Turkey has replaced the term Central Asia with Turkistan in its national school curriculum.
Education Minister Yusuf Tekin announced the change in Ankara and said the new name will support unity in what the government calls the Turkic world.
Tekin said the ministry is removing geographical terms that he described as having imperial roots and said the curriculum should reflect Turkey’s own historical vocabulary.
He said earlier governments allowed foreign concepts to shape how Turkish students understood the region, adding that he wants school programs to highlight ideas from what he called the Turkish state tradition that focus on human rights and the rule of law.
The term Central Asia refers to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.
The term Turkistan is a historical label that was used for areas where Turkic-speaking peoples lived before the modern borders of Russia, China and the Central Asian Republics were drawn.
The term is also used by Uyghur groups for the region in western China that Chinese authorities call Xinjiang.
The change reflects Ankara’s push to present Turkey as the cultural center of Turkic-speaking states through the Organization of Turkic States.