TURKS

Western Turks
 
The concept of 'Turks' in ancient times is not the same as that of today. We already mentioned the difference between Turkish, Turkic and Turk. In the discussions on the origin of Turks and Uygurs above, we had ascribed the term 'Turk' to the most restrictive definition, namely, those early Turks who rebelled against Ruruans and then split into two parts of Eastern Khnanate and Western Khnanate. Around AD 740s, Eastern Khnanate Turks, aka Orkhon Turks under Khan Muchuo (Mo-ch'o), were defeated by the Uygurs and Karlaks as a conspiracy of Tang Chinese. After this defeat, Chinese history said the Eastern Turks were still paying pilgrimage to Tang Dynasty regularly. The remaining Orkhon Turks were not heard from after China's Five Dynasties. Western History books, in order to make a distinction between Turks and Mongols, would claim that the Turks were 'finally' expelled in AD 924 by the Khitans (i.e., Kitai, to evolve into the name of Cathay for China). Among the tribes in Genghis Khan's Mongolia of 13th century, there would be various designations like Turkic (Kyrgyz, Kerait, Uygur), Mongol (Oirat, Tartar, ) and Turko-Mongol (Naiman, Merkit).
 
Western Turkic Khanate, however, had already been dispersed by the Tang's westward expansion in 651 AD. After the defeat of Western Khante, the Tibetans would compete with the Tang Chinese for the control of Chinese Turkistan and Central Asia. Chinese history recorded altogether ten Western Turkic family names, and at one time, Tibetans proposed to Tang Chinese to have a 50-50 division of the ten families. Remnant Western Turks would be Turkic tribes like the Turgesh and the Karlaks (Qarluk). Karlaks would replace the Turgesh as a major power in Central Asia. In AD 751, Tang Chinese army of 30 thousand, led by General Gao Xianzhi (governor-general of the four cities of Chouci-Yutian-Shule-Suiye), were invited by locals to counter Arab invasion. But the Karluks defected to the Arabs. Kao's army were defeated by the alliance of the Arabs and the Karluks. Kao-hsien-chih barely escaped alive. (Gao Xianzhi was spelled Kao-hsien-chih or Ko Son-ji in Korean. Gao was the son of Korguryo General Ko Sagye who was captured by Tang army and then served Tang Dynasty.) Hence the Karluks controlled today's western China while the Uygurs controlled Mongolia and the Gobi. After Kirghiz (who were conquered by Uygurs in AD 758-760) defeated Huihu (Uygur) and killed the Huihu khan around AD 840s, some Uygur families fled to the Karlaks for protection, while some fled to Tibetans for asylum.
 
Turks would migrate like their predecessors. During the course of the history, we saw similar patterns of migrations. The Yüeh-chih migrated southwest in 141-128 BC to the Oxus Valley after being defeated by the Huns in 174-161 BC, and they pushed out the Scythians. The son of Yüeh-chih was ordered to stay behind and they were referred to as the Yüeh-chih Minor who survived in Western China for hundreds of years. The Scythians went to take over Greco-Bactria kingdom, and they, under the pressure of the Kushan Yueh-chih, entered India after 135 BC and finished the last remaining Greeks there. Kushan Yüeh-chih followed the path of the Scythians certainly and they would dominate Central Asia for hundreds of years. Then, Hephthalites (White Huns or Ye-tai) crossed the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) River in AD 425, invaded Persia, conquered Kabul's Kushans. After the decline of the Huns, Tobas took over northern China and pressed the Ruruans westward. The Ruruans, in turn, pressured the Huns (?) into invading Europe in AD 370 around. I would stress again that the Ruruans were more Hunnic than those they drove off towards Europe. Turks rebelled against the Ruruans in AD 546-553. In Asia Minor, the Turks allied with Sassanian Persians (Chosroes of Persia) in AD 565, dividing Ephthalite empire of the White Huns. Some people claimed that the remaining Hephthalites (White Huns) moved west to the Russian steppe to form the Avar Khanate late 6th cent, and some people also claimed that the earlier Ruruans had fled westward to form the Avars. Just bear in mind that the Ruruan (Juan-Juan) chief had fled to the Ephthalites for protection and the kinsmenship between the two could be a factor. (The History Of Toba Wei Dynasty said that the White Huns or Ye-tai people were a branch of the Yüeh-chih.) In 576, another group of Turks invaded the Caucasus and established the Khazar Khanate  
 
