Turkic expansion

The Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West, Central, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages.. "Turkic peoples, any of various peoples whose members speak languages belonging to the Turkic subfamily...". "The Turkic peoples represent a diverse collection of ethnic groups defined by the Turkic languages."

According to historians and linguists, the Proto-Turkic language originated in Central-East Asia region, potentially in Mongolia or Tuva. Initially, Proto-Turkic speakers were potentially both hunter-gatherers and farmers, but later became nomadic pastoralists. Early and medieval Turkic groups exhibited a wide range of both East Asian and West-Eurasian physical appearances and genetic origins, in part through long-term contact with neighboring peoples such as Iranian, Mongolic, Tocharians, Yeniseian people, and others."Some DNA tests point to the Iranian connections of the Ashina and Ashide,133 highlighting further that the Turks as a whole ‘were made up of heterogeneous and somatically dissimilar populations’.134 Geographically, the accounts cover the regions of Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Xinjiang, the Yenisei zone and the Altay, regions with Turkic, Indo-European (Iranian akaand Tokharian), Yeniseic, Uralic and other populations. Wusun elements, like most steppe polities of an ethno-linguistic mix, may have also played a substratal role."

Many vastly differing ethnic groups have throughout history become part of the Turkic peoples through language shift, acculturation, conquest, intermixing, adoption, and religious conversion. Nevertheless, Turkic peoples share, to varying degrees, non-linguistic characteristics like cultural traits, ancestry from a common gene pool, and historical experiences. Some of the most notable modern Turkic ethnic groups include the Altai people, Azerbaijanis, Chuvash people, Gagauz people, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz people, Turkmens, Turkish people, Tuvans, Uyghurs, Uzbeks, and Yakuts.

Etymology

The first known mention of the term ''Turk'' (Old Turkic: 𐱅𐰇𐰼𐰰 ''Türük'' or 𐱅𐰇𐰼𐰰:𐰜𐰇𐰛 ''Kök Türük'', , Pinyin: Tūjué < Middle Chinese *''tɦut-kyat'' < *''dwət-kuɑt'', Old Tibetan: ''drugu'') Orkhon inscriptions Bain Tsokto inscriptions applied to only one Turkic group, namely, the Göktürks, who were also mentioned, as ''türüg'' ~ ''török'', in the 6th-century Khüis Tolgoi inscription, most likely not later than 587 AD. A letter by Ishbara Qaghan to Emperor Wen of Sui in 585 described him as "the Great Turk Khan". The Bugut (584 CE) and Orkhon inscriptions (735 CE) use the terms ''Türküt'', ''Türk'' and ''Türük''.

During the first century CE, Pomponius Mela refers to the ''Turcae'' in the forests north of the Sea of Azov, and Pliny the Elder lists the ''Tyrcae'' among the people of the same area. However, English archaeologist Ellis Minns contended that ''Tyrcae'' Τῦρκαι is "a false correction" for ''Iyrcae'' Ἱύρκαι, a people who dwelt beyond the Thyssagetae, according to Herodotus ( Histories, iv. 22), and were likely Ugric ancestors of Magyars. There are references to certain groups in antiquity whose names might have been foreign transcriptions of ''Tür(ü)k'', such as ''Togarma'', ''Turukha''/''Turuška'', ''Turukku'' and so on; but the information gap is so substantial that any connection of these ancient people to the modern Turks is not possible.

It is generally accepted that the name ''Türk'' is ultimately derived from the Old-Turkic migration-term 𐱅𐰇𐰼𐰰 ''Türük''/''Törük'',<"Türk"
in ''Turkish Etymological Dictionary'', Sevan Nişanyan. which means 'created, born' or 'strong'. Scholars, including Toru Haneda, Onogawa Hidemi, and Geng Shimin believed that ''Di'', ''Dili'', ''Dingling'', ''Chile'' and ''Tujue'' all came from the Turkic word ''Türk'', which means 'powerful' and 'strength', and its plural form is ''Türküt''. Even though Gerhard Doerfer supports the proposal that ''türk'' means 'strong' in general, Gerard Clauson points out that "the word ''türk'' is never used in the generalized sense of 'strong'" and that ''türk'' was originally a noun and meant "'the culminating point of maturity' (of a fruit, human being, etc.), but more often used as an djectivemeaning (of a fruit) 'just fully ripe'; (of a human being) 'in the prime of life, young, and vigorous'". Turkologist Peter B. Golden agrees that the term ''Turk'' has roots in Old Turkic. yet is not convinced by attempts to link ''Dili'', ''Dingling'', ''Chile'', ''Tele'', & ''Tiele'', which possibly transcribed *''tegrek'' (probably meaning ' cart'), to ''Tujue'', which transliterated ''Türküt''. The Chinese Book of Zhou (7th century) presents an etymology of the name ''Turk'' as derived from 'helmet', explaining that this name comes from the shape of a mountain where they worked in the Altai Mountains. Hungarian scholar András Róna-Tas (1991) pointed to a Khotanese-Saka word, ''tturakä'' 'lid', semantically stretchable to 'helmet', as a possible source for this folk etymology, yet Golden thinks this connection requires more data.

The earliest Turkic-speaking peoples identifiable in Chinese sources are the Yenisei Kyrgyz and Xinli, located in South Siberia. Another example of an early Turkic population would be the Dingling. Medieval European chroniclers subsumed various Turkic peoples of the Eurasian steppe under the "umbrella-identity" of the "Scythians". Between 400 CE and the 16th century, Byzantine sources use the name Σκύθαι (''Skuthai'') in reference to twelve different Turkic peoples.G. Moravcsik, ''Byzantinoturcica'' II, p. 236–39

In the modern Turkish language as used in the Republic of Turkey, a distinction is made between "Turks" and the "Turkic peoples" in loosely speaking: the term ''Türk'' corresponds specifically to the "Turkish-speaking" people (in this context, "Turkish-speaking" is considered the same as "Turkic-speaking"), while the term '' Türki'' refers generally to the people of modern "Turkic Republics" (''Türki Cumhuriyetler'' or ''Türk Cumhuriyetleri''). However, the proper usage of the term is based on the linguistic classification in order to avoid any political sense. In short, the term ''Türki'' can be used for ''Türk'' or vice versa.

List of ethnic groups

; Historical Turkic groups

* Az
* Dingling
* Bulgars
* Esegel
* Barsils
* Alat
* Basmyl
* Onogurs
* Saragurs
* Sabirs
* Shatuo
* Ongud (from Shatuo)
* Göktürks
* Oghuz Turks
* Kangly