dogu-turkistan-sempozyumu

East Turkistan Kazakh Independence Movements in the 20 th Century / Dr Meryem HakimThe Kazakhs who made their way out of East Turkistan into the free world in1950 were joined by the Kazakh people who had emigrated from India and EastTurkistan in 1939 to settle in Pakistan, which had been declared an independentstate after Indian independence; they sought refuge in Turkey. Before the collapseof the Soviet Union in 1991 the Kazakh people who lived in the free world,namely Turkey and Europe, were the children of Kazakhs who had managed tosurvive thousands of humiliations, atrocities and raids in East Turkistan.In the twentieth century, throughout all these years of insurgence, thousandsof Kazakh men, women, children, both young and old, died, and hundreds ofdistinguished leaders and intellectual Kazakhs were imprisoned, tortured andkilled as a result of the Chinese oppression and massacres in East Turkistan. Atthis time the world was not informed of these facts. Efforts were made both inEast Turkistan and in other parts of the world, such as India, Turkey, Europe andAmerica, to explain this atrocity by the Chinese administration through books,articles, news items and other documents. Even though the Kazakh leaders whomigrated from East Turkistan in the second half of the twentieth century hadalready passed away, the struggle of the Kazakh Turks in East Turkistan have beenindelibly recorded in documents, publications and the annals of history.The inhuman crimes of torture, oppression and violence that have beenwitnessed by the international community in the twenty-first century in EastTurkistan were also committed in the past at great levels. What has changed sincethen is that the international society is now well-informed of the oppression thathas been conducted during the last century by the Chinese in East Turkistan. TheEast Turkistan issue needs to be solved not only by Central Asia, but also by theentire world. If we are to draw lessons from history, then we should regard theEast Turkistan issue as not only a problem of the Muslim Uyghur people, whoare struggling today, but also as an issue that has a potential to distort the securitypolicies and strategies of the all newly-independent Muslim-Turkish states inCentral Asia. It is for this reason that the independence struggle and humanrights violations in East Turkistan will affect not only the Uygur, Kazakh andKyrgyz people of East Turkistan, but also the entire Muslim and Turkic worldwhich is associated with Central Asia in terms of supra-identities, as well asthe international society, which perceives human dignity and human rights asfundamental principles.389