Western Turkic peoples, notably the Khazars, Cumans, and Pechenegs, had played important roles in the medieval history of South Russia and Southeastern Europe. The affiliations with the Magyars, Avars, and Székely in Hungary, Ukraine, the Balkans would be too complicated a topic to be included here.  
 
http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/history/A0827540.html pointed out that "Khazars are a group of ancient Turkic people who appeared in Transcaucasia in the 2d cent and subsequently settled in the lower Volga region. Emerging in the 7th cent, the Khazars extended their control, during 8th-10th centuries, from the northern shores of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea to the Urals and as far westward as Kiev. They conquered the Volga Bulgars and the Crimea, levied tribute from the eastern Slavs, and warred with the Arabs, Persians, and Armenians. In the 8th cent, the Khazar nobility embraced Judaism. The Khazar empire fell when Sviatoslav, duke of Kiev, defeated its army in AD 965." The Khazars (or Chazars) are believed by some to have been the ancestors of many East European Jews.  
 
http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/society/A0838008.html continued saying that "Pechenegs or Patzinaks, in the 8th and 9th cent, inhabited the region between the lower Volga and the Urals. Pushed west (c.889) by the Khazars and Cumans, they drove the Magyars before them and settled in southern Ukraine on the banks of the Dnieper. They long harassed Kievan Rus and even threatened (934) Constantinople. After unsuccessfully besieging Kiev (968) and killing the Kievan duke Sviatoslav (972), they were defeated (1036) by Yaroslav and moved to the plains of the lower Danube. Attacked (1064) by the Cumans, many Pechenegs were slain or absorbed. After once more besieging Constantinople (c.1091), they were virtually annihilated by Emperor Alexius I. There were some significant communities of Pechenegs in Hungary today. Cumans or Kumans, identified with the Kipchaks (or the western branch of the Kipchaks) and known in Russian as Polovtsi, had come from northwestern Asian Russia. They conquered Southern Russia and Walachia in the 11th cent., and for almost two centuries warred intermittently with the Byzantine Empire, Hungary, and Kiev. In the early 12th cent. the main Cuman forces were defeated by the Eastern Slavs. The Mongols decisively defeated the Cumans in AD 1245. Some were sold as slaves, and many took refuge in Bulgaria and also in Hungary, where they were gradually assimilated into the Hungarian culture. Others joined the khanate of the Golden Horde (also called the Western Kipchaks)."
 
In Asia Minor and Anatolia would be the Seljuks and the Osmanli or Ottoman Turks, both members of the Oghuz confederations. http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/society/A0861663.html continued saying that "the Arab annexation of the area of ancient Sogdiana in the 7th cent brought the Oghuz Turks into direct contact with the Abbasid caliphate and later the Persian Empire. The Turks, who embraced the Sunni Muslim faith, began to migrate to the Middle East. At first as mercenaries for the Abbasids, the Turks would become the actual rulers of the empire. At the beginning of the 11th cent, Seljuk Turks, led by Tughril Beg, conquered Khwarazm and Iran. They entered Baghdad in 1055, with Tughril Beg proclaimed sultan. His successor, Alp Arslan, conquered Georgia, Armenia, and much of Asia Minor, overran Syria, and defeated (1071) the Byzantine emperor Romanus IV at Manzikert, opening Byzantium (except for a small area around Constantinople) to Seljuk and Turkmen occupation. After final downfall of the Seljuk empire in 1157, all the Seljuk states were overrun in the 13th cent by Jenghiz Khan and his successors, whose hordes comprised both Mongols and Turks and became generally known as Tatars. After the Mongol wave had receded, the Osmanli Turks, a minor tribe and the last of the Turkish invading peoples who had been assigned in 13th cent to the border area of the Byzantine Empire by their Seljuk overlords, would complete the overthrow of the Byzantine Empire. Highly disciplined, they would, in the 14th cent, make themselves masters of the ruins of the Seljuk empire in Anatolia. Their historic ruler ... [Suleyman the Magnificient], at one period, ruled from Vienna to the Indian Ocean and from Tunis to the Caucasus. The people of modern Turkey, founded after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, are direct descendants of Osmanli Turks. The original Osmanlis had merged at an early stage with the Seljuks, and their descendants mixed extensively with Muslim converts from the Ottoman Empire."