East or Chinese Turkistan?

This chapter discusses the use of pan-Turkist ideology as a political strategy to transform an ethnic community into a modern self-governing nation. Formulated in the late nineteenth century by Turkic intellectuals in the Russian and Ottoman empires, pan-Turkism underlined the linguistic and cultural unity of all Turkic communities and aimed at uplifting their economic and political status. Adopting the pan-Turkist discourse and ideology, Turkic nationalist intellectuals in China's Xinjiang province envisioned their community of “East Turkistanis” as a nation seeking modernity and autonomy for their homeland “East Turkistan” outside or within the borders of the Republic of China (1912–1949). The pan-Turkist discourse of “East Turkistanis” belonging to the greater Turkic nation and their homeland forming the eastern flank of primordial “Turkistan” thus served firstly as a strategy to underline the cultural and historical distinctiveness of Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic communities of Xinjiang from the Han Chinese. Secondly, the pan-Turkist argument functioned as a strategy to further their aspirations for either full political independence of the “East Turkistan Republic” or for a high degree of autonomy of “Chinese Turkistan” within the Republic of China. Although the Xinjiang Turkic nationalists managed to attain their goals only to a limited degree, this research, nonetheless, demonstrates that the discourse and ideology of the “Turkic nation” and “Turkistan” were a central political strategy of Xinjiang Turkic intellectuals at the time and influenced local political events down to the Communist takeover in late 1949.