Abstract

Türkmen is a member of the Oguz branch of Turkic which is closest to the language spoken in Turkey and Azerbaijan. The Turkmen are descended from an ancient people known as the Oghuz Turks, and it was the 7th-century literary developments of these peoples which set the precedent for modern Turkmen literature. They share a claim to western-Turkic (Oguz) heritage along with Azerbaijanis and Turks in Turkey. Türkmen literary tradition is a rich mosaic of pre-Islamic Turkic elements fused with Islamic influences. A unified Turkic language Jadidism was not a set ideology; there were differing shades of jadidism throughout the Islamic world. One area where the Turkmen reformers differed from other jadids was on the topic of a unified- or pan-Turkic language. A unified-Turkic language had been a central tenet of Gasprinskii’s philosophy.