On the present classification
Turkology is probably one of the oldest branches of historical linguistics, judging from the fact that the earliest sketch of Turkic dialects was drawn c. 1073, long before the first Crusade. There were many previous attempts to build a consistent classification of the Turkic languages, the most prominent ones being that of Rémusat (1820), Balbi (1847), Berezin (1848, 1857), Ilminskiy (1861), Vámbéry (1885), Radloff (1882), Katanov (1894), Aristov (1896), Müller (1896), Foy (1903), Korsh (1910), Winkler (1921), Samoylovich (1922), Rahmati (1922), Bogoroditskiy (1934), Ligeti (1934), Batmanov (1947), Räsänen (1949), Malov (1951),  Baskakov (1952), Benzing (1959), Menges (1959), Tekin (1980), Johanson (1998), Schoening (1999), Dyachok (2001), Anna Dybo (2006), Mudrak (2002, 2009), ASJP (2009). Whereas most of these were just flimsy attempts, some of them (such as Baskakov's) were part of a lifetime work.

The present taxonomical system was rebuilt nearly from scratch with very little reference to other theoretical publications, and is not directly based on any previous classification; consequently, it may differ from earlier works in several aspects.

All the linguistic argumentation and other theoretical considerations, including a lexicostatistical research with possible datings, are provided in "The Internal Classification and Migrations of Turkic Languages", a separate online article. The present taxonomical description does not address any rare or obsolete languages for which no lexical data were found, either because of access difficulties or the complete absence thereof (e.g. "Hunnic"), therefore by no means should this work be viewed as exhaustive. The present article is mostly focused on getting all the major subgroups together in the proper order, something that was particularly hard to accomplish considering the close proximity of most Turkic sub-branches and their considerable posterior interaction.

The nine lexemes below were carefully chosen to visually demonstrate maximum phonological differences across the Turkic languages (unlike the numbers which simply run from 1 to 10). Font colors tend to mark phonologically similar lexemes, except the black color that stands for "unclassified", or gray that marks an "internal lexical replacement or borrowing". You should not pay much attention to the colors, these are mostly auxiliary and were used to analyze the material, and in some cases, were left unchanged or uncorrected. However, they were not removed afterwards, since they still help to pick up similar phonetic elements.

Notes on transcription
ü, ö as in Turkish or German; ï is a back vowel, more or less as Russian <bI> or Turkish <I>; ê is mostly schwa as in "about", but in some languages may denote a different sound; N = nasal /ng/; x = kh; sh as in English; zh as in "treasure"; ð (in Bashkir) as in "this"; s' (in Chuvash) is a palatalized /s/, as the Russian "cb" or (to some extent) the Japanese "sh"; d' is a palatalized /d/, as in Russian or Altay; J is a sound similar to "j" in "Jack" or highly palatalized /d/; q/G are voiceless and voiced deep velars, respectively; *P/B (in Tuvan, Tofa, Proto-Turkic) is intermediate between /p/ and /b/ as in Mandarin; -D- (in Old Turkic, intervocal) was probably similar either to the Spanish intervocal -d- or interdental English /ð/; D- (in Yughur, Tuvan) is intermediate between /t/ and /d/ as in Mandarin; *S (in Proto-Turkic) is an unkown consonant, probably a palatalized /s'/; *R (in Proto-Turkic) is probably, a mixture of /r/ and /z/, a palatalized lateral fricative similar to the one in modern Khalkha Mongolian, also cf. a similar trill in Czech; *H is an intense aspiration or similar; ' above vowels (in Chuvash) marks stress; the pronunciation of certain other phonemes may in fact be unconfirmed, unattested or unkown.

A note on the Silk Road and the Central Asian Bridge
One can better understand the classification of Turkic languages after familiarizing with the geography of the Silk Road and the concept of the *Central Asian Bridge. During the Middle Ages, people could not use flying carpets. Any kind of travel or ethnic migration could only proceed along narrow, geographically suitable pathways extending between deserts and mountain ranges and forming a natural, permanent network of migration routes. In Central Asia, this network became known as the Silk Road. The Silk Road is often considered merely from the economic perspective, although it also played a critical military, cultural, demographic, and linguistic role being an absolutely unique, vital artery which conveyed and maintained life in Eurasia for many generations. The Huns, the Turks, the Mongols, the Gipsies, whoever passed through Central Asia, could only travel along this natural migratory system; consequently, the distribution and classification of peoples in Asia is in fact nearly pre-determined by the geographical structure of these routes and the adjacent geographic areas. That's especially true of the Turkic, Mongolic, and Iranian peoples who have lived by and off the Silk Road for most of their time. The Silk Road was also a streaming jet of genes running in the opposite directions that brought the Chinese DNA to Central Asia and vice versa. It also carried plague and other infections, and subsequently brought tea, paper, compass, gunpowder, and other inventions to Europe causing it to rise from the Middle Ages into the era of art, reason, technology, as well as fierce firearm warfare.

