Turks are the progenitors of modern Turks, Uzbeks, Kazakhs and other Asians. Historically, a significant part of the ethnic groups inhabiting Eurasia are obliged to consider the territory of present-day Russia as their ancestral home - exactly there, in Buryatia and Tuva, in Altai and in southern Siberia (Trans-Baikal and Baikal regions, Lake Baikal, Sayany), as historians believe, is the homeland of the Turks.
Antonym written traces
It is believed that for the first time the antonym "Turk" was used in writing by the Chinese in their annals in 542. 24 years later, the Byzantines spoke about the Türkic as a nation - the Türkic Kagan Silzibul in 568 sent an embassy to the Byzantine emperor Justinian II. Türkologists interpret the term “Turk” as “solid”, “strong”.
What they looked like
The ancestors of modern Turks, Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks and Kazakhs externally had Mongoloid facial features. There are other, historically proven, features of their relationship to the Mongoloid race - written sources relating the Turkic languages to the Mongoloid languages. Outwardly, modern Turks are not always Mongoloids, they are most often a mixed type, as, for example, Bashkirs and Tatars, Turkmens. The current Turks, Azerbaijanis and Gagauz also do not have pronounced Mongoloid features. There are objective reasons for this.
Byzantium, which also included the Turkish Republic, at one time, as a result of aggressive campaigns, assimilated the Seljuks and Byzantines, as a result of which there was a mixing of ethnic groups and the subsequent "crystallization" of a certain ethnic symbiosis.
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Ethnic area
Inner Asia and Southern Siberia is the small homeland of the Turks, this is that territorial “patch” that over time has grown into a thousand-kilometer territory throughout the world. The geographical composition of the area of the Turkic peoples took place, in fact, over two millennia. Proto-Turks lived in the west of the Volga as early as the III-II millennium BC, they constantly migrated. Ancient Turkic "Scythians" and Huns "were also an integral part of the Ancient Turkic kaganate. Thanks to their ritual structures, today we can get acquainted with the works of ancient early Slavic culture and art - this is precisely the Turkic heritage.
The Turks were traditionally engaged in nomadic cattle breeding, in addition, they mined and processed iron. Leading a sedentary and semi-nomadic lifestyle, the Turks formed Turkestan in the Central Asian interfluve in the 6th century. Existing in Central Asia from 552 to 745, the Türkic Kaganate in 603 was divided into two independent kaganates, one of which included modern Kazakhstan and the lands of Eastern Turkestan, and the other made up the territory that included present-day Mongolia, Northern China and Southern Siberia.
The first, western, kaganate ceased to exist half a century later, conquered by the eastern Turks. The leader of the Turgeshes Uchelik founded a new state of the Turks - the Turgesh Khaganate.
Subsequently, the Bulgars, the Kiev princes Svyatoslav and Yaroslav were engaged in the combat "formatting" of the Turkic ethnos. The Pechenegs, who devastated the southern Russian steppes with fire and sword, were replaced by the Polovtsians, they were defeated by the Mongol-Tatars … In part, the Golden Horde (Mongol Empire) was a Turkic state, which later disintegrated into autonomous khanates.
There were numerous other significant events in the history of the Turks, among which the most significant is the formation of the Ottoman Empire, which was facilitated by the conquests of the Ottoman Turks, who seized the lands of Europe, Asia and Africa in the 13th - 16th centuries. After the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which began in the 17th century, Petrine Russia absorbed most of the former Golden Horde lands with the Turkic states. Already in the 19th century, the East Transcaucasian Khanates joined Russia. After Central Asia, the Kazakh and Kokand khanates, together with the Bukhara Emirate, became part of Russia, the Mikinsky and Khiva khanates, together with the Ottoman Empire, constituted the only conglomerate of Turkic states.
Current situation
Today, the Turkic peoples are numerically predominant in several countries of the world. Turkey is the leader in this regard (almost 60 million of the population), followed by Azerbaijan (the number of representatives of the nationality is approximately half less). Uzbekistan is in third place. The Turkic peoples are also represented by Kazakhs, Uighurs, Turkmens, Tatars and 10 other ethnic groups. Least of all in this list are Nogais (130 thousand).