Turkic peoples
Turkic peoples, any of various peoples whose members speak languages belonging to the Turkic family within the Altaic language group. They are historically and linguistically connected with the Tujue, the name given by the Chinese to the nomadic people who in the 6th century ce founded an empire stretching from what is now Mongolia and the northern frontier of China to the Black Sea. With some exceptions, notably in the European part of Turkey and in the Volga region, the Turkic peoples live in Asia. Their most important cultural link, aside from history and language, is with Islam, for, with the exception of the Sakha (Yakut) of eastern Siberia and the Chuvash of the Volga region of Russia, the vast majority of Turkic peoples are Muslim. In addition to those groups already mentioned, contemporary peoples who are classified as Turkic include the Altai, Azerbaijanis, Balkar, Bashkir, Dolgan, Karachay, Karakalpaks, Kazakhs, Khakass, Kipchak, Kumyk, Kyrgyz, Nogay, Shor, Tatars, Tofalar, Turkmen, Turks, Tyvans (Tuvans), Uyghurs, and Uzbeks.
The Altaic hypothesis—the idea that Turkic, Mongolic, and Manchu-Tungus languages are a language family that share a genetic relationship (along with Korean and Japanese in some formulations)—is controversial among linguists. Most scholars now reject the hypothesis, but some argue that the Altaic category remains useful as an areal grouping with noteworthy similarities in vocabulary, morphological and syntactic structure, and certain phonological features explained by prolonged geographic proximity. Here, Altaic is discussed as a language group in recognition of the diversity of views in scholarship.