"Uyghurs Are Not Turks"
China Rewrites Uyghur History
Douyin video uploaded by “道中华” (Dao Zhonghua) titled: “The Uyghurs are not descendants of the Turks, but rather the “buriers” of the Turks” on May 22, 2026. English subtitles by Kashgar Times. Full Transcript at bottom of article.
In a recent video circulating on Douyin, published by the account “道中华” (Dao Zhonghua) an official mouthpiece for the China National Ethnic Affairs Commission, state media has reached a new, desperate low in its campaign to rewrite the history of the Uyghur people. The video, dripping with the heavy-handed rhetoric of the 2019 White Paper titled “The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang”, makes a startling claim: the ancient Turks simply “vanished” by the mid-eighth century, and the Uyghurs are merely “Huihe” workers who overthrew their “oppressive bosses” with Tang Dynasty help.
To those of us who have spent years documenting the systematic dismantling of the Uyghur culture, this is not just a historical debate; it is a biopolitical tool of contemporary statecraft designed to legitimize direct sovereign control and justify aggressive assimilation policies.
The Myth of the “Vanished” Turk
The video’s primary fabrication is that the Turks were an ancient tribe that had “vanished by the mid-eighth century,” asserting that modern Uyghurs have no kinship with them. This is a deliberate linguistic trick. While the Ashina clan of the Göktürk Khaganate lost political power in 744 CE, the Turkic ethnic and linguistic family never disappeared.
In reality, the Uyghur Khaganate (744–840 CE) emerged as the direct inheritor of the ancient Türk steppe tribal confederation. Medieval Uyghurs were recognized by contemporary sources as “Eastern Turks,” and their language, then and now, belongs to the Karluk branch of the Turkic language family. By claiming the Turks vanished, Beijing attempts to sever the umbilical cord connecting Uyghurs to their Central Asian heritage, framing them instead as a “new” group formed entirely within the “Chinese national family”.
Linguistic Gaslighting: The English Analogy
The state’s narrative goes further by arguing that speaking a Turkic language does not make a people ethnically Turkic, drawing a comparison to Americans, Britons, Canadians, New Zealanders, and Australians, who all speak English but belong to different national identities. This analogy is fundamentally flawed. The Uyghur language is not a colonial language adopted by the Uyghur people; rather, it is a distinct and highly developed language with deep historical and linguistic roots in the Southeastern Turkic branch of the Turkic language family.
Chinese state bureaus have long practiced linguistic imperialism, often categorizing Uyghur as a mere “dialect” (fāngyán) to frame it as subordinate to Mandarin. This bureaucratic truncation extends even to Uyghur names, standardizing and shortening poly-syllabic Uyghur names to fit Han administrative standards is a subtle but powerful form of administrative assimilation.
Erasing the Organic Roots of Islam
Perhaps most offensive is the claim that Islam is an “externally imposed” belief system not deeply tied to the Uyghur people. The video attempts to use the diverse history of Uyghurs, who practiced Shamanism, Manichaeism, and Buddhism, as evidence that Islam is a “foreign virus.”
While it is true that the transition from Buddhism to Islam took place over centuries, independent scholarship demonstrates that this conversion was organic and central to local identity. By claiming Islam was “forced” upon us through “religious wars,” the CCP seeks to justify its own “People’s War on Terror” and the subsequent destruction of over 16,000 mosques and banning of Islamic practice altogether.
Why Is Beijing Doing This?
The reason for this historiographical reconstruction is clear: brainwashing and total cultural erasure. The Chinese state views distinct Turkic and Islamic identity as an “ideological virus” or a pathological “cancer” that must be eradicated to ensure the “health” of the Zhonghua minzu (the unified Chinese national race).
By telling Uyghurs they are not Turks and not Muslims, Beijing hopes to:
Delegitimize autonomy: If Uyghurs are just “integrated Chinese,” then claims to historical territory or self-determination are rendered “unscientific” and “separatist”.
Facilitate “Terror Capitalism”: The mass internment of millions in “re-education camps” is supported by a security industrial complex that treats Uyghur bodies as a space of exception where human rights no longer apply.
Ensure Economic Domination: Control over East Turkistan, a hub for the Belt and Road Initiative and a source of massive oil and gas reserves, requires the total submission of the indigenous population.
