Journal Concept and its Sections

The Turkic Studies Journal (TSJ) is a peer-reviewed, open-access academic journal that publishes research in Oriental studies, focusing on the culture, history, and languages of Turkic and neighboring peoples of Central Asia. It also features studies exploring the unique culture of the East, which, in interaction with Western culture, forms the unified civilizational foundation of the modern world.
The mission of the journal is to explore the indigenous informational lacuna concerning the historical culture and language of the Turkic peoples. The Turkic Studies Journal is the sole publication within the Eurasian space that features original and translated articles on the medieval history and archaeology of the Turkic peoples, as well as their textology and languages, with a focus on the Republic of Kazakhstan as a historically centralizing entity of Central Asia and the East. The journal's publishing activities are also aimed at fostering international academic cooperation in the context of pressing issues in Oriental studies
Why is the journal focused on publications about medieval culture?
The journal focuses on the publication of research on medieval culture because it reveals connections with the cultures of the Sakas, Scythians, and Huns, and serves as a source for understanding the historical culture and genesis of the Turkic peoples. Broadly speaking, it was precisely during the medieval period that an "explosion of passionarity" occurred in Turkic reality (in the terms of L.N. Gumilyov). This explains the formation and functioning of numerous states and political entities across the vast territory of the Eurasian continent, where steppe empires succeed one another: the Hunnic Empire, the Old Turkic Khaganates,  the states of the Uyghurs and Kyrgyz, the Kimeks  and Kipchaks, the Oghuz and Karakhanids, the Golden Horde and the Ulus of Jochi, and the Kazakh Khanate.
 According to classical historical periodization, the medieval era is dated from the 6th to the 17th centuries.This chronology is based on the emergence of the ancient Turks onto the political stage of the Old World in the 6th century, specifically marked by the establishment of the First Turkic Khaganate in 551 CE. However, this process was preceded by a gradual period of formation and preparation. Therefore, according to archaeological periodization, the beginning of the medieval period pushed back to the 2nd century CE, or even to the 2nd century BCE, coinciding with the onset of Xiongnu history. Historical science  associates the ethnogenesis of the Turks with Xiongnu culture. The study of ethnogenesis requires knowledge of the pre-Turkic period, encompassing ancient epochs. This era is explored through sources from prehistoric archaeology—namely, the Stone, Bronze, and Early Iron Ages. The reconstructed sequence of ethnocultural development is as follows: ancient Aryans, Sakas, Xiongnu, and Turks. The characteristics of the cultural and economic systems, spiritual culture, and subsistence strategies of the ancient Turks and Kazakhs determine the patterns of ethnogenetic processes. In this regard, Kazakhstan is particularly significant and is rightly referred to as an open-air museum. Kazakhstan's territory hosts ancient monuments from all historical and archaeological epochs, ranging from the Paleolithic era to contemporary ethnographic times, indicating continuous human habitation since deep antiquity. Anthropological research confirms that the Kazakhs are an indigenous ethnos that has inhabited their historical territory uninterruptedly for millennia. Throughout the history of the Steppe, there have been no periods of complete ethnic population replacement. Another people who have long inhabited their historical homeland are the Chinese. Kazakhstan became the birthplace of horse domestication, giving the world an entirely new equestrian culture. Humanity, which had relied on pedestrian mobility for millions of years, mastered a means of transportation five thousand years ago that vastly expanded the possibilities for cultural and technological exchange. This development represented an innovation of global significance. The great steppe empires, in one way or another connected with the history of Kazakhstan, possessed supreme authority (headed by a khagan or khan),  maintained powerful and mobile cavalry forces an indicator of their "equestrian culture" and practiced both nomadic and sedentary forms of economy. They developed crafts, established settlements and cities, and had their own writing systems. Unlike many other peoples, such as Europeans, Slavs, Armenians, Georgians, and Arabs, the Turkic peoples, due to political and religious expansions as well as sociocultural and regional interactions, utilized several graphic systems over the course of one and a half millennia. This diversity represents both a weakness and a strength of Turkic written culture, serving as one of its distinguishing features.
The origins of Turkic writing can be traced back to pre-literate petroglyphs and the symbols of the Sakas and Xiongnu (including rune-like signs on the silver bowl from the Issyk Kurgan, inscriptions on the Aktas and Karatoma burial sites (K. Akishev), and the Letter of the Huns). During the era of the Old Turkic Khaganates (6th–7th centuries) and the Uyghur and Kyrgyz states (7th–9th centuries), more than 400 inscriptions were created using runic, Brahmi, Manichaean, and Uyghur scripts across Steppe Eurasia, Mongolia, China, the North Caucasus, Crimea, and Eastern Europe (including Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria). According to D.D. Vasiliev, there were established schools dedicated to runic writing during this period. Later, with the spread of Islam in Steppe Eurasia, Turkic written monuments were composed in various scripts, including Arabic, Latin, Armeno-Kipchak, and Arabic-based systems such as Chagatai and “Töte jazu”. Turkic written heritage monument, including literary works, reflect the full diversity of life and present a comprehensive worldview of the Turkic peoples. They encompass ideals of state governance and the model official (Kutadgu Bilig/Blessed Knowledge by Yusuf Balasaguni), the history of Turkic states and their rulers (Orkhon runic inscriptions), supreme deities and religious beliefs (The Manichaean Confession Prayer, Karabalgasun Inscription, the treatise Kefalaya, Adoration of the Magi, and Armeno-Kipchak monuments), ethnoculture and lifestyles (runic texts and inscriptions from the Golden Horde period), the encyclopedic record of Turkic life (‘Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk’ by Mahmud al-Kashgari), as well as studies of Turkic languages (grammars, dictionaries, and reference works).
The linguistic aspect of Oriental and Turkological studies encompasses both diachronic and synchronic analyses of the Turkic languages. The diachronic analysis begins with the reconstruction of linguistic units of the Altaic language family, which includes the Turkic languages; it involves determining the role of the Proto-Turkic language as a meta-language, the formation of ancient Turkic dialects (northern, southern, and mixed), and the process of differentiation of Turkic languages into Kipchak, Oghuz, South Siberian, and Karluk groups. In diachronic studies, it is essential to examine which phonetic and phonological units that characterize the Turkic languages across their respective groups, identify the typological changes  in the structure of the agglutinative Turkic languages, explore which layers of genuinely historical and borrowed vocabulary constitute the lexicon of the Turkic languages, and analyze how the grammatical forms of nouns and verbs have been preserved and transformed over time.
Research on modern Turkic languages involves studying linguistic systems of Turkic languages not only in the context of comparative-typological and system-structural approaches that underpin formal semasiological analysis. It also includes functional-pragmatic and anthropocentric perspectives, based on a semantic-onomasiological approach—a relatively underexplored area in Turkological linguistics. Publications addressing the areal and cultural contacts between Turkic languages and other languages of the world are also of considerable importance.
The journal aims to foster high-level research in Oriental studies, Turkology, historical-cultural and linguistic studies, based on historical sources, field materials, and Turkic written monuments inscribed in runic, Manichaean, Uighur, Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic scripts. Its goal is to address lacunae in the diachronic and synchronic study of Turkic languages through their comparison with other languages; and to reinterpret past events, phenomena, and processes within the framework of contemporary scientific paradigms and technologies.

