One of Turkish President Erdogan’s top advisors, Yalcin Topcu, praised Kazakh President Nursultan Nurbayev for renaming the entire southern region of Kazakhstan to “Turkestan”:

A top adviser to Turkish president said Thursday “the cradle of our civilization will be Turkestan”, hailing Kazakhstan’s decision to change the name of its southern region to Turkestan.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Yalcin Topcu praised Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s decision to rename the region as Turkestan on June 19.

“This decision is proof that Aksakal [Kazakh President Nazarbayev] is such an important statesman, who has strategic thinking [ability],” Topcu said.

“Aksakal” literally means “white beard” in Turkic languages and metaphorically refers to a wise elder.

“We were fed by that region. From there, we spread to other parts of world. The name of our cradle of civilization [i.e.,Turkestan] has now been restored to its original,” he said.

The Kazakh president signed the decree on the name on June 19, which moves the administrative center of South Kazakhstan region from Shymkent to the Turkestan city, and also renames the region as Turkestan.

“The center of Turkestan region will be Turkestan city, which has been the political and spiritual center of Kazakh Khanate and the whole Turkic world for hundreds of years,” Nazarbayev said in his speech at the signing ceremony. (source)

Kazakhstan became famous in the USA for a brief period from the character Borat played by Jewish comedian Sacha Cohen on the Ali G Show, from which ensued a small international controversy that lasted for several years.

Humor aside, Kazakhstan is a nation with a long history in Central Asia and world politics. It was central to the Silk Road trade, which endured from the days of antiquity until the rise of Islam and even then, for several centuries after that was a route which European missionaries such as Blessed John of Montecorvino and explorers such as Marco Polo traveled through in order to go to the far east. While it is not a modern, “advanced” nation, neither is it backwards as so would perceive.

Kazakhstan also is one of the ancient homelands of the Turkic people, who were known in ancient times as the Scythian peoples and who is referenced in the New Testament (2 Colossians 3:11) as well as  in the Septuagint (2 Maccabees 4:47), and who Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus says were the descendants of Magog, a son of Gomer who was a son of Japheth by Noah (1) who is the younger brother of Ashkenaz, believed to be the progenitor of much of Europe.

The peoples of Kazakhstan seem to be a mixture of the ancient Scythian peoples and the Turkic peoples, who are believe to have arrived from somewhere in the Caucasus region, having already lived in and around the areas of ancient Scythia and Siberia as nomads. For centuries, various empires appeared in Central Asia and stretched throughout the region, known as the Khagante, from Ukraine to Manchuria.

Islam arrived in Kazakhstan around 740 AD under the Umayyad Dynasty at the same time St. John of Damascus, who wrote his famous criticism of Islam as a religion of pagan extraction based on Greek mythology mixed with Arabian legends and parts of sacred scripture. Only southern Kazakhstan was conquered, and the Muslims continued to press as far as the great city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan. By the final battle of Islam during the early expansions at the Battle of the Talas River in 751, Islam controlled a large part of the work and would work at making Samarkand the “eastern jewel of Islam” in comparison with Cordoba in the west. In the centuries that followed, the Turkic peoples of this region gradually converted to Islam and swept into the Middle East, eventually settling in Anatolia, driving the Byzantines further and further back before eventually conquering them and converting many to Islam, and is the reason why that area of the world is named “Turkey”, for it became the a new homeland for many Turks.

Tuvan throat singing, which is a form of religious shaman worship in Central Asia

Turkic religion was originally based on Shamanism called Tengriism and which is the earliest religion known in the area and is still practiced there today. The religion is a worship of the “great sky god” that while it is a religious practice serves primarily as a vehicle of nationalist and imperial identity. (2) This bears a semblance in philosophy to the ancient “aryan” beliefs found preserved in India that have their origins in Persia, as Hinduism is an ethno-nationalism religion brought to the subcontinent and imposed upon the Dravidian peoples, whose ancestors are Hamitic with roots coming from Eastern Africa, as well as to the Shintoism of Japan.

Most interesting is that the earliest Tengrii inscriptions are written with Runes that bear a striking semblance to and are a subject of debate of on their relationship with Germanic Futhark Runes and against suggesting, as Hitler and other Germanic, Turkic, and Japanese thinkers have done, a shared heritage between the three groups.

While Kazakhstan is officially a majority “muslim” nation today, few Kazakhs practice Islam with any degree of seriousness. Most of the Islam in Kazakhstan has been influenced by Tengriistic concepts of spirituality and mysticism and as such has been defined by Sufi Islam. This is not to suggest that Sufi Islam is a “moderate” form of Islam, for as its theology is orthodox so it accepts all of the evils intrinsic to Islam including the denial of Christ and the elevation of Mohammed as the perfect model for human behavior for all time. Sufism, which takes its name from the Arabic tasawwuf meaning “to be wooly”, as early Islamic mystics copied the wool robes of Catholic monks, is highly influenced by both Christian and pagan thought.

Turkey is a highly Islamic nation whose wrath against Christians is well known. The Turk also is one of the greatest missionaries of Sufi Islam, and many Sufic orders came out of Anatolia, possibly the most famous being the Konya-based Mevlevi order popularized by the Balkh-born Jalal Ad-Din Rumi and his whirling dervishes, who through ritual dance and in some cases, drug use, work themselves into ecstasy in order to attempt to “connect” with the divine.

