East Turkestan
During the 2nd century BC, Chinese writers called the city states of the northern and southern rim of the Taklamakan Desert the "Walled city-states of the Western Regions".
[11] In 60 BC, the Han dynasty established the Protectorate of the Western Regions "in charge of all the oasis-states of the Tarim Basin" which they ruled in indirectly with small agricultural military colonies.
[11] After the crackdown of internal separatist forces, the Eastern Han dynasty set up another protectorate known as the Chief Official of the Western Regions instead.
[15] "Turkestan", which means "region of the Turks", was defined by Arab geographers in the ninth and tenth centuries as the areas northeast of the Sir River.
[16] With the various migrations and political upheavals following the collapse of the Gökturk confederation and the Mongol invasions, "Turkestan", according to the official Chinese position, gradually ceased to be a useful geographic descriptor and was not used.
[19] During the sixteenth century, the Chagatai Khanate completed the Islamification and Turkification of western Xinjiang and the surrounding region, known then as Moghulistan, while China's Ming dynasty held the Eastern Areas.
[22] Until the 20th century, locals used the names of cities or oases in their "territorial self-perception", which expanded or contracted as needed, such as Kashgaria out of Kashgar to refer to southwestern Xinjiang.
As Yuan Dahua, the last Qing governor, fled from Xinjiang, one of his subordinates, Yang Zengxin (楊增新), took control of the province and acceded in name to the Republic of China in March of the same year.
In 1921, the Soviet Union officially defined the Uyghurs as the sedentary Turkic peoples from Chinese Turkestan as part of their nation building policy in Central Asia.
[22] Multiple insurgencies arose against Yang's successor Jin Shuren (金树仁) in the early 1930s throughout Xinjiang, usually led by Hui people.
[30] Chinese warlord Sheng Shicai (盛世才) quickly defeated the ETR and ruled Xinjiang for the decade after 1934 with close support from the Soviet Union.
[22] Amid the anti-Han programs and policies[31] and exclusion of "pagans",[19] or non-Muslims, from the separatist government, Kuomintang leaders based in Dihua (Ürümqi) appealed to the long Chinese history in the region to justify its sovereignty over Xinjiang.
In response, Soviet historians produced revisionist histories to help the ETR justify its own claims to sovereignty, with statements such as that the Uyghurs were the "most ancient Turkic people" that had contributed to world civilization.
[30] Traditionally, scholars had thought of Xinjiang as a "cultural backwater" compared to the other Central Asian states during the Islamic Golden Age.
[18][35][36] Tursun Rakhimov, a Uyghur historian for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet split,[37] argued in his 1981 book "Fate of the Non-Han Peoples of the PRC" that "both" East Turkestan and Dzungaria were conquered by China and "renamed" Xinjiang.
[46] East Turkestan was historically not treated as an inseparable part of China, but rather colonized by Han Chinese who had little in common with the Uyghur population.
[46] On February 28, 2017, it was announced by the Qira County government in Hotan Prefecture that those who reported others for stitching the 'star and crescent moon' insignia on their clothing or personal items or having the words 'East Turkestan' on their mobile phone case, purse, or other jewelry, would be eligible for cash payments.
[20] "East Turkestan" has the advantage of also being the name of two historic political entities in the region, while Uyghurstan appeals to modern ideas of ethnic self-determination.
Separatist sentiment is strongest among the Uyghur diaspora,[21] who practice what has been called "cyber-separatism", encouraging the use of "East Turkestan" on their websites and literature.
[18] The historical definitions for "East Turkestan" are multifarious and ambiguous, reflecting that, outside of Chinese administration,[20] the area now called "Xinjiang" was not geographically or demographically a single region.
The World Uyghur Congress considers East Turkestan to be the area of Xinjiang along with territory claimed to be annexed by a "neighboring Chinese province" in 1949.
