First Turkic Khaganate in the context of "Göktürks"

Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia. Bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south and southeast, it covers an area of 1,564,116 square kilometres (603,909 square miles), making it the 18th-largest country in the world and the second largest landlocked country after Kazakhstan, as well as the largest landlocked country that does not border an inland sea. With a population of 3.5 million, it is the world's most sparsely populated sovereign state. The country constitutes a significant portion of the Mongolian Plateau, and its natural environment is characterized by grassy steppe, mountains to the north and west, and the Gobi Desert to the south. Ulaanbaatar, the capital and largest city, is home to roughly half of the country's population.

The territory of modern-day Mongolia has been ruled by various nomadic empires, including the Xiongnu, the Xianbei, the Rouran, the First Turkic Khaganate, the Second Turkic Khaganate, the Uyghur Khaganate and others. In 1206, Genghis Khan founded the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous land empire in history. His grandson Kublai Khan conquered China proper and established the Yuan dynasty. After the collapse of the Yuan, the Mongols retreated to Mongolia and resumed their earlier pattern of factional conflict, except during the era of Dayan Khan and Tumen Zasagt Khan.

Various nomadic empires, including the Xiongnu (3rd century BC–1st century AD), the Xianbei state (c. AD 93–234), the Rouran Khaganate (330–555), the First (552–603) and Second Turkic Khaganates (682–744) and others, ruled the area of present-day Mongolia. The Khitan people, who used a para-Mongolic language, founded an empire known as the Liao dynasty (916–1125), and ruled Mongolia and portions of North China, northern Korea, and the present-day Russian Far East.

In 1206, Genghis Khan was able to unite the Mongol tribes, forging them into a fighting force which went on to establish the largest contiguous empire in world history, the Mongol Empire (1206–1368). After the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire, Mongolia came to be ruled by the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) based in Khanbaliq (modern Beijing) and administered as part of the Lingbei Province. Buddhism in Mongolia began with the Yuan emperors' conversion to and dissemination of Tibetan Buddhism.

Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Dushanbe is its capital and most populous city. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east and is narrowly separated from Pakistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor. It has a population of more than 10.7 million people.

The territory was previously home to cultures of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, including the Oxus civilisation in west, with the Indo-Iranians arriving during the Andronovo culture. Parts of country were part of the Sogdian and Bactrian civilisations, and was ruled by those including the Achaemenids, Alexander the Great, the Greco-Bactrians, the Kushans, the Kidarites and Hephthalites, the First Turkic Khaganate, the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, the Samanid Empire, the Kara-Khanids, Seljuks, Khwarazmians, the Mongols, Timurids and Khanate of Bukhara. The region was later conquered by the Russian Empire, before becoming part of the Soviet Union. Within the Soviet Union, the country's borders were drawn when it was part of Uzbekistan as an autonomous republic before becoming a constituent republic of the Soviet Union on 5 December 1929.

Sogdia (/ˈsɒɡdiə/) or Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian civilization between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya rivers, and in present-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Sogdiana was also a province of the Achaemenid Empire, and listed on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great. Sogdiana was first conquered by Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, and then was annexed by the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great in 328 BC. It would continue to change hands under the Seleucid Empire, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, the Kushan Empire, the Sasanian Empire, the Hephthalite Empire, the Western Turkic Khaganate, and the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana.

The Sogdian city-states, although never politically united, were centered on the city of Samarkand. Sogdian, an Eastern Iranian language, is no longer spoken. However, a descendant of one of its dialects, Yaghnobi, is still spoken by the Yaghnobis of Tajikistan. It was widely spoken in Central Asia as a lingua franca and served as one of the First Turkic Khaganate's court languages for writing documents.

Tengrism (also known as Tengriism, Tengerism, or Tengrianism) is a belief system originating in the Eurasian steppes, based on shamanism and animism. It generally involves the titular sky god Tengri. According to some scholars, adherents of Tengrism view the purpose of life as to be in harmony with the universe.

It was the prevailing religion of the Göktürk, Hun, Xianbei, Bulgar, Xiongnu, Yeniseian and Mongolic peoples, as well as the state religion of several medieval states such as the First Turkic Khaganate, the Western Turkic Khaganate, the Eastern Turkic Khaganate, Old Great Bulgaria, the First Bulgarian Empire, Volga Bulgaria, Khazaria, and the Mongol Empire. In the Irk Bitig, a ninth century manuscript on divination, Tengri is mentioned as Türük Tängrisi (God of Turks). According to many academics, Tengrism was, and to some extent still is, a predominantly polytheistic religion based on the shamanistic concept of animism, and was first influenced by monotheism during the imperial period, especially by the 12th–13th centuries. Abdulkadir Inan argues that Yakut and Altai shamanism are not entirely equal to the ancient Turkic religion.

The Hephthalites (Bactrian: ηβοδαλο, romanized: Ebodalo), sometimes called the White Huns (also known as the White Hunas, in Iranian as the Spet Xyon and in Sanskrit and Prakrit as the Sveta-huna), were a people who lived in Central Asia during the 5th to 8th centuries CE, part of the larger group of Eastern Iranian Huns. They formed an empire, the Imperial Hephthalites, and were militarily important from 450 CE, when they defeated the Kidarites, to 560 CE, when combined forces from the First Turkic Khaganate and the Sasanian Empire defeated them. After 560 CE, they established "principalities" in the area of Tokharistan, under the suzerainty of the Western Turks (in the areas north of the Oxus) and of the Sasanian Empire (in the areas south of the Oxus), before the Tokhara Yabghus took over in 625.

The Imperial Hephthalites, based in Bactria, expanded eastwards to the Tarim Basin, westwards to Sogdia and southwards through Afghanistan, but they never went beyond the Hindu-Kush, which was occupied by the Alchon Huns, previously thought to be an extension of the Hephthalites. They were a tribal confederation and included both nomadic and settled urban communities. They formed part of the four major states known collectively as Xyon (Xionites) or Huna, being preceded by the Kidarites and by the Alkhon, and succeeded by the Nezak Huns and by the First Turkic Khaganate. All of these Hunnic peoples have often been controversially linked to the Huns who invaded Eastern Europe during the same period, and/or have been referred to as "Huns", but scholars have reached no consensus about any such connection.

The history of the Kyrgyz people and the land now called Kyrgyzstan goes back more than 3,000 years. Although geographically isolated by its mountainous location, it had an important role as part of the historical Silk Road trade route. Turkic nomads, who trace their ancestry to many Turkic states such as the First and Second Turkic Khaganates, have inhabited the country throughout its history. In the 13th century, Kyrgyzstan was conquered by the Mongols; subsequently it regained independence but was invaded by Kalmyks, Manchus, and Uzbeks. In 1876, it became part of the Russian Empire, remaining in the USSR as the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic after the Russian Revolution. Following Mikhail Gorbachev's democratic reforms in the USSR, in 1990 pro-independence candidate Askar Akayev was elected president of the SSR. On 31 August 1991, Kyrgyzstan declared independence from Moscow, and a democratic government was subsequently established.