Turkmen Status within Iranian Ethnic Identity (Cultural, Geographical, Political)

Abstract

The world is a place containing various racial and lingual groups. Iran is not an exception, because it can be called a multi-national or multi-racial community. Iran is of great interest to a wide range of scientific disciplines because of the rich ethnic and cultural diversity of population living there, and the extreme complexity of the historical and genetic issues in the region. However, studies related to the ethnogenesis of indigenous peoples and their ancient genetic contacts are not conclusive. Turkmen the largest ethno-linguistic minority in Iran are one of such peoples. Iranian Turkmen are a Turkic people the Branch of Turkmen people living mainly in Northern and Northeastern of Iran Famous to Turkmen Sahra 'Includes Golestan, RazaviKhorasan and North Khorasan. Turkmens were one of the divided nation after 1885, as a result of the British, Iranian and Pashtun resistance in The Great Game, expansion of the Russian Empire to the south ended. Fate of Turkmens across borders evolved differently. Industrialization, urbanization and more intensive modernization in Soviet Turkmenistan led to: unite disparate nomadic tribes settled in a single ethnic group with pronounced cultural and linguistic attributes.

Keywords: Turkmen people, Turkmen Sahra, language, Genetic evidence, Racial characteristics.