About Turkomans!

 

Central Asia is a central region of Asia, spanning the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent. Various definitions of its exact composition exist and no one definition is universally accepted. Despite this uncertainty in defining borders, it does have some important overall characteristics. For one, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. As a result, it has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, and ideas between Europe, Western Asia, South Asia, and East Asia.

In modern contexts, Central Asia is usually reckoned to consist of the five former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan; these are also the constituents per the United Nations regional classification scheme. The region may also include Afghanistan, Mongolia, northeastern Iran, northern Pakistan, northwestern India, western parts of the People's Republic of China such as Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu and Inner Mongolia, and southern parts of Siberia.

Central Asia is largely coextensive with Turkestan and, thus, is the homeland for many Turkish people including the Turkomans, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Uyghurs.

The Turkmen are Turkish people living primarily in the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and in northeastern Iran. They speak the Turkoman Language which is classified as part of the Western Oghuz branch of Turkish language, family together with Turkish, Azerbaijani, Gagauz, Salar and Turkoman spoken in Iraq.

Origins

Türkic tribes of not Türkic dynastic mythological system were designated "Turkmens" (for example, Uigurs, Karluks, Kalaches and a number of other tribes were designated Turkmens), only later this word gained a meaning of a specific ethnonym. The etymology derives from Türk plus the Sogdian affix of similarity -myn ,-men, and means "resembling a Türk", "co-Türk". A prominent turkic scholar Mahmud Kashgari also mentions etymology Türk manand (like turks). The language and type of Turkoman were much influenced by their migration to the west. Mahmud Kashgari calls the Karluk turkmen as well. But the first time the etymology turkmen was used by Makdisi (Seconf half of the 10th century A.D.) As Mahmud Kashgari, he writes that karluk and Oguzses were called turkmen. Modern scholars agree that the element -man/-men acts as an intensifier and have translated the word as "pure Turk" or "most Turk-like of the Turks". Among Muslim chroniclers such as Ibn Kathir was attribution of the etymology from the mass conversion of 200,000 households in AH 349 , causing them to be named Turk Iman, which is a combination of "Turk" and "Iman" إيمان (faith, belief), meaning "believing Turks", and the term later dropping the hard to pronounce hamza.

Historically, all of the Western or Oghuz Turks have been called Türkmen or derisive Turkoman, however today the terms are usually restricted to two Turk groups: the Turkmen people of Turkmenistan and adjacent parts of Central Asia, and the Turkomans of Iraq and Syria, which are similar but not identical ethnic groups.

During the Ottoman period these nomads were known by the names of Türkmen and Yörük or Yürük (Türkic "Nomad", other phonetic variations include Iirk, Iyierk, Hiirk, Hirkan, Hircanae, Hyrkan, Hyrcanae, the last four known from the Greek annals). These names were generally used to describe their nomadic way of life, rather than their ethnic origin. However, these terms were often used interchangeably by foreigners. At the same time, various other exoethnonym words were used for these nomads, such as 'Konar-göçer', 'Göçebe', 'Göçer-yörük', 'Göçerler', and 'Göçer-evliler'. The most common one among these was 'Konar-göçer' - nomadic Turcoman Turks. All of these words are found in Ottoman archival documents and carry only the meaning of 'nomad'.

The modern Turkmen people descend, at least in part, from the Oghuz Turks of Transoxiana, the western portion of Turkestan, a region that largely corresponds to much of Central Asia as far east as Xinjiang. Oghuz tribes had moved westward from the Altay mountains in 7th century CE through the Siberian steppes and settled in this region, and also penetrated as far west as the Volga basin and Balkans. These early Turkmens are believed to have mixed with native Sogdian peoples and lived as pastoral nomads until the Russian conquest.

