Turkish Factors In The Making Of Kyrgyzstan National Identity

Among the five' newly independent countries,Kazakstan,kyrgyzstan,Turkmenistan and Uzbekstan are belong to turkic speaking countries.Central Asia was detached from Soviet Union and reopened as a independent geoplitical space after the historic collapse of the latter.The Central Asia countries started to operate their nation-state building projects in the wake of Soviet Union's dismantlement.In order to create "other" and clear Soviet influences,Central Asia countries accepted Turkish identity promoted by Turkey.International observers and analysts once forecasted that these Central Asia countries would follow the "Turkish model".Therefore,Turkey elements would play a salience role in national identity building project of the new states.In its national identity building projects,Kyrgyzstan mainly employs ethnic-centred approach rather than a civic one in domestic level and depends on outside resources in international level due to its weak governance.Under the nationalism wave in modern history,the Turkic identity was rediscovered and designed as national identity by Turkic speaking people from Ottoman Empire to Tatars living in Russia.However,the practice of pan-Turkism was failed.In the end,the two countries have a shared but different understanding of Turkic identity.The ends of the Cold War provide Turkey with chances to promote Turkish identity:1)a collective ethnic Turkic identity features ethnic,linguistic and religious factors;2)civic Turkic identity features so-called turkish model,simply indicates a combination of democracy,moderate Islamic religion and market economy.It has been proven that both the willingness and capacity of Kyrgyzstan state to adopt turkish model are weak.But Kyrgyzstan is willing to keep a loose turkic identity in international arena.