Possible links between Turks and Siberian Sythians:
At a deeper chronological level, since c. 900-700 BC, rich archaeological sites in the region of the Tian-Shan, Altai and Sayan mountains mark the presence of the so called "Siberian Scythians" (see Pazyryk culture) The findings include kurgans, gold, iron weapons, horse burrials, charriots, petroglyphs, remnants of clothing, carpets, mummies in permafrost, etc. We suppose herein, that these archaeologically attested ethnic groups could have formed the basis for the Proto-Turkic unity, although that is still contoversial. In addition, Chinese records, anthropological and genetic studies indicate the presence of "European invaders", as well as an unusually high concentration of the Proto-Indo-European R1a1 haplogroup in this region.

A group resulting from the Turkic expansion to Northeast Siberia, along the Lena River (probably from c. 12-13th century). When we think of Sakha, we should basically think of the Turkic migration along the Lena river, whose source lies in the vicinity of Lake Baikal near the East Sayan Mountains. The glottochronological studies [e.g. Dyachok (2001) and herein] imply an early separation of Sakha from the main stem (c. 200 BC). There was a tribal confederation that lived northwest of Baikal c. 6-10th centuries, known as kurykans (hypothetically, Old Sakha). Before the Russian arrival, Sakha had had very intense early contact with the Evenk (=Tungusic) substratum, noticeable in today's grammar and phonology, and had also acquired many Mongol (Buriat) lexical borrowings, as well as preserving many important archaic Turkic features. Sakha seems to be highly deviant in many respects, having little to do with Tuvan or Khakas. Generally, there isn't much doubt that the Yakutic subgroup should be viewed as an important, early-splitting branch of the Turkic languages.

A Genghis Khan movie filmed in Tuva and Khakassia (2007)

This subtaxon represents the descendants of the Yenisei Kyrgyz, a historically important group of Turkic tribes attested under various names in the Chinese chronicles between 200-900 AD, and finally disappeared during the 13th century's turmoil of the Mongol invasions.

The Yenisei Kyrgyz inhabited the Minusink Depression in Khakassia (Minusinsk is a city near Abakan, the capital of Khakassia), which is a geographically suitable plain with steppes, lakes, and valleys located along the upper reaches of the Yenisei river. Protected by the Altai and Sayan mountains, the Minusink Depression has relatively mild climate convenient for agriculture, so even cherry orchards have been grown there since the 19th century.

The Yenisei Kyrgyz seem to have destroyed the Uyghur Empire in Mongolia and its capital Ordu-Balïq in 840 AD, which caused the dissipation of the Orkhon Turkic peoples, and led to the rise of the Yenisei Kyrgyz Kaganate (840-1207).

Ethnographically, the descendants of the Yenisei Kyrgyz unity seem to inclue Khakas, Shor, but also Tuvan, some of the Altai , and apparently Kyrgyz of Kyrgyzstan. All of these peoples seem to share a number of common traditions, such as nomadic living in yurts, cattle breeding, horse riding, brightly colored clothing, pointy high hats, tengreistic shamanism, hawk hunting, etc.
The Khakas, Altai, and Kyrgyz languages seem to be rather archaic, and contain relatively few old borrowings (except for abundant loanwords from Russian). Consequently, the Yenisei Kyrgyz descendant may be seen as very "typically Turkic" in many respects and may have preserved many Proto-Turkic features in language, culture, and genetic profile.

The odd ethnological resemblance of Tuvan shamans to the North American Indians is far from coincidental and may in fact be an indication of a Paleo-Asiatic (Yeniseian, such as Ket) substratum, which settled along the middle Yenisei, and which has been shown to be linguistically related to Na-Dene (see Dene-Yeniseian superfamily). The genetic studies (conducted since 1997) also demonstrate high concentration of Native American mtDNA lineages in Tuvans, Soyots, Khakas, Altayans, and Butyats (I. Zakharov, 2003)

On the meaning of Kyrgyz: (Note: all ethnonymic remarks are unavoidably hypothetical.) "Kyrgyz" seems to mean "destroyers, exterminators" or "terror" in Turkic and Mongolic languages, with an apparent reduplication of the kyr- root, cf. Tuvan "korgysh", Khakas "xorGïs", Kyrgyz"korkush" (fear, terror); Kazakh "qurtu" (exterminate), "qïrqu" (shearing, cutting); Altai "kïr" (erase)," kïrkïsh" (shearing), Sakha "kïrgïs" (fight, destroy each other), etc. A less likely version is that it means "qIrq + iz" (forty + suffix).