Whirling dervishes

The Russian expansion into Central Asia and the far east beginning in the mid-16th century following the conquest of the Khaganate of Kazan brought Christianity again into Central Asia. Indeed, Christianity had been present there since the time of the Apostles, and it is well-known that many of the silk Road outposts in Central Asia had Nestorian Christians present. Their presence was so well-established that during the time of the Mongol Invasions of the Middle East during the 13th century that ended with the Mongolian loss at Ayn Jalut to the Turk-turned-Muslim convert Qutuz, that they inspired Marco Polo’s trips to China and the formal correspondence between the Pope and French Kings and the Mongols and Nestorian Bishops, including the participation of bishops from Central Asia at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274.

During the Soviet period, much religion was suppressed, and Central Asia was no different. Christianity and Islam alike were driven underground in favor of government-enforced secularism. However, following the fall of the USSR, the nation is modernizing and, with a GDP of approximately 497 billion USD with a population of 18 million (New Jersey is 465 billion in GDP and 9 million in population for comparison), is an “upcoming” nation.

The Capitol of Kazakhstan, Astana, was designated such in 1997 and the city entirely rebuild with the assistance of Japanese architect Kisho Kurakawa, whose philosophy of architechture, as noted by Wikipedia, places a focus on ethnic nationalism:

The notion of receptivity is a crucial Japanese idea—possibly a “tradition.” Kurokawa stated that Japan is a small country. For more than a thousand years, the Japanese had an awareness of neighboring China and Korea and, in the modern age, Portugal, Great Britain and America, to name a few. The only way for a small country like Japan to avoid being attacked by these empires was to make continuous attempts to absorb foreign cultures for study and, while establishing friendly relations with the larger nations, preserve its own identity. This receptivity is the aspect that allowed Japan to grow from a farming island into an imperial nation, first using Chinese political systems and Chinese advancement, then Western techniques and knowledge. Japan eventually surpassed China and stumbled upon itself during World War II. After the war, Japan, using this same perspective absorbed American culture and technology.

Kurokawa’s architecture follows the string of receptivity but, at one point, tries to diverge and find its own identity.

Kazakhstan was and remains following the fall of the USSR a nation with a special relationship with Russia for Russian national security. However, the USA and Turkey have taken increased roles in Kazakhstan, and in the conflict in Ukraine, while saying it sided with neither the USA nor Russia and offered to act as a peace maker, that she supported the Ukrainian rebels with “humanitarian relief” and emphasized the “historical closeness” of Ukraine to Kazakhstan.

This “closeness” is because, as noted, Ukraine was a part of the ancient Scythian empire of which was centered in Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan also sits on the Turkic Council, which is based in Istanbul and on their websites shows modern Turkish as well as the ancient Turkic runes for their name:

Erdogan wants to bring closer ties with Kazakhstan because he is promoting the concept of Pan-Turkism, which is a common ethno-nationalist bond between “all Turks” in order to prepare for his attempts to revive the Ottoman Empire. This is the reason Turkey is building massive railroads into Central Asia, to economically connect those nations to Turkey which will bring about political and cultural influence, as both follow economics.

He is doing this with all of the Central Asian nations, but Kazakhstan is the largest and most powerful of them. It is also the closest ally to Russia in terms of economics, and to bring Kazakhstan under Turkic influence also weakens Russia, Turkey’s greatest enemy.

The USA and Israelis with the Germans back the Turks because it was they who armed Turkey as a part of the CIA project Operation Gladio to serve as a “hedge” against the Russians. This is reinforced by that Turkey was for five centuries an ally of Germany through the Ottoman Empire and, as both the Germans and Japanese have noted, they view the Turks as a shared ancestor through ancient blood and cultural ties.

The area in Kazakhstan that was renamed as “Turkestan” is the southernmost and most densely populated province with an equally long history for both the Turkic people and Sufi Islam with close ties to both Bukhoro (after which the famous Islamic Hadith collection Sahih Bukhari is named) and Samarkand. The capitol city was Shymkent but has been moved to Turkestan City, which was named after Ahmad Yesevi, a Medieval Muslim saint who during the time of the Crusades and subsequently many of the Turkic migrations founded and is considered the progenitor of Turkish Sufism.

Erdogan’s recognition of “Turkestan” in Kazakhstan is not one of mere political, economic, or shared cultural ties, but ancient concepts of race and religion that while professing Islam on one end are promoting it in the context of ethnic nationalism that has all of the dangerous potential to lead to a religious syncretism. It could be one religion for the Turk, one for the German, and one for the Japanese, but all are bound by a shared spiritual religion rooted in blood ties, as sons of Magog united against the world to divide and conquer it with their allies.

Stop worrying about Iran and Russia. For all of the problems that one may point against them, the real enemies are the same old Axis of evil that existed in the last century, and promoting the same evils of valuing one’s race over the grace of God that leads to the exact same evil end.

(1) Josephus, Book I, Chapter VI, Part I: For Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now call Galatians, [Galls,] but were then called Gomerites. Magog founded those that from him were named Magogites, but who are by the Greeks called Scythians.

(2) A. Kodar. ZPU Journal. 2008. #1. “They are divided into two levels of Tengriism- imperial and national” (Выделяются два уровня тенгрианства – имперский и народный) (source)