Turks, an important and wide-spread family of the human race, found from the banks of the Lena through central Asia and Asia Minor to the European shores of the Bosphorus and the Ægean. Formerly classed amongst the 'Turanian' peoples, it is now more usual to say that they are of the Mongolo-Tartar ethnological group, and speak languages of the Ural-Altaic family. To them belong at the present day Yakuts, Siberian Tartars, Kirghiz, Uzbeks, Turkomans, Karakalpaks, Kazan Tartars, and Dungans, as well as the Ottoman Turks; linguistically the Bashkirs and Tehuwashes fall under the same head. Old Turkish stocks no longer extant were the Petschenegs in Russia, the Cumanians, the Chazars, the White Huns, and the Seljuks (from whom the Ottoman Turks are sprung). The existing Turkish peoples are all Moslems, save the Yakuts, and mostly nomadic. They have often sent forth conquering hordes of warriors, and have given ruling families or races to China, Persia, India, Syria, Egypt, and the empire of the Calif.
See especially the articles TURKESTAN and TURKEY; ASIA, Vol. I. p. 493; SELJUKS; BABER; TAMERLANE; TARTARS; Vambéry, Skizzen aus Mittelasien (1868), and Das Türkenvolk (1885).