[5][6] The Republic of China National Revolutionary Army units and soldiers belonging to Ma Bufang moved into Xinjiang to take control of the province.

Many of the Turkic peoples of the Ili region of Xinjiang had close cultural, political and economic ties with Russia and later the Soviet Union.

However, the rebels encountered fierce resistance from Kuomintang forces holed up in the power and central police stations and did not take them until the 13th.

[13] The rebels engaged in massacres of Han Chinese civilians, especially targeting people affiliated with the Kuomintang and Sheng Shicai.

[13] In territory controlled by the ETR like Kulja, various repressive measures were carried out, such as establishing a Soviet-style secret police organization, barring Han from owning weapons, and making Russian and Turkic languages official to replace Chinese.

[16] The Ili National Army (INA), which was established on 8 April 1945 as the military arm of the ETR, was led by the Kirghiz Ishaq Beg and the White Russians Polinov and Leskin.

[19] The INA uniforms and flags all had insignia with the Russian acronym for "East Turkestan Republic", ВТР in Cyrillic (Восточная Туркестанская Республика).

[34] The unpopular Governor Wu Zhongxin was replaced after the ceasefire with Zhang Zhizhong, who implemented pro-minority policies to placate the Uyghur population.

Bai Chongxi, the Defense Minister of China and a Muslim, was considered for appointment in 1947 as Governor of Xinjiang,[35] but the position was given instead to Masud Sabri, a pro-Kuomintang Uyghur who was anti-Soviet.

[36] Sabri was close to conservatives in the CC Clique of the Kuomintang and undid all of Zhang Zhizhong's pro-minority reforms, which set off revolts and riots among the Uyghurs in oases like Turfan.

[37] Ehmetjan Qasim (Achmad-Jan), the Uyghur Ili leader, demanded that Sabri be sacked as governor as one of the conditions for his agreeing to visit Nanjing.

Salar Muslim General Han Youwen, who served under Ma Bufang, commanded the Pau-an-dui (保安隊; pacification soldiers), composed of three 340-man battalions.

[39] The acting Soviet consul at Chenghua, Dipshatoff, directed the Red Army in aiding ETR Ili forces against Osman's Kazakhs.

[47] The Uyghur linguist Ibrahim Muti'i opposed the Second East Turkestan Republic and was against the Ili Rebellion because it was backed by the Soviets and Stalin.

[48] The former ETR leader Saifuddin Azizi later apologized to Ibrahim and admitted that his opposition to the East Turkestan Republic was correct.

In response to the chaos a curfew was placed at 11:00 p.m.[50] American telegrams reported that the Soviet secret police threatened to assassinate Muslim leaders from Ining and put pressure on them to flee to "inner China" via Tihwa (Ürümqi).

[2] Chinese Muslim and Turkic Kazakh forces working for the Kuomintang fought Soviet Russian and Mongol troops.

[58] On 22 August, five leaders of the Three Districts, Ehmetjan Qasimi, Abdulkerim Abbas, Ishaq Beg Munonov, Luo Zhi and Dalelkhan Sugirbayev, boarded a Soviet plane in Almaty and were headed for Chita but were said to have perished in a plane accident near Lake Baikal, a crash was widely suspected to be an assassination ordered by Joseph Stalin.

[59][60] On 3 September three other former ETR leaders, including Saifuddin Azizi, arrived in Beijing by train and agreed to join the People’s Republic of China, which was founded on 1 October.

The only organized resistance the PLA encountered was from Osman Batur's Kazakh militia and from Yulbars Khan's White Russian and Hui troops, who served the Republic of China.

[64] The American Ambassador to the Soviet Union sent a telegram back to Washington, DC, in which he said that the situations in Iranian Azerbaijan and in Xinjiang were similar.

[65] According to her autobiography, Dragon Fighter: One Woman's Epic Struggle for Peace with China, Rebiya Kadeer's father served with pro-Soviet Uyghur rebels under the Second East Turkestan Republic in the Ili Rebellion (Three Province Rebellion) in 1944 to 1946, using Soviet assistance and aid to fight the Republic of China government under Chiang Kai-shek.

[67] There was a split in the East Turkestan Independence Movement between two branches, one of them pro-Soviet and supported by the Soviet Union and the other being anti-Soviet pan-Turkic and having members based in Turkey and western countries.

The Pan-Turkist ones were the three Effendis, (ئۈچ ئەپەندى; Üch Äpändi) Aisa Alptekin, Memtimin Bughra, and Masud Sabri.

[47] The Ili Rebellion is mentioned and praised in an Arabic Islamist pamphlet about China and the Soviet Union's Muslims, which was picked up and translated in 1960 into English in Tehran by American government agents.