User talk:Bingfeng

http://users.accesscomm.ca/doukhobor.genealogy/Molokan.htm Molokan Surnames

http://www.peoples.org.ru/tatar/eng_129.html My work for the Tatar-Bashkir Service of Radio Liberty

http://www.iccrimea.org/scholarly/bwilliams.html The Crimean Tatars. The Diaspora Experience and the Forging of a Nation*

http://www.ponyexpress.net/~rizvanov/felix/Tatchech.htm Chechens could learn from the model of Tatar "secession"

http://beutel.narod.ru/write/russiahist.htm Notes on Russian Character and Outline of Russian History

http://www.jamestown.org/pubs/view/pri_005_016_005.htm NEW MUFTIS, NEW RUSSIANS?

http://www.geocities.com/ai320/facts.htm # The greatest of the Mamluke Sultans of Egypt was the Crimean Tatar, Ruku ad-Din Baibars. He took power in Cairo in 1250 and completed

http://admin.muslimsonline.com/babri/euromuslim1.htm A Muslim Europe Waiting

http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/russ110/russwomenslides.htm Kitchenmaids or Stateswomen? A Political History of Women in Russia

yalpa Senior Member

Registered: Oct 2001 Posts: 333 Uygur

You did not ask me anything. Can’t you read what I write here? If you want me to answer your question whether or not Kasgarli was correct to claim himself Turk then you need to write down his exact words and the name of the source where he wrote these words. In other words, put down the fact. I am not going to bother with baseless arguments.

You kind of accomplished this with Bilge by giving us his almost exact statement "dokkuz oghuz is actually my people". I am saying almost, because it is a translation. The exact statement is “tokuz oguz menin bodunum erti”(Tekin, 1988:45). As you can see, there is no ‘actually’ in the original. The word actually made into this translation probably because of the following sentence: “Tenri yer bulgakin üçün ödine küni tegdük üçün yagi bolti”(Tekin, 1988:46). In this second sentence, he explains why tokuz oguz became their enemies, the enemies of the Turks.

The meaning of ‘bodunum’ is not very clear in these statements, either. Nowadays, it is translated as ‘people’. (Tekin,1988). In the thirties, the translation of this word was ‘millet’ (nation) (Orkun,1936). If one checks the meaning of this word in the Etymological Dictionary of the pre-13 century Turkish, so far the only major dictionary of its kind, one will find that it meant “clans, an organized tribal community, in the sense of a community ruled by a particular ruler. ‘Bodun’ is the plural of ‘bod’ or ‘boy’ (clan, tribe). It still survives in the Anatolian Turkish as ‘boy’. Thus, ‘bodun’ means clans. It seems like this word came to mean ‘people’ later on, but it is very likely that they understood this word to mean a collectivity (people) made up of a collection of tribes, not of individuals or citizens. Turks had many political terms like this one. There was, for example, the term ‘bag’ (tie, belt, something that ties together a bundle). This word also meant a confederation of clans. In other words, a group of ‘bod’s (clans) made a ‘bodun’. One higher level of organization was a ‘bag’.

There is no need to go into more details here, since this is not the subject. I made this brief argument here to show you how a debate is conducted. You may be a nice guy or not. But, if you are asking me a question then I will want you to use facts, not interpretations of these facts. Bring me Kasgarli’s exact statement with the name of the source where this statement is. Then, you will have your answer. As far as I am concerned this statement does not exist, because the original statement that I can verify is not presented. It is crucial to see in what context this statement is made, so we can figure out what is meant by it.

You criticize me for using the word Uighur. This is the English version of it. I will be more than happy to say Uygur. I was simply trying to be consistent with the language we have been using. If this is going to be the case then you may perhaps be kind enough to use Kasgarli instead of Kasgari, since there is no such a suffix in Turkish.

I think you are trying to say that Marco Polo was a big scholar. Give me a break my friend. He was a businessman looking for more opportunities. He wrote a book during his travels. His book is valuable as a possible source of information, but not the sort written by scholars. So, he said Kasgar was called Turkistan (You probably mean that the area that Kasgar was part of was called Turkistan). What is the big deal about this, and what does this prove? I think you do not understand. I am not saying that this land was not called Turkistan, and I am certainly not saying that the word Turk was not being used. All I said was that their usage was different from ours. We mean a nation and an ethnicity by this word, and when we use it in geographic terms such as Turkistan and Turkiye, it means a land occupied by an ethnically constructed nation. I am stressing ethnicity, because both the Arabic word ‘millet’ and the Turkish word ‘ulus (s is actually the sh sound here) and its Mongolian version ulus (no sh sound here) existed as non-ethnical descriptions before our own ethnically constructed ‘millet’ and ‘ulus’ terms. We still use the same words, but mean different things now. When we use either of these terms it means an ethnic group. The question is, then, whether or not you can show me that they described their Turkishness in our terms.

