" The Soviet cartographers did not have an easy task of creating order out of the Central Asian patchwork of different peoples, languages and clans. Until 1924, the Russians treated Central Asia as one big region which they called Turkestan - the land of the Turks - as most people who lived there spoke Turkic languages. "

― Erika Fatland , Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan