dogu-turkistan-sempozyumu

FREEEAST TURKISTAN SYMPOSIUMan important point in the history of Eastern Turkistan. The best expressionfor the British strategy, including the “divide and rule” policy which wasfrequently applied by the Chinese, is “the Great Game”.The substitution of the name Turkistan with the more generic phraseof Central Asia was not just a simple change in name; this too was partof the ‘Great Game’. No other state than Eastern Turkistan, throughouthistory, has used this name; this region was called the Turkistan Provinceafter the Russian occupation. However, the region Turkistan has beenmentioned in reliable sources throughout the ages. In 1867, the GeneralProvince of Turkistan was established, including the recently-occupiedregions, to replace the Turkistan Province, with Tashkent being made thecapital. 1 On 14 October, 1924, the word “Turkistan” was completely removedfrom the political literature of Soviet Russia. The name Turkistan was then appliedonly to the Republic of Eastern Turkistan, which survived from 1944 to 1949. 2Today, the Chinese government refers to this region, which is currently underChinese administration, as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This useof names, which is a part of the assimilation programs of these two totalitarianand oppressive regimes, is tentative, and we sincerely believe that historical andethnic facts should be among the leading criteria when choosing place names tobe used in academic works.Emphasizing the fact that the term “Turkistan” is no longer used by the Turkicpeoples and that the term “Central Asia”, no ordinary change of name, has beenimposed in Western literature, Baymirza Hayit argues: “Turkistan was mentionedin Soviet terminology as ‘Central Asia and Kazakhstan’ from 1925. Russia, inan effort to make Turkistan an experimental area to demonstrate that differentpeoples can be intermingled, rejected the name of this country, as they desired toeliminate a consciousness of membership to the same nation, and also in an effortto make Turkistan a fundamental element of Russian colonialism. Russia does nottolerate the use of the name ‘Turkistan’. However, surprisingly, and inaccurately,some Western researchers have used the Russian expression “Central Asia” sincethe 1950s, thus facilitating the Russian aim to obliterate the word ‘Turkistan’ fromthe Western and Muslim world. Turkistan is not the whole of Central Asia, butonly a part of it...” 3 Our decision to use the name “Eastern Turkistan” in thisstudy is based not only on these historical, legal and scientific facts, but also on290