Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Turkestan is a region in Central Asia, largely inhabited by Turkic people. It is subdivided into West Turkestan and East Turkestan. West Turkestan was conquered by the Russian Empire, thus sometimes called Russian Turkestan. It was taken over by the Soviet Union. After its collapse in 1991, the countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan recovered their independence. East Turkestan, often called Chinese Turkestan, was conquered by the Manchu Empire and was named Ice Jecen or Xinjiang (new frontier). It was taken over by the People's Republic of China by which it is now administered as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.