dogu-turkistan-sempozyumu

FREEEAST TURKISTAN SYMPOSIUMAsia increasingly follow official designations of national identity. Hence, forCentral Asia, the break-up of the USSR did not lead to the creation of a greater“Turkistan” or a pan-Islamic collection of states, despite the predominantly Turkicand Muslim population of the region. Rather, the USSR dissolved along ethnicand national lines that had been created by the Soviet State itself. China clearlyis not about to fall apart anytime soon. Yet, it also has continuing ethnic andreligious conflicts and it must solve them for other more pressing reasons.Chinese histories notwithstanding, every Uighur firmly believes that theirancestors were the indigenous people of the Tarim basin, which did not becomeknown in Chinese as “Xinjiang” (“new dominion”) until the eighteenth century.Nevertheless, the identity of the present people known as the Uighur is a ratherrecent phenomenon related to Great Game rivalries, Sino-Soviet geopoliticalmaneuverings, and Chinese nation-building. While a collection of nomadic steppepeoples known as the “Uighur” have existed since before the eighth century, thisidentity was lost from the fifteenth to the twentieth century.It was not until the fall of the Turkish Khanate (552-744 C.E.) to a peoplereported by the Chinese historians as Hui-he or Hui-hu that we find the beginningsof the Uighur Empire. At this time the Uighur were only a collection of ninenomadic tribes, who, initially in confederation with other Basmil and Karlukhnomads, defeated the Second Turkish Khanate and then dominated the federationunder the leadership of Koli Beile in 742. 12 The gradual sedentarization of theUighur and their defeat of the Turkish Khanate occurred precisely as trade withthe unified Chinese Tang state became especially lucrative. Sedentarization andinteraction with the Chinese state was accompanied by socio-religious change:the traditional shamanistic Turkic-speaking Uighur came increasingly underthe influence of Persian Manichaeanism, Buddhism, and eventually, NestorianChristianity. Extensive trade and military alliances along the old Silk Road withthe Chinese state developed to the extent that the Uighur gradually adoptedcultural, dress and even agricultural practices from the Chinese. The conquest ofthe Uighur capital of Karabalghasun in Mongolia by the nomadic Kyrgyz in 840,without rescue from the Tang, who may by then have become intimidated by thewealthy Uighur Empire, led to further sedentarization and crystallization of theUighur identity. One branch that ended up in what is now Turpan took advantage460