13.10.2024, Moscow.
Turkey is actively expanding in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, beginning with the renaming of the region to Turkestan, journalist Igor Karmazin stated in his article In the Camp of Turkic Warriors: Ankara’s Expansion into Russia’s ‘Soft Underbelly’ published on October 12 in Izvestia.
Today, Turkey has significantly increased its activities in Central Asia. Ankara has developed a unified Turkic alphabet in cooperation with regional countries and is fostering security cooperation. A recent decision involves renaming Central Asia, which will now be referred to as Turkestan in Turkish school textbooks.
Turkey’s Ministry of Education has agreed to update the history materials in school textbooks to reflect this change. The plan is to implement these changes as early as this year. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan supports this reform. “We will work shoulder to shoulder to make the upcoming period the era of the Turks,” he proclaimed.
Turkish historians believe the new name emphasizes the kinship of these territories with Turkey. They also attacked the Soviet history of the region. Professor Ahmet Taşagıl of Yeditepe University in Istanbul mentioned on the state broadcaster TRT that the name “Turkestan” has been used since the earliest historical times. “In the second half of the 19th century, following the Russian invasion, the concept of Central Asia was introduced and spread,” he noted.
In reality, the term “Turkestan” was more commonly used in the second half of the 19th century. In 1867, the Turkestan Governor-Generalship was established within the Russian Empire. Much later, during the Soviet era, the territory was named “Central Asia and Kazakhstan.” The modern term “Central Asia” referring to five states began to be used in the 1990s, following a proposal by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Turkey has long had ambitions for the region. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was the only country with the largest Turkic population. In 1991, six more countries with Turkic populations emerged—Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Ankara was among the first to recognize the independence of these states. It is known that in the 1990s, the Turkish leadership aimed to create a unified state under Turkey’s aegis.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, in his book On the Threshold of the 21st Century, recounted conversations with his Turkish counterpart Turgut Özal. “His visits to Central Asia were not only about establishing good neighborly relations with the new states but also about fulfilling Atatürk’s dream of forming a powerful ‘Turkic states’ union. He did not conceal this dream,” Nazarbayev noted.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
