Between the years 1949-1964 in East Turkestan independence struggle and Turkey made migration

This study investigates the political struggle following the fall of the Qing Empire, and the ensuing migration of Uighur and Kazakh Turks who were forced to leave their country. As such, it allows a better evaluation of the power struggle in East Turkestan and the emigration that it gave rise to. The vast body of data in this study comes from books, articles, newspaper reports, official reports, and other works, published in varying languages, on the power struggle in East Turkestan and the ensuing emigrations. Our data sources also include the memoirs and first-hand documents supplied by those who immigrated to Turkey after 1952, as well as from interviews with living immigrants. In particular, this study aims to shed light on the 1949-1964 political turmoil in East Turkestan, and the events leading to the emigration. The analysis presented is far from addressing all of the relevant issues because, beside the scarcity of written material on the issue, some of the old emigrants have difficulty remembering the events and their chronological order, while the younger ones either cannot remember the events or report that the old emigrants have told them so. Further factors that make it hard to comprehensively document the emigration are the facts that the overwhelming majority of the emigrants were illiterate, that the literate ones simply did not record what happened at the time, and that most of the documents, along with other valuables, that could potentially shed light on the issue were lost in the raids during the emigration. With the data at hand, though, an attempt is made to objectively evaluate the political, economic, and social events in East Turkestan between 1949 and 1964. We hope our study to contribute to future research on East Turkestan.