The Second Gokturk Empire Episode 1: Ilterish Khagan And The Turkic Resurrection

The history of the Turks can be traced back to the first millennium BCE. Slowly but steadily, they migrated from Northern Asia into large parts of the Northern Hemisphere – sometimes voluntarility, but mostly out of wars and climatic catastrophes. For the longest time, those people that belonged to the Turkic culture group were scattered across all of the Eurasian Steppe belt. Finally, in 552 CE, the chief of the Ashina Tribe BUMIN overthrew the then-supreme Rouran overlord in Mongolia and created his own state, the empire of the GÖK TÜRKS. Many military campaigns of these “Celestial Turks“ resulted in the expansion of the Göktürk borders to the Korean borderlands in the East, the Ukrainian Steppe and Crimea in the West, Afghanistan and the gates to Iran in the south. Alliances with the Byzantine Empire and the Sogdians enabled a stunning victory over Sassanid Persia, while in the east the newly established T’ang Dynasty was nearly annihilated by Turkic forces in the Chinese