TURKOLOGY

The academic study of the languages and civilization of the Turkic peoples with a traditional emphasis on sources written in Turkic languages.

The modern Turkic languages include Turkish, Uzbek, Kazakh, Azeri, Kazan Tatar, Turkmen, Kirghiz, Chuvash, Bashkir, Karakalpak, Yakut, Kumik, Crimean Tatar, Uighur, Tuvan, Gagauz, Karachay, Balkar, Xakas, Noghay, Altay, Shor, Dolgan, Karaim, and Tofalar. Native scholars have been writing descriptions of the Turkic dialects since the eleventh century. In the West, the earliest works on Turkey appeared in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the first descriptions of the Turkish language were published in the seventeenth century. The formal study of Turkish and other Turkic languages was introduced in Europe in the eighteenth century, and by the end of the nineteenth century, there were prominent centers of Turkology at universities in Paris, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kazan, Budapest, and Vienna. Today Turkology is widely taught in modern political units representing individual Turkic peoples: the Turkish republic, the Turkic republics of the former USSR, and the Uighur Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China, where it is synonymous with the study of the local national culture. Turkology is also offered at major universities in Europe and North America, though the study of the language and civilization of the Turkish republic is far better represented than the study of the Turkic peoples as a whole.

Bibliography

Menges, Karl H. The Turkic Languages and Peoples: An Introduction to Turkic Studies, 2nd revised edition. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1995.

Poppe, Nicholas. Introduction to Altaic Linguistics. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1965.

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