The Turkistan reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Turkistan

Türkistan (also spelled Turkistan or Turkestan) is a region in Central Asia, largely inhabited by Turkic people.

It is subdivided into West Türkistan and East Türkistan.

West Türkistan was conquered by the Russian Empire, thus sometimes called Russian Türkistan. After the Russian Revolution, a Türkistan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union was created, which was eventually split into Kazakhstan (Kazakh SSR), Kyrgyzstan (Kyrgyz SSR), Tajikistan (Tajik SSR),Turkmenistan (Turkmen SSR) and Uzbekistan (Uzbek SSR). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, these countries gained their independence.

East Türkistan, often called Chinese Türkistan, was conquered by the Manchu Empire and was named Ice Jecen or Xinjiang (new frontier). It was taken over by the People's Republic of China by which it is now administered as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

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