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January 31, 1992
Letters
Editor, Newsweek
Sir, Your depiction (The Turkish Model, Feb. 3) that the Central Asian Turkic republics of the new C.I.S are "five new countries" may be a harmless slip of tongue, but declaring their ethnically Turkish populations as "descendants of the Mongol invaders who swept across Asia 700 years ago" is a much belated oversimplification, misleading the un-informed on the true origins of these peoples' Turkish and/or Mongolian roots, and their ceaseless tribal interminglings stretching way back to prehistoric ages. It was between 6O to 15 thousand years ago that waves of these tribes were trekking across the Bering Straits from Siberia to North, Central and South Americas. Their physical appearance even then was as diverse as it was 700 years ago.. And those earlier settlers named this vast and beautiful new continent as "Am.er.ok—uðu", literally meaning the "beloved—land" in original Sky*Root Turkish. No wonder why Columbus was threatened into silence by the Spanish Court and Church, too shocked to acknowledge such an indigenous name for the implications it carried, until a false pass-port could be issued for another Italian captain as a pretext to enable them to do so.
Best personal regards, Doðan Türker
enc.
(Own Address) |
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