This Douyin video is not educational, it is a psychological weapon. It is an attempt to break lineage and roots by replacing authentic memory with a state-sanctioned fiction. As we watch Uyghur history being distorted in short clips, we must remember that only by respecting authentic history can a people move toward a future that is truly their own.
Full audio transcript of video translate to English from Chinese Mandarin:
“Last time we said that the ancient Turkic people disappeared a long time ago, so why do people, especially some separatist groups, insist on claiming that Uyghurs are descendants of the Turks? To sort out this relationship, we need to go back to the historical scene. Remember two key points. First, the Turks were an ancient tribe that had vanished by the mid-eighth century. Second, the main origin of modern Uyghurs is the Huihe people from the Sui and Tang periods. During the Turkic Khaganate, what was the status of the Huihe?
They were an enslaved and oppressed tribe. The Huihe relied on the support of the Tang dynasty to unite other tribes and eventually overthrow the Turkic Khaganate, establishing their own Huihe Khaganate in 744 and accepted the Tang dynasty’s investiture. In 788, the Huihe Khagan voluntarily asked the Tang dynasty to change their name to Huihu. To use an analogy, the Turks were the oppressive bosses, and the Huihe were the resistant workers; there’s no inheritance link, let alone kinship. In 840 AD, the Huihu Khaganate collapsed, and most of its people began migrating west. Most of the Huihu migrants entered the area now known as Xinjiang’s Tarim Basin.
Originally, this area was home to people with different languages, and cultures, like the Hu people, alongside Qiang and Han people. The Huihu established two regimes here, the eastern Gaochang Huihu practiced Buddhism, while the western Karakhanid later embraced Islam. Their religions differed, and they were long-time opponents. The key point is here: modern Uyghurs are descendants of those west-migrating Huihu, fully integrating with the local population in language, culture, and blood to form a completely new ethnic group. So the conclusion is clear: the direct ancestors of the Uyghurs are the Huihe, who were responsible for the Turks’ downfall. Modern Uyghurs are a new ethnic group formed by the Huihe’s integration with other groups.
Claiming that Uyghurs are descended from the Turks is a flat-out reversal of black and white, a fabrication. People who spread these rumors love using language and religion as a catch-all adhesive. Let’s tear these apart one by one. First, language. They say Uyghur belongs to the Turkic language branch of the Altaic family, so they’re Turkic people, but that’s purely equivocation. By that logic, if the UK, US, Canada, and Australia all speak English, does that mean they’re one ethnic group? Obviously, that’s absurd. Second, religion. Saying that being a Turkic person means believing in Islam is just ridiculous. Historically, within the Turkic language family, there were those who believed in Judaism, those who followed Buddhism, and those who followed Bernicism. Dividing ethnic groups by religion is the least scientific. The source of this absurd claim is nineteenth-century European scholars who fabricated a continuous ethnic lineage from ancient Turks to modern Turkey based on linguistic similarities.
This theory, entirely based on imagination and fiction, was picked up by certain separatist factions and foreign forces aiming to destabilize Xinjiang. The so-called theory that Uyghur people are descendants of the Turks is the core of this politicization. The answer could not be clearer: the ancient Turks who have disappeared and the Uyghur people within the modern Chinese national family have no historical lineage or kinship. Forcing the two together is a betrayal of history and distorts and harms the history and culture of the Uyghur people. The Uyghur people are a closely connected member of the Chinese national family, and their history is an important part of the colorful Chinese civilization; only by respecting authentic history can we move toward a shared future. How exactly did this Pan-Turkist lie, revealed by this loophole, come about? Who is exploiting it, and what ambitions are hidden within? In the next issue, we’ll dive directly into the birth of this political specter and the conspiracy behind it. Stay tuned.”
Sources Used
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Interesting read which is reflective of Communist airbrushing an entire civilization 😱
ehh they're weaponizing it but Uyghurs aren't really Turks they have history much edating the Ashina and Gokturk business, and had their own script etc. And the Uyghyr Mahmud Kashgari in 9th century Baghdsd when describing the Turks in his Tarikh Al Turk mentioned that Uyghurs were not Turks, but that he could understand most of the Turkic languages.
Later, with conversion and other reasons, Uyghurs began to identify as Turks, which is normal as these confederacies would form and could expand over time..