Turkic people. The victories of Turkic conquerors have often been against other Turkic people. The reason that Constantinople lasted for so long, before being conquered by the Ottomans, is that the forces of Timur in the meantime attacked and inflicted a defeat on the Ottomans at the Battle of Ankara. That, as explained in "Symbolism Theory Of The Vatican And Hagia Sophis" is why I believe that three of the minarets that the Ottomans built around the Hagia Sophia are white but the other is red.

Although not near the combat, the Turkic nations that were Soviet republics were greatly affected by the Second World War. Their resources were urgently needed, they served in the Soviet military, and a lot of vital industry was relocated there for safety.

The Nazis, although they did not plan to occupy the area which was in Asia, remembered that there had been an uprising in 1916 by the Turkic people against conscription into the Russian Army while Russia was at war with Germany in the First World War. This was known as the Basmachi Movement. Seeing a chance to weaken the Soviet Union, with which they were at war, the Nazis encouraged the Pan-Turkic movement, and a rebellion against Russian rule, in the Second World War. There was a Turkic regiment, recruited from Soviet prisoners of war, but were deployed only on the Nazis' Western Front, and not against their own country.

This is not all of Turkestan. The homeland of Turkic people continues eastward into China. The vast western region of the country that China calls Xinjiang is populated by the Uighurs, who are Turkic. They sometimes refer to the region as East Turkestan.

The country on the southeastern coast of the Caspian Sea is Turkmenistan. Most of the country is covered by the Karakum Desert. The country is rich in energy resources.

The capital city of Turkmenistan is Ashgabat. Unlike much in the region it is not an old city, being founded in 1881. This is what Ashgabat looks like today.

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >, After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

Mark Meek's Ideas

Thursday, January 28, 2021

Turkestan

No comments:

Post a Comment