Turkology (or Turcology or Turkic studies) is a complex of humanities sciences studying languages, history, literature, folklore, culture, and ethnology of people speaking Turkic languages and the Turkic peoples in chronological and comparative context. That includes ethnic groups from the Sakha, in eastern Siberia, to the Turks in the Balkans and the Gagauz, in Moldova.

History

Ethnological information on Turkic tribes for the first time was systemized by the 11th-century Turkic philologist Mahmud al-Kashgari in the Dīwān ul-Lughat it-Turk (Dictionary of Turkic language). Multi-lingual dictionaries were compiled from the late 13th century for the practical application of participants in international trade and political life. One notable such dictionary is the Codex Cumanicus, which contains information for Cuman, Persian, Latin, and German. There are also bilingual dictionaries for Kipchak and Armenian. as well as Kipchak and Russian. In the Middle Ages, Turkology was centered on Byzantine/Greek historians, ambassadors and travelers, and geographers. In the 15th to the 17th centuries the main subject of Turkology was the study of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish language, and the Turkic languages of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. In 1533 a first hand-written primer appeared, and by 1612 a printed grammar by Jerome Megizer was published, followed by F. Mesgnien-Meninski's four-volume Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalium published in 1680. Peter Simon Pallas initiated a more scientific approach to Turkology with his Comparative dictionaries of all languages and dialects (1787) which included lexical materials from Tatar, Mishar, Nogai, Bashkir, and other Turkic languages. In the 19th century, Turkology was further developed by M. A. Kazembek's Grammar of the Turkish-Tatar language (1839), O. N. Betlingk Grammar of the Yakut language (1851). A major achievement was the deciphering at the end of the 19th century of the Early Middle Age Orkhon inscriptions by V. Thomsen and W. W. Radloff (1895). By the late 19th century, Turkology had developed into a complex discipline that included linguistics, history, ethnology, archeology, arts and literature. In the 20th century, the Turkology complex included physical anthropology, numismatics, genetics, ancient Turkic alphabetic scripts, typology, genesis, and etymology, onomastics and toponymy. The appearance of Türkische Bibliothek (1905–1927) inaugurated specialised periodicals, followed by Mitteilungen zur Osmanischen Geschichte (1921–1926). Scientific developments allowed calibrated dating, dendrochronology, metallurgy, chemistry, textile, and other specialized disciplines, which contributed to the development of the Turkological studies. Deeper study of the ancient sources allowed better understanding of economical, social, mythological and cultural forces of the sedentary and nomadic societies. Linguistic studies uncovered preliterate symbioses and mutual influences between different peoples.

Persecution in Soviet Russia

On 9 August 1944, the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, published an edict prohibiting "ancientization" of Turkic history. The edict was followed by a consecutive wave of mass arrests, imprisoning and killing of the Turkology intelligentsia, massive creation of replacement scientists, and rewriting of history pages on an industrial scale. Many Turkology scholars in the Soviet Union were persecuted or imprisoned by Joseph Stalin's political oppression movement, the Great Purge, during the 1930s and the 1940s, on the basis of disputed Islamic writings and publications. Other cultural Scholars, such as Egyptologists and Japanologists were also subject to the political repression, in Stalin's movement to cleanse Communist Russia of ethnic minorities that posed opposition to Communism. Most Oriental and other cultural scholars that had been repressed in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as their respective scientific works, were, however, officially rehabilitated in or after 1956. On the other hand, the edict brought unintended benefits to Turkology. One was the nearly immediate linguistic development of an alternate lexicon, which replaced the nouns and adjectives containing the word Türk by a wealth of euphemisms: "nomads, Siberians, Paleosiberians, Middle Asians, Scythians, Altaians, Tuvians", etc. that filled scientific publications. The other was "writing into a drawer", when results of the years of fruitful work were written down for future publication. When the bonds relaxed, the publications exploded. Another was a flight of scientists from European Russia into remote areas, which brought first class scientists to many intellectually starved outlying areas of Central Asia. Another one was connected with the statewide efforts to re-invent the history, when a wealth of Turkological facts were found in the process of search for "correct" history. And another one was a built-up of the public interest for the forbidden subjects, that resulted that no print size could satisfy the demand. L.N.Gumilev and O.Suleimenov inflamed a surge in the new generation of Turkology scholars. With the physical culling of the scholars from the society, an organized a total extermination of all their published and unpublished works took place concurrently. Their books were removed from the libraries and destroyed from private collections by an intimidated population, articles and publications were culled, published photographs were retouched, private photographs were destroyed, published scientific references were erased, and publications with undesired references were destroyed. Very few of the early 20th century expedition diaries, ethnographical notes, reports and drafts for publications were ever recovered.

Turkology scholars persecuted in 20th-century Soviet Union

Pseudoscientific theories

The linguistic field of Turkology has been noted as particularly influenced by 'pseudo-Turkologists', whose theories do not follow due diligence to properly prove Turkish origins in non-related languages. Some extreme pseudo-turkologists contend that Turkic history stretches back hundreds of thousands of years, that every major civilization in history is of Turkic origin, and that major historical figures such as Jesus Christ and Genghis Khan were of Turkic origin. Ethnic Russian scholars have put forth similar theories with an added Turco-Slavic synthesis, in an attempt to put "the Russian world at its proper place at the center of world civilization". Many conflicting theories among Turkic peoples of Central and North Asia seek to connect their peoples to a larger legacy and place in history. According to historians Konstantin Sheiko and Stephen Brown, these theories are influenced by "the Turkic rejection of Russian imperialism" driven by a post-Soviet need for nation-building. As the journalist Luka Ivan Jukić concludes in his examination of extreme pseudo-Turkology: "Turkic countries have suffered greatly over the last century and a half. After the brutality of World War I, Turkey was set to be wiped off the map by the diktat of Western powers, a fate already shared by every other Turkic people. During Soviet rule, the traditional nomadic lifestyle of Turkic Steppe peoples was derided by official Soviet historiography as backward, uncivilized and feudal — something to be ashamed of, not proud of. On the margins of the development of global capitalism, or in the furnace of communist social and economic engineering, Turkic peoples have borne the brunt of modernity’s failures and experienced few of its successes. Ancient history, invented or otherwise, offers a refuge. Pseudo-Turkology, which places Turks at the very heart of the history of all human civilization, provides a source of unlimited pride."

List of Turkologists