Turkic

Turkic refers to a language family of related languages spoken by Turkic peoples across a wide area of Eurasia, and to the peoples who speak them. The Turkic languages form a large and diverse family, with dozens of individual languages and many dialects. They are predominantly agglutinative and exhibit vowel harmony, and most are written in a variety of scripts depending on region and period.

Geographically, Turkic languages are spoken from southeastern Europe and the Caucasus through Central Asia and into Siberia and western China. Major modern languages include Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Bashkir, Uyghur, Yakut (Sakha), Chuvash, and many others. Population distributions and official status vary by country, with Turkey and Azerbaijan having large concentrations of Turkic-language speakers, and substantial communities in Russia, China, and Central Asian states.

Linguistic classification traditionally divides Turkic into several branches, notably Oghuz (Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen), Karluk (Uzbek, Uyghur), Kipchak (Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Bashkir, Nogai), Siberian Turkic (Yakut, Khakas, and related languages), and the distinct Oghur branch (Chuvash and related tongues). Turkic languages share features such as suffixal grammar, object-verb or verb-final word order in many varieties, and vowel harmony across words.

Historically, Turkic-speaking peoples produced several empires and states, including the Göktürk Khaganate and the Seljuks, with broader influence through the Ottoman Empire. In the modern era, Turkic-speaking states collaborate in regional forums such as the Organization of Turkic States, founded to promote cultural and political cooperation.

Turkic thus encompasses a wide linguistic family and a broad array of cultures across Eurasia.