@
Armstrong
The first separatist activities were started by Jadidist inspired intellectuals like Sabit Damulla Abdulbaki and the Bughra brothers. Go look up the Jadidist movement in central asia. They advocated Pan Turkism and the separatists that set up tthe First East Turkestan Republic (Committee for National Revolution) were Pan Turkic and against non Turkic Muslims like the Hui. They tried mixing Islamism with Pan Turkism (the name of their republic was Islamic Republic of East Turkestan) and implemented both sharia and policies against non Turkic peoples. Abdullah Bughra beat several Christian Swedes and then they massacred both Han and Hui civilians at Kizil.
The only thing they accomplished was pissing off both non Muslims and Non Turkic Muslims. Their Republic was crushed and their leaders were executed or driven away by the Hui who then retook control of the region.
They didn't use the word "Uyghur" or even think of themselves as Uyghur because that name was given by the Soviets in 1921 at the Tashkent conference. The Uyghurs were an ancient Turkic confederation 1,200 years ago and their modern descendants are the Buddhist Yugurs of Gansu. The soviets stole the name from them, and applied it to the Turkic people in the Tarim but they are descended from the Karluks.
The name "Uyghur" was introduced into Xinjiang by the puppet Soviet governor Sheng Shicai. The Soviets created a puppet Uyghur Nationalist movement under Ehmetjan Qasim who was a member of the Soviet Communist party. They attacked China in the Ili Rebellion in 1944 and set up the Second East Turkestan Republic with Soviet help. However they still declared Islam the state religion even though they were communists and Soviet puppets.
China sent Hui and Salar (Turkic Muslims) to fight against the Soviets and their Uyghur allies.
Now since China adopted the Soviet names for ethnic classification, so it has drilled the (erroneous) name Uyghur into common usage and probably nobody is going to ever correct it.
Mixing religion with
ethnic nationalism is retarded. The ETIM terrorists are still mixing "Uyghur" nationalism and Islamism. If people want to be Islamist they should be Islamist without any nationalism, or if they want to be nationalist they should not be Islamist.
Anyway all the trouble started when this state was abolished. I believe if this was still in place there wouldn't be any problems or rebellions. The Kumul Khans were the descendants of the Chagatais, who were the traditional monarchs of the Uyghur's ancestors. The Khans were vassals to the Chinese government and they controlled a semi autonomous state. The Khans were very loyal to China and the last one was obsessed with Chinese things. After the Khanate was abolished by the pro Soviet governor, the Pan Turkic jadists took advantage of the chaos to revolt and establish the First East Turkestan Republic.
Kumul Khanate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia