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While the various Turkic peoples often share historical, cultural and linguistic roots, the rising of a pan-Turkic political movement is a phenomenon only of the 20th century and can be seen in parallel with European developments like pan-Slavism and pan-Germanism or with Middle-Eastern Pan-Arabism. Proponents use the latter most often as a point of comparison.
Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire with its multi-cultural and multi-ethnic population, influenced by emerging racial theories and the Turkish nationalism of the Young Turks, some tried to replace the lost empire with a new Turkish commonwealth.
One of the most significant early exponents of pan-Turkism is Enver Pasha, the Ottoman Minister of War during World War I, and one of the architects of the Armenian Genocide at that time, which was designed to eliminate the one ethnic group seperating Turkic people in Anatolia and Central Asia. He later became one of the leaders of the Basmachi movement in Central Asia during the Russian revolutionary wars.
While of little impact during much of the 20th century, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the late 20th century meant that the majority of the Turkic peoples were suddenly again able to travel and conduct business as partners in political alliances.
TurkeyTurkey (officially the Republic of Turkey Turkish Turkiye is a country located in Southwest Asia with a small part in southeastern Europe. Until 1922 the country was the center of the Ottoman Empire. The Anatolian peninsula, between the Black Sea and the has become a major business partner to many Central Asian Turkic states, helped with the reform of higher education, the introduction of the Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet also called the Roman alphabet is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world, the standard script of the English language and most of the languages of western and central Europe, and of those areas settled by Europeans., economic development and commerce and continues to work for a pan-Turkic alliance.The TOMER Institute of AnkaraAnkara (formerly known as Angora or Enguri , and in the classical period, Ancyra is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city (after Istanbul) and lies at an approximate altitude of 850 meters (about 2800 feet). It is also the capital of University, Turkey's main cultural exchange agency (similar in function to Institut Français , Goethe Institute or British CouncilThe British Council is a partly UK Government-funded cultural relations organisation and a registered charity in the UK. It aims to build mutually beneficial cultural and educational relationships between people in the UK and in other countries, and incre) has taken an international lead in furthering linguisticBroadly conceived, linguistics is the study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. The study of linguistics can be thought of along three major axes, the endpoints of which are described below: Synchronic and diachronic Sy research and teaching of Turkic languagesThe Turkic languages are a group of closely related languages that are spoken by a variety of people distributed across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China. The Turkic languages are considered by some linguists to be part of the A.
The political pan-Turkic movement is linked with parallel development of theories of the racial origin of Turkic peoples, with some linguistic theories about the Ural-Altaic languages and with some theories about ancient archeology, e.g. the origin of the Sumerians as being early Turks. The Kemalist movement in Turkey to "clean" the Turkish language from foreign (mostly Persian and Arabic) influence and particularly the Sun Language Theory, proposed by Kemal Atatürk himself, can all be seen as part of this same intellectual climate.
Pan-Turkism is and has always been a movement viewed with suspicion by many, particularly by non-Turks. Some see it as nothing else but a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some see it as downright racist, particularly when considering the associated racial and historical teachings. Proponents see it as a way of increasing regional security, economic growth and as a viable bullwark against Islamist movements, by furthering secular and democratic government in the region.