East Turkestan is a loosely-defined geographical and historical region in the western provinces of the People's Republic of China, which varies in meaning by context and usage. The term was coined in the 19th century by Russian Turkologists, including Nikita Bichurin, who intended the name to replace the common Western term for the region, Chinese Turkestan, which referred to the Tarim Basin in the southwestern part of Xinjiang during the Qing dynasty. The medieval Persian toponym "Turkestan" and its derivatives were used by the local population as early as the 7th century. Historical manuscripts, dating back to the 7th and 9th century, found in the Turpan and Khotan regions show that the name Turkestan was used to describe the region. The opening of the 11th century literary work Kutadgu Bilig by Kara-Khanid statesman Yusuf Khass Hajib also describes the region as Turkestan. Beginning in the 17th century Altishahr which means "Six Cities" in Uyghur became the Uyghur name for Tarim Basin, Uyghurs also called the Tarim Basin "Yettishar," which means "Seven Cities," and even "Sekkizshahr" which means "Eight Cities" in Uyghur. Chinese dynasties from the Han dynasty to Tang dynasty had called an overlapping area the "Western Regions". The parts of this area conquered by Manchu Qing Dynasty were termed "Xinjiang" from the 18th century on.
The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) which has often been confused as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and other names, is a Uyghur Islamic extremist organization founded in Pakistan by Hasan Mahsum. Its stated goals are to establish an Islamic state in Xinjiang and Central Asia, and eventually a Caliphate. The United States removed the "East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM)," which had been confused as the "East Turkistan Islamic Party / Turkistan Islamic Party," from its list of Terrorist Organizations in 2020, claiming it ceased to exist. However, the U.S. State Department later stated that "ETIM was removed from the list because, for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist as the same organization that was conducting terrorist attacks in Syria at the time of their designation." The U.S. State Department further stated that "Uyghur terrorists fighting in Syria and Afghanistan are members of the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP)"and that the TIP is "a separate organization that China and others have incorrectly identified as ETIM."
The East Turkestan independence movement is a political movement that seeks the independence of East Turkestan, a large and sparsely-populated region in northwest China, as a nation state for the Uyghur people. The region is currently administered as a province-level subdivision of the People's Republic of China (PRC), under the official name Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The East Turkistan independence movement is primarily led by the East Turkistan Government in Exile and supported by the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement. Within the movement, there is widespread support for the region to be renamed, since "Xinjiang" is seen by independence activists as a colonial name. "East Turkestan" is the best-known proposed name as it is the historical geographic name of the region and the name of the two independent states that briefly existed in the region in the first half of the 20th century.
The Three Evils is a political slogan of the People's Republic of China defined as terrorism, separatism and religious extremism. The phrase refers to declared counter-terrorism operations undertaken by China, Central Asian republics, and Russia, primarily as related to Xinjiang. The Chinese government views each of the Three Evils as interrelated phenomena driving persistent instability in the westernmost province of Xinjiang, and the slogan has been deployed extensively in support of Xinjiang internment camps since 2017.
Hasan Mahsum, also known as Abu-Muhammad al-Turkestani and Ashan Sumut, was the leader of the Islamic extremist group Turkistan Islamic Party and suspected of having ties with Al Qaeda. He was shot dead in a counter-terrorism operation on October 2, 2003 by the Pakistani Army.
The January 2007 Xinjiang raid was carried out on January 5, 2007, by Chinese paramilitary police against a suspected East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) training camp in Akto County in the Pamir plateau.
Terrorism in China refers to the use or threatened use of violence to effect political or ideological change in the People's Republic of China. The definition of terrorism differs among scholars, between international and national bodies and across time and there is no legally binding definition internationally. In the cultural setting of China, the term is relatively new and ambiguous.
The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is an international organization of exiled Uyghur groups that claims to "represent the collective interest of the Uyghur people" both inside and outside of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. The World Uyghur Congress claims to be a nonviolent and peaceful movement that opposes what it considers to be the Chinese "occupation" of 'East Turkestan' and advocates rejection of totalitarianism, religious intolerance and terrorism as an instrument of policy. The Congress is funded in part by the National Endowment for Democracy or NED of the United States. It has been designated as a terrorist organization by China since 2003 for conspiring with separatists and religious extremists to plan terror attacks.