Objectives:
-  To investigate the genetic roots of the Turkic peoples, the regularities of their historical development, and the emergence of medieval Turkic states, such as the Old Turkic, Uyghur, Kimek-Kipchak, Karakhanid, Oghuz states, the Golden Horde, the Ulus of Jochi, and the Kazakh Khanate through the study of Kazakhstan’s antiquities,  as well as to examine the role of the historical and cultural heritage of Eastern peoples in shaping the modern ethnocultural map of the world, as well as the global settlement of Turkic-speaking peoples;
- To examine how archaeology reveals historical processes through material culture. This journal aims to reconstruct the stages of the formation of the Old Turkic civilization, the history of Turkic states, phases of migration and military conquests, the spread of new cultural norms, and the development of the steppe mentality;
- To determine how medieval Turkic written monuments, composed in various graphic systems (runic, Manichaean, Uyghur, Arabic, Latin, Armeno-Kipchak, and Chagatai), reveal the Turkic worldview, ideology and culture, way of life and modes of thinking, as well as the literary richness of the Turkic languages.
- To investigate contemporary  issues in the development of Turkic languages in both diachronic and synchronic perspectives; to focus on the role of meta-languages (Proto-Altaic and Proto-Turkic) in the formation of dialects and the linguistic system of the Turkic languages in diachronic studies; to reveal historical typological commonalities and specific features of linguistic units across Turkic language groups; and to investigate modern Turkic languages within semasiological and onomasiological frameworks, uncovering their areal and cultural contacts with other languages.

Journal Sections:
Since 2024, the journal publishes articles within two fields: historical-cultural and philological, with the following sections:

• Medieval History (including archaeology)
• Textology
• Turkic Languages

In order to reveal a comprehensive picture of Turkic culture and to integrate scholars into the academic community, Turkic Studies Journal collaborates with the following publications: Archaeology of Kazakhstan (Republic of Kazakhstan, Almaty), The New Research of Tuva (Russian Federation, Republic of Tuva), Peoples and Religions of Eurasia (Russian Federation, Barnaul), Ural-Altaic Studies (Russian Federation, Moscow), Oriental Studies (Russian Federation, Republic of Kalmykia), Milli Folklor (Türkiye, Ankara), Turk Kültürü ve Hacı Bektaş Veli Araştırmaları (Türkiye, Ankara), and Turkic Languages (Germany).

The journal publishes articles in English, Kazakh, and Russian. Publication frequency – four times per year.

Turkic Studies Journal publishes original research articles, review articles, and book reviews.

Publisher – NJSC ‘L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University’, Astana, Republic of Kazakhstan.

https://enu.kz/