Russians and Turkistan

When the Russians first appeared on the historical stage, they generally faced the dominance of Turkic peoples in Europe in both geographical and military terms. This social structure, which was minimally developed in early periods, has even been described in some sources as culturally quite primitive. Indeed, it is well known that the earliest Russian communities significantly benefited from and were influenced by the culture and civilization of the Turkic peoples in the region.

Struggling to survive in the harsh and cold geography of the north, these communities engaged for a long time in fishing and hunting rather than settled agriculture. Due to their lack of political stability and inability to overcome internal conflicts, they appealed to the Viking kings of Scandinavia to establish order in the region and lay the foundations for their first state institutions.

Initially presenting a weak profile in international politics, the Russians encountered their greatest struggles again with Turkic peoples as they expanded from their earliest state centers in Eastern Europe toward their current territories. This situation clearly demonstrates how deeply rooted the relations between these two societies are.

By the 10th century, the Russians had adopted Christianity as their official religion and laid the foundations for the Cyrillic alphabet still in use today. Behind this transformation lay the genius of the Byzantine Empire. As Byzantium gradually weakened and became vulnerable to Russian raids, it pursued a systematic policy of “Christianization” to remove these communities as a threat and successfully brought this northern power into its own religious and cultural hinterland.

Just as every peak has its turning point, every low point has its ascent. Russia, having consolidated its political unity, gradually expanded and would achieve its major territorial gains on Turkic homelands.

With Russian expansion extending into the Turkistan region, the Turkic communities there endured extremely harsh processes of domination. The Russian administration did not merely govern Turkic lands through military force; it also imposed assimilation policies such as forced marriages with Russian women, mandatory learning of the Russian language, and restrictions on religious practices, thereby obstructing the Turkic peoples’ ability to live according to their own cultures. Although the Turkic states of Turkistan have now achieved independence, they still face serious difficulties in fully returning to their own identities and languages due to the oppressive era that swept over them like a steamroller.

During the occupation period, education and intellectual life suffered a major rupture. In this region under Russian pressure, innovative movements emerged that challenged the traditional madrasa mindset. These circles, which argued that Islam needed to be reinterpreted in light of contemporary conditions, developed deep and contentious ideological divisions with the traditional madrasa establishments. During this period, a segment emerged that traveled from Turkistan to centers such as Istanbul for education, returned to their homeland, and embraced the Jadidist movement.

The Tsarist and subsequent Russian administrations consistently suppressed local uprisings in Turkistan with brutal and bloody military methods. Under this repression, the indigenous population struggled to preserve its identity and economic livelihood by sustaining certain professional groups, but the new economic and social order imposed by Russia ultimately led to the decline and disappearance of these traditional crafts. Unfortunately, the Turkic peoples were forced to adapt to the new lifestyle introduced by Russia.

One of the greatest tragedies occurred in educational institutions; Turkish families, recognizing the overt cultural erosion taking place in the modern-looking schools established in the region, carefully avoided sending their children to these institutions in order to protect their national and religious identities.

The fact that the Turkic peoples, who once existed across a vast geography stretching from northern China to eastern Europe, from Central Asia to the Middle East and even northern Africa, and who established numerous states, suffered such severe memory loss and identity disruption under Russian domination constitutes one of the most dramatic turning points in world history.

The Turkic peoples, one of the few nations to have spread across the most diverse regions of the world and left global marks in these areas, have, alas, been confined since the 1800s to the smallest territorial extent in their history and forced to sustain their existence under the most difficult and adverse conditions.

Yet it must not be forgotten that just as a magnificent recovery and resurgence followed the Mongol invasions, this period of stagnation experienced by the Turkic world is essentially a temporary “leaf shedding” preparing the ground for a new spring. If the Turkic states, currently scattered in their present condition, along with other Muslim nations, can unite around the strongest and most unshakable bond—the bond of religion—they will once again redirect the course of history and inscribe their names in the future in golden letters!