Karahanlilar lived in a land that others called Turkistan (Marco Polo was not a Turk or Dokkuz Oguz or Oguz). This does not tell us that Karahanlilar called their land Turkistan. For example, Anatolian Selcuks did not call their land Turkistan, but Europeans did. By the way, it is very likely that Turks would have used a word that ended with ‘-ili’ or ‘–eli’. The fact that Marco Polo used the word Turkistan shows that he heard the word from Persian speakers or Turkish speakers whose language was already mixed with Persian terms.

You should also wonder about the word ‘Karahan’. Why ‘kara’ (black), but not ‘ak’ (white)? Do you have an answer? Could we perhaps conclude that Karahanlilar actually represented a break with the Ashina clan, since ‘kara’ was used to describe the common people as in ‘kara bodun’? We find this argument, for example, in Dilaçar’s Kutadgu Bilig Incelemesi (1972:16). Similarly, Divitçioglu talks about the existence of ‘ak’ and ‘kara’ buduns among Kok Turks (1987: 188,189). Furthermore, we see that there were other types of ‘budun’s (clans): ‘iç budun’, ‘baz budun’, ‘kayin budun’ (Divitçioglu, 184-85). In fact, we find the following description in the Kül Tigin inscription about Dokuz Oguz: “yiriya baz kagan tokuz oguz bodun yagi ermis” (Tekin, 1988:12). According to Divitçioglu, this statement is telling us that the Dokuz Oguz were one of the baz/dis (outer) clans. ‘Iç’ (inner) buduns (clans) were those who were in the confederation because of their own choice. The outer (baz/dis) clans were the ones that were forced into the confederation through wars (Divitçioglu, 1987: 184-85). Divitçioglu (1987:181) tells us that the thirty clans of the Kok Turks at one point were made up of 12 Turk, 9 Uygur, 8 Oguz and 1 Kipçak clans.

We may translate ‘budun’ as people, which was probably one of its meanings. However, we cannot really say that ‘budun’ meant ethnic collectivity as we understand it today. So far, there is no evidence for this. For example, the designation ‘Turkish people’ will today mean those people who are ethnically Turks. We do not really have types of people anymore. However, during the time of the ancient Turks or Turkish speakers there were many different types of ‘budun’ (people). This was the case because they were not really thinking ethnically, but in terms of tribes and ranks in these tribes. In the ancient times, we are in the world of tribes/clans. We may talk about the history of Turkish speaking tribes in this period, but we cannot really talk about the history of Turkish ethnicity or ethos. According to the present evidence, this simply did not exist. To talk both about the emergence and history of Turks as an ethnic group, we really need to wait until the 19th or maybe late 18th century.

In this history of Turks as an ethnic group, we may of course have Turks, Tatars, Azeris and Uygurs. For all that is required to become part of this history is that one claims that one is Turkish. However, we cannot use the ancient history as the beginning of this ethnic history, because these ancients lived in a different world in which the idea of ethnicity was basically nonexistent. On the other hand, biologically, culturally (in some areas) and historically, these ancients are one of our ancestors. Thus, the history of Turks as an ethnic group is about two hundred years old, whereas the history of Turkish speakers go as far back as the first time they appear in historical or archaeological record. This could probably go to the time of Huns, since it is thought that there were Turkish-speaking clans in the Hun confederation. The history of the Turkish tribes in terms of the first written document by them starts in the 6th century AD. This is the first time, according to what we have so far, that some Turkish speakers started writing their history in their own language. What Chinese wrote is irrelevant here, since this was not something Turks wrote. That is, it does not tell us that some Turkish speakers were writing history, but that Chinese historians were writing about Turkish speakers. However, even according to the Chinese records, the first time the word Turk is mentioned is the 5th century AD (Golden, 1992). The history of tribes that were called Turks start at the same time as well, since they were the ones who produced the first written records written in Turkish. Their history ended around the 8th century as Uygurs with some others destroyed them. No tribe that was called Turk ever appeared again, but the name stayed.

You may of course have your own story Uygur, but if it is not too much to ask, I would like you to base the arguments you may want to make on facts with references. See, when I argue you can go check my facts, and follow up on them. I presented statements from the Kök Turk inscriptions in their original forms. These are facts, and since I also gave you the sources you can go find them. Will you be able to do the same? Probably not.

According to you, I had to read before I could discuss Turkish history. I hope my presentation here is enough to show that I have been doing some reading. Now, it is your turn to show how much reading you have been doing. Of course, everything I wrote is according to the evidence we have now. If they find other stuff in the future then the situation will of course change. But, till then, this is the case.