TURKISTAN

also spelled Turkestan, in Asian history, the regions of Central Asia lying between Siberia on the north; Tibet, India, Afghanistan, and Iran on the south; the Gobi (desert) on the east; and the Caspian Sea on the west. The term was intended to indicate the areas inhabited by Turkic peoples, but the regions also contained peoples who were not Turkic, such as the Tajiks, and excluded some who were, including the Turks of the former Ottoman Empire and the Turko-Tatar peoples of the Volga River area. The mountain systems of Pamirs and Tien Shan divided the total area of more than 1,000,000 square miles (2,600,000 square km) between West Turkistan (Russian)covering present-day Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and the southern part of Kazakstanand East Turkistan (Chinese), now the Uighur Autonomous Region of Sinkiang. For a time after the mid-1920s, West Turkistan was known as Soviet Central Asia (administratively excluding Kazakstan).