The origin and theoretical aspects of Pan-Turkism

Abstract

The Pan-Turkish ideological movement appeared in the arena in order to save the Ottoman Empire and the country from the destruction of certain political, social and economic processes at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Pan-Turkism was reflected in the Tatar period of the Russian Empire along with the national awakening. It was the idea of ​​uniting all the Turkic-speaking peoples of the Caucasus, the Volga-Ural region, the Crimea, the Middle East and Central Asia under the roof of a great Turkish state. It was the Tatar intellectuals of the Volga region and Crimea who laid the foundation for the theory of ideology. The founders of Pan-Turkish ideology were the Crimean Tatar educator, politician and publicist Ismail Gasparli; Siberian Tatar educator Yusuf Akchura; Azerbaijani intellectual and Transcaucasian Sheikh-ul-Islam Ali Husayn-Zade and others. It was in their doctrines that the idea of ​​uniting peoples of Turkish origin into a single Turkish state was presented.Elements of Pan-Turkism first emerged within linguistic, ethnolinguistic, and racial studies within language, history, and literature. According to adherents of Pan-Turkism, Turkic peoples share certain characteristics, such as related languages, perceived common ancestry, history, and cultural traditions. Around the 1900s, Pan-Turkism emerged as a political movement that sought independence from the Ottoman Empire and aimed at reviving the Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism was the only one of the ideologies that flourished in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, and which was given a historic opportunity during the First World War, when the Young Turks, who determined the fate of the empire, adopted it as a guiding principle for state policy. Pan-Turkism was able to completely replace well-established state ideologies and worldviews, Pan-Turkism simply overshadowed alternative theories and established guidelines for policy-making.