History

Signs of advanced settlements have been found throughout Turkmenistan including the Djeitun settlement where neolithic buildings have been excavated and dated to the 7th millennium BCE. By 2000 BCE, various Ancient Iranian peoples began to settle throughout the region as indicated by the finds at the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. Notable early tribes included the nomadic Massagatae and Scythians. The Achaemenid Empire annexed the area by the 4th century BCE and then lost control of the region following the invasion of Alexander the Great, whose Hellenistic influence had an impact upon the area and some remnants have survived in the form of a planned city which was discovered following excavations at Antiocheia (Merv). The Parni invaded the region as the Parthian Empire was established until it too fractured as a result of tribal invasions stemming from the north. Ephthalites, Huns, and Göktürks came in a long parade of invasions. Finally, the Sassanid Empire based in Persia ruled the area prior to the coming of the Muslim Arabs during the Umayyad Caliphate by 716 CE. The majority of the inhabitants were converted to Islam as the region grew in prominence. Next came the Oghuz Turks, who imparted their language upon the local population. A tribe of the Oghuz, the Seljuks, established a Turko-Iranian culture that culminated in the Khwarezmid Empire by the 12th century. Mongol hordes led by Genghis Khan conquered the area between 1219 to 1221 and devastated many of the cities which led to a rapid decline of the remaining Iranian urban population.

The Turkmen largely survived the Mongol period due to their semi-nomadic life-style and became traders along the Caspian, which led to contacts with Eastern Europe. Following the decline of the Mongols, Tamerlane conquered the area and his Timurid Empire would rule, until it too fractured, as the Safavids, Uzbeks, and Khanate of Khiva all contested the area. The expanding Russian Empire took notice of Turkmenistan's extensive cotton industry, during the reign of Peter the Great, and invaded the area. Following the decisive Battle of Geok-Tepe in January 1881, Turkmenistan became a part of the Russian Empire. After the Russian Revolution, Soviet control was established by 1921 as Turkmenistan was transformed from a medieval Islamic region to a largely secularized republic within a totalitarian state. By 1991, with the fall of the Soviet Union, Turkmenistan achieved independence as well, but remained dominated by a one-party system of government led by the authoritarian regime of President Saparmurat Niyazov until his death in December 2006.

Nomadic heritage

The Turkmen were mainly a nomadic people for most of their history and they were not settled in cities and towns until the advent of the Soviet system of government, which severely restricted freedom of movement and collectivized nomadic herdsmen by the 1930s. Many pre-Soviet cultural traits have survived in Turkmen society however and have recently undergone a kind of revival.

Turkmen lifestyle was heavily invested in horsemanship and as a prominent horse culture, Turkmen horse-breeding was an ages old tradition. In spite of changes prompted by the Soviet period, a tribe in southern Turkmenistan has remained very well known for their horses, the Akhal-Teke desert horse - and the horse breeding tradition has returned to its previous prominence in recent years.

Many tribal customs still survive among modern Turkmen. Unique to Turkmen culture is kalim which is a groom's "dowry", that can be quite expensive and often results in the widely practiced tradition of bridal kidnapping. In something of a modern parallel, President Saparmurat Niyazov introduced a state enforced "kalim", wherein all foreigners are required to pay a sum of no less than $50,000 to marry a Turkmen woman.

Other customs include the consultation of tribal elders, whose advice is often eagerly sought and respected. Many Turkmen still live in extended families where various generations can be found under the same roof, especially in rural areas.

The music of the nomadic and rural Turkmen people reflects rich oral traditions, where epics such as Koroglu are usually sung by itinerant bards. These itinerant singers are called bakshy; they also act as healers and magicians and sing either a cappella or with instruments such as the two-stringed lute called dutar.

Turkmen in Iran and Afghanistan

Turkmen in Iran and Afghanistan remain very conservative in comparison to their brethren in Turkmenistan. Islam plays a much more prominent role in Iran and Afghanistan where Turkmen follow many traditional Islamic practices that many Turkmen in Turkmenistan have abandoned as a result of decades of Soviet rule. In addition, many Turkmen in Iran and Afghanistan have remained at least semi-nomadic and traditionally work in agriculture/animal husbandry and the production of carpets.

 

Demographics and population distribution

The Turkmen people of Central Asia live in:

As of 2005, there remain approximately 60,000 Turkmen refugees in Pakistan, largely in the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan. A few hundred Turkmen and Kyrgyz refugee families living in Pakistan were given asylum in Turkey in the 1980s.

There are also scattered communities of Turkmens in Russian province of Stavropol and elsewhere in the Caucasus, descending from the tribes who emigrated from Turkmenistan in 18th century and call themselves "Trukhmens".