Uyghurs
The history of the Uyghur people, as with the ethnic origin of the people, is a matter of contention between Uyghur nationalists and the Chinese authority. Uyghur historians viewed the Uyghurs as the original inhabitants of Xinjiang with a long history. Uyghur politician and historian Muhemmed Imin Bughra wrote in his book "A History of East Turkestan", stressing the Turkic aspects of his people, that the Turks have a 9000-year history, while historian Turghun Almas incorporated discoveries of Tarim mummies to conclude that Uyghurs have over 6400 years of history, and the World Uyghur Congress claimed a 4,000-year history in East Turkestan. However, the official Chinese view asserts that the Uyghurs in Xinjiang originated from the Tiele tribes and only became the main social and political force in Xinjiang during the ninth century when they migrated to Xinjiang from Mongolia after the collapse of the Uyghur Khaganate, replacing the Han Chinese they claimed were there since the Han Dynasty. Many contemporary Western scholars, however, do not consider the modern Uyghurs to be of direct linear descent from the old Uyghur Khaganate of Mongolia. Rather, they consider them to be descendants of a number of peoples, one of them the ancient Uyghurs.
Uyghurs in Kazakhstan
Uyghurs in Kazakhstan can be roughly divided into three groups based on the time of their ancestors' migration. The earliest, the "yärlik" ("locals"), are those who have been in the country the longest. They came to various areas of Kazakhstan, especially Semirechie, in the late 19th and early 20th century. Most of the more than 200,000 Uyghurs in Kazakhstan trace their roots to the migrations during the 1950s and 1960s. They tend to refer to themselves as "kegänlär", literally "newcomers". Others used to call them "kitailik" ("Chinese"), but now the more commonly used term has become "köchäp kegän"; "kitailik" instead has come to refer to the latest Uyghur newcomers, those who have arrived since the 1990s (also referred to as "wätändin", or "people from the homeland").