Information

Turkic Cultures Student Association is a registered student organization at the University of Texas at Austin. As the name suggests it is an international/cultural association. Membership is open to any interested student, staff, or faculty of the University without any discrimination. For now, we consider everyone in our mailing list as members. Since there is a difference not easily recognized between Turkish and Turkic, this part of the "About Us" page will try to clarify the term 'Turkic.'

The Turkic peoples are a group of peoples residing in northern and central Eurasia who speak languages belonging to the Turkic family and who, to varying degrees, share certain cultural and historical traits. The term Turkic represents a broad, ethno-linguistic group of people and includes existing cultures such as the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Turkish people, as well as historical societies such as the Seljuq and Timurid. All these peoples can be loosely referred to as "Turks". Turkish, on the other hand, specifically represents the citizens of Turkey and the Turkish ethnicity.
The term Turkic as a common reference to various Turkic-speaking people began its spread after the appearance of the Turkic Kaganate in the 6th century CE, and did not gain a universal acceptance among some Turkic peoples until influenced by European nationalistic concepts of the 19th century CE. Prior to that, various Turkic-speaking people were known under different general ethnic names.
The family of Turkic languages is a subdivision of the Altaic language group and is one of the most geographically widespread in the world, being spoken in a vast region ranging from Europe to Siberia.
For more details please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_peoples

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Mission

We are a cultural organization that seeks to introduce the different Turkic cultures from around the world to the UT community, to provide a meeting place and a learning environment for those interested in Turkic cultures, and to bring together students, staff, and faculty belonging to the different Turkic cultures.
Our major activities include but are not be limited to lectures on Turkic cultures, Turkic language courses, field trips, movie nights, picnics, and live music concerts.