East Turkestan

East Turkestan, also spelled East Turkistan, is a loosely defined geographical region in the northwest of the People's Republic of China, at the crossroads of East and Central Asia. Russian Turkologists of the nineteenth century, among them Nikita Bichurin, coined the name to replace the common Western term Chinese Turkestan, which had meant the Tarim Basin in southern Xinjiang. Uyghurs have their own names for the basin, Altishahr meaning Six Cities, Yettishar meaning Seven Cities and Sekkizshahr meaning Eight Cities, while Chinese dynasties from the Han to the Tang called an overlapping area the Western Regions. From the twentieth century Uyghur separatists used East Turkestan for the whole of Xinjiang, covering the Tarim Basin and Dzungaria, or for a future independent state there, and two short-lived East Turkestan Republics existed in 1933 to 1934 and 1944 to 1946.