East Turkestan
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Proper noun edit
- Synonym of Xinjiang.
- [1876 [1874 September 27], J. Scully, “A Contribution to the Ornithology of Eastern Turkestan”, in Allan Hume, editor, Stray Feathers: A Journal of Ornithology for India and its Dependencies[1], volume IV, Calcutta: Calcutta Central Press, →OCLC, page 59:
- It seems to me that I entered the hills, from the Indian side, at Barakau on the 25th of June last; that I reached the ‘top’ on the Depsang plains on the 14th of this month; and that to-day I have emerged on the Central Asian side of the hills into the plains of Eastern Turkestan.]
- 1905, Raphael Pumpelly, Explorations in Turkestan, with an account of the basin of eastern Persia and Sistan[2], page 16:
- It is the opinion of an important school of archeologists that the earliest products of metallurgy in bronze and iron successively progressed to the western world from the far East — a progress that in each case carried with it a revolution in civilizations. We do not know whether this region saw the birth of the metallurgy of those elemental substances which — beginning with copper and tin and progressing through bronze to iron and steel and the use of coal — marks the birth of civilization and its great revolutions. If it was not the birthplace of this art, and if it was a distributing center, it is a long step nearer to any far eastern source, whether this was China, East Turkestan, India, or Persia.
- 1906, James Whitford Bashford, China and Methodism[3], page 31:
- The introduction of Mohammedanism occurred during the seventh century. Mohammedanism has its largest following in the northwestern portion of the empire, and it has once or twice threatened the peace of the government in that region, especially in the dependency of East Turkestan.
- 1946, Military Information: Sinkiang Rebellions 1931-1937[4], page 9:
- Within the independent government of the East Turkestan Republic, while Sabid-da-Mulla insisted upon defending the Old City of Kashgar to the death, Mahum and Nias wanted to quit the Old City for the time being, withdraw to Ying-chi-sha, and plan a second uprising.
- 1952, “Sharasume”, in Leon E. Seltzer, editor, The Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer of the World[5], Morningside Heights, NY: Columbia University Press, →OCLC, page 1745, column 2:
- It is the administrative hq. of the dist. Altai [Chinese Aerhtai or Ashan], by which name the town is sometimes called, and which formed part (1944-50) of the East Turkestan Republic.
- 1962, Bertil Almgren, Geographical Aspects of the Silk Road Especially in Persia and East Turkestan[6], number 34, Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, page 96:
- After Lou-lan, however, the Qum darja river and, north of this, the parallel mountain range of Quruq-tagh again seem to offer some guidance, when choosing the northern route through East Turkestan.
- 1970 [1964], Reinhard G. Hubel, “The carpets of East Turkestan”, in Katherine Watson, transl., The Book of Carpets[7], West Germany: Praeger Publishers, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 267:
- Furthermore for many regions of eastern and southern China it is the mat rather than the carpet that is more suited to the climate as a floor covering. Carpet export from east Turkestan was therefore always directed primarily westwards and to a lesser extent southwards. In old Chinese documents there is scarcely a mention of the carpets of east Turkestan.
- 2006, Sheila Hollihan-Elliot, Muslims in China[8], Mason Crest Publishers, →ISBN, page 55:
- For most of their history, the Uyghurs lived as tribes in a loosely affiliated nation on the northern Chinese border (sometimes called East Turkestan). Most do not think of themselves as Chinese, and some want to break away from China and form an independent state. They wish to emulate their Turkic Muslim neighbors in Central Asian states like Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, which gained independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
- 2013, Steve Finch, “China Courts Central Asia”, in The Diplomat[9]:
- For Anwar Yusuf Turani, a Washington D.C.-based school teacher and prime minister of the exiled government of East Turkistan – the pro-independence name for Xinjiang – all of this is too little too late by Beijing.
Evasive about whether pro-independence supporters are present in Central Asia, he says that he communicates regularly with people in Xinjiang, even if it’s difficult with social media mostly blocked. “The Chinese government makes propaganda telling the people of East Turkestan that we should live in harmony, that the vast majority of the Uyghur people want to live with China,” Turani tells The Diplomat.
- 2013, Isaac Stone Fish, “My Dinner With Alptekin”, in Foreign Policy[10]:
- I only knew one of the men at the table — a friend of a good friend from China — and after listening to several speeches that I did not understand, and several gulps of whiskey, I went to go talk to him. But he doesn’t speak much English, and I felt communicating with him in Mandarin would be in poor taste. So I smiled at him, and he smiled sadly at me, and pulled out his accordion. "We eat, we talk, we drink — water or tea, not vodka, like me," Alptekin said with an exaggerated wink, as my friend stared into the distance beyond the gym wall and started playing a mournful song on the accordion. "And that’s how we free East Turkestan."
- 2015, “Legitimizing Repression: China’s “War on Terror” Under Xi Jinping and State Policy in East Turkestan”, in Uyghur Human Rights Project[11], Washington, D.C.:
- According to data assembled by the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) from Chinese and overseas media, a range of 656 to 715 individuals lost their lives in the violence that engulfed Uyghurs and other ethnicities between 2013-14. The number of fatalities in 2014 is approximately double that of 2013. Although these numbers should not be considered definitive, as the Chinese government tightly controls information in East Turkestan, they are indicative of a deterioration in conditions during the two calendar years of Xi Jinping’s tenure as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of the People’s Republic of China.
- 2019, Rukiye Turdush, “How China tried to stop my freedom of speech — in Canada”, in Washington Post[12]:
- My brother was killed on the streets in 1992. He was only 18. He was attacked by a mob of Chinese construction corps soldiers. He was killed in East Turkestan (also known as the Xinjiang region of western China) because he engaged in a peaceful protest with his friends against the millions of Han Chinese being sent into our homeland to dominate the land of our people, the Uighurs. I later gave his name to my newborn baby boy and decided to leave my country in search of a peaceful life for him in Canada.
- 2019, Carlotta Gall, “They Built a Homeland Far From China’s Grip. Now They’re Afraid.”, in New York Times[13]:
- He and his business partner, Nur Ahmet Mahmut, 32, publish anything they can find, from Uighur history and literature to children’s stories and cookery books. They sell symbols of their hoped-for republic, East Turkestan — such as its sky blue flag with white crescent and star — items that are outlawed in China.
- 2021 March 8, Theodore Deutch, “H.R.1630 - Uyghur Human Rights Protection Act”, in Congress.gov[14]:
- Congress makes the following findings:
(1) The Government of the People’s Republic of China has a long history of repressing Turkic Muslims and other Muslim minority groups, particularly Uyghurs, in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (“Xinjiang” or “XUAR”), also known as East Turkestan.
- 2022 March 7, Omer Kanat, “Uyghurs Stand With Ukrainians”, in The Diplomat[15], archived from the original on 7 March 2021:
- I know what it means to be dislocated at the hands of an occupying armed force — the terror and pain over the loss of a homeland, the immediate urgency of staying alive, the uncertain future and the fight ahead. My family left my hometown of Ghulja, East Turkestan, in the 1970s, crossing the short border between China and Afghanistan to seek sanctuary in Kabul. Our story of exile is the story of millions of Uyghurs and the hundreds of millions of displaced people across the globe.
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:East Turkestan.
Usage notes edit
- East Turkestan is the preferred name used by Uyghur independence activists, who reject the name “Xinjiang” due to it being a name given by the Chinese state. The term is correspondingly proscribed in China for its strong correlation with the Uyghur independence movement.
Derived terms edit
Translations edit
a historical region in Asia
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Xinjiang — see Xinjiang