TURKS. The term Turk is purely linguistic and refers to those peoples who speak Turkic languages, having no racial sense. The Turks may be divided into two groups : a western, which includes the Osmanli, the Turks of what was formerly "Turkey in Europe and Turkey in Asia," the old Ottoman empire, and the eastern Turks, including many of the peoples of Turkistan and Central Asia, as far as the river Lena. There are also Turks in the Crimea, in the Caucasus, and along the Volga. The latter are cul turally entirely associated with the eastern Europeans, as are the Osmanli with the south-eastern Europeans and western Asiatics, but linguistically they are associated with the western Turks. (For racial history see ASIA : Central, and South-western.) The eastern Turks include the Turks of Turkistan and the Caspian steppes, who have become largely absorbed culturally and physi cally in the Iranian peoples, and may be conveniently called Iranian Turks, and the Turanian Turks, many of whom are called Tatars (this rather than the more familiar "Tartar" is the more correct spelling), of the Steppes, of southern Siberia, Dzungaria and northern Mongolia. The Iranian Turks include the Turko mans, the Sarts, the Taranchi or Ili Tatars, the Uzbegs, the Kai zak and the Kara Kalpak. The Turanian Turks include the Khir ghiz, a somewhat loose term, the Yakut and the Siberian Tatars.
The social organization of the Turks is based on a patriarchal system of sub-clans, all related by blood, and these sub-clans are gathered together in a loose confederacy of the clan (sok).
There is no definite mode of life which can be associated with the Turks as a whole; the western Turks and most of the Iranian Turks are sedentary agriculturalists, while those eastern Turks who have been most subject to migrations and live under steppe conditions have adopted the horse culture found in its most typical form among the Mongols (q.v.), while the Yakuts prac tise the reindeer culture of eastern Asia.
The western Turks are Muslims, but to the east, in spite of the superimposition of higher religions, including formerly Nestorian Christianity, which at one time was a serious rival of Islam, much of the animistic old religions remain, and shamanism is a specially important feature among the eastern and northern tribes.
It is almost impossible to make any generalized statement about the Turks; their most potent bond is that of language; they have no uniform culture, no uniform religion or physique, and even the features of some of the ceremonies of the Kirghiz, considered by Czaplicka to be one of the purest of Turkic tribes, are almost ex actly similar to those of the Mongols. Ethnologically, therefore, they must be referred to the regions in which they live.