The Ili Rebellion was a Uyghur separatist movement backed by the Soviet Union against the Kuomintang government of the Republic of China in 1944. After the start of the rebellion, the rebels established the Provisional Government of the Second East Turkestan Republic in 1944. The Ili Rebellion was the start of the East Turkistan National Liberation Revolution, also known as the Three Districts Revolution, which lasted from 1944 to 1949.
The 2011 Kashgar attacks were a series of knife and bomb attacks in Kashgar, Xinjiang, China on July 30 and 31, 2011. On July 30, two Uyghur men hijacked a truck, killed its driver, and drove into a crowd of pedestrians. They got out of the truck and stabbed six people to death and injured 27 others. One of the attackers was killed by the crowd; the other was brought into custody. On July 31, a chain of two explosions started a fire at a downtown restaurant. A group of armed Uyghur men killed two people inside of the restaurant and four people outside, injuring 15 other people. Police shot five suspects dead, detained four, and killed two others who initially escaped arrest.
Anwar Yusuf Turani is a self proclaimed ethnic Uyghur nationalist and separatist leader. Born into a family branded counter-revolutionary by the Chinese government, Turani was raised in a labor camp where he faced economic hardship and political oppression. He attended Kashgar Teacher's College and graduated from the Department of Physics in July 1983. Turani came to the United States on August 12, 1988 and became the first Uyghur political asylee. In 1995, he established the East Turkistan National Freedom Center (ETNFC), a non-profit human rights organization based in Washington, D.C. He is the first person to start the East Turkistan independence movement in the United States. Having spearheaded the formation of the East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) on September 14, 2004 in Washington, D.C., Turani went on to become the first Prime Minister of the entity.
The Xinjiang conflict, also known as the East Turkistan conflict, Uyghur–Chinese conflict or Sino-East Turkistan conflict, is an ongoing ethnic geopolitical conflict in what is now China's far-northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang also known as East Turkistan. It is centred around the Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group who constitute a plurality of the region's population.
On 28 October 2013, a car ran over pedestrians and crashed in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, in a terrorist suicide attack. Five people died in the incident; three inside the vehicle and two others nearby. Police identified the driver as Usmen Hasan and the two passengers as his wife, Gulkiz Gini, and his mother, Kuwanhan Reyim. An additional 38 people were injured.
On the early morning of Wednesday, 30 July 2014, Juma Tahir, the imam of China's largest mosque, the Id Kah Mosque in northwestern Kashgar, was stabbed to death by three young male Uyghur extremists. Religious leaders across denominations condemned the attack.
Zeynidin Yusup, also known as Zeynidin Kari or Ziauddin Yusuf, was one of main leaders of the Free Turkistan Movement.
Uyghur Americans are Americans of Uyghur ethnicity. Most Uyghurs immigrated from Xinjiang, China, to the United States from the late 1980s onwards, with a significant number arriving after July 2009.
Barin Township, also spelled Baren, is a township of Akto County (Aketao), Kizilsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture (Kezilesu), Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. The township is located on the western edge of the Taklamakan Desert at the foot of the Pamir Mountains. Located in the middle west of the northeastern part of the county, the township covers an area of 1,087 square kilometers with a population of 38,706. It has 19 administrative villages under its jurisdiction. Its seat is at Barin Village (巴仁村).
The Uyghurs of Turkey are members of the Uyghur diaspora that live in Turkey.
The 2015 Aksu colliery attack, also known as the Baicheng incident took place on 18 September 2015, when a group of terrorists, suspected to be Uyghurs, attacked workers and security guards at a coal mine in Baicheng County in Aksu, Xinjiang, leaving at least 16 dead and 18 wounded according to government sources, with other estimates reaching as high as 50 dead and 50 wounded. When local police arrived at the scene, the attackers rammed the police's vehicles before fleeing into the mountains. The majority of the victims of the attack were members of the Han ethnic group.
The Akto Turkmen are sub group of the Kyrgyz people who live in Xinjiang, China. They are now Uyghur speaking and live in Akto County, a county located in the Kizilsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture.
Free Turkistan Movement or Turkistan Islamic Party [1] [2] 