"Karagas" (for Tofa(lar)) and may also be just another way to pronounce "Kyrgyz", as well as the direct retention of this ethnonym among the Fuyu Kyrgyzes.

The Tuvan-Tofa subgroup represents those ethnic groups that settled deep in the West and East Sayan mountains. Glottochronologically, these languages seem to have separated from Proto-Khakas c. 800 AD. They are rather peculiar, exhibit many archaisms and innovations and, for the most part, cannot be understood by the Turks of Central Asia. There is also evidence for the Tungusic influence in the basic vocabulary.
Note that the Tuvan and Tofa(lar) spelling may contain voiced symbols, e.g. <b>, <d>, <g>, but these just denote the so called "weak" consonants that are normally pronounced as unvoiced in the beginning of a word or as semi-voiced in the intervocal position.

The Khakas subgroup includes at least the following representatives: Standard Khakas (which is mostly a 20th century creation) and its more true-to-life rural dialect-languages, including Sagai (the most commonly spoken Khakas dialect), Kacha, Kyzyl (almost extinct), Koibal, Beltir (extinct), Mras-Su Shor, Kondom Shor (meaning Shors living along the Mras and Kondom rivers), Middle Chulym (spoken along the middle course of the Chulym river), possibly Lower Chulym (acc. to a local researcher, the last speaker died c. 2010), as well as (according to Baskakov) possibly even nothern Altai dialects. The Khakas people had traditionally practiced nomadic herding, agriculture, hunting, and fishing, but were mostly Russified and culturally westernized during the course of the 20th century.
All the Khakas peoples seem to be direct descendants of the Yenisei Kyrgyz (originally known as just "Kyrgyz") who used to occupy the same region until the Mongol invasion in the beginning of the 13th century.
The modern ethnonym "Khakas" is an artificial creation introduced only in 1918, and patterned on the then-supposed European reading of Chinese chronicles, whose ethnonyms are notoriously difficult to reconstuct (see Yakhontov, Butananayev (1992)). This word is still out of use in Khakas communities (except for formal occasions), with the self-appellation being "Tadar(lar)", as for most Turkic peoples of the Sayan-Altay region. The latter name has most likely too been a 17-19th century exonym applied by Russians to nearly all the Turks.
The reason for the loss of the original generic must be in the long-standing differentiation of the Yenisei Kyrgyz unity. As noted above, the present-day Khakas term turns out to be a generic reference to a group of living and extinct ethnicities, with Sagai being the most prominent one.

Fuyu Kyrgyz is an often omitted and oddly located, presently nearly extinct variant of Khakas in northeast China, that recently existed among less than 700-400 passive speakers (now remembered mostly by elderly and to a very small extent). It's located to the northwest of Harbin along the Nenjiang river near a town called Fuyü, hence the odd exonym; the self-appellation is in fact "Gyrgys, xyrgys". The Fuyü Kyrgyz seem to have been exiled to Dzungaria in 1703-06 and then expelled again and resettled to China in 1761 after the conquest of Dzungaria by the Qing Empire. Fuyu Kyrgyz apparently belongs to the Khakas subtaxon (cf. namir < Khakas nanmïr "rain"; suG "water"). No description of grammar is available (only in Mandarin?). Religion: originally shamanism, then Lamaism. Recently revisited by Butanayev (2005) from Khakassia and studied by Hu, Zheng-Hua (1982) from China.

The Altay (Turkic) subgroup is a complex assortment of poorly studied dialect-languages with ambiguous classification, some of which may exhibit proximity to Khakas, while others to the Tian-Shan Kyrgyz. The peculiarities of the lesser Altay languages are frequently ignored or underestimated, and little data on them may be available.
The South Altay Turkic subtaxon may include at least the following languages: (1) Standard Altay or/and Altay-kizhi or Altay (proper); (2) Teleut (used as standard before 1917; only 2500 persons (1989)); and (3) Telengit (deeper in the mountains). The North Altay Turkic includes: (1) Tuba (rather intermediate between North and South); (2) Kumandy (~1000 speakers); (3) Chalkan or Kuu (850 persons, all bilingual in Russian); plus an undefined number of dialects.
Generally, Altay (Turkic) seems to be rather intermediate between Khakas and Karluk-Kyrgyz languages. However, much of their lexical basis seems to be of Siberian Turkic stock, therefore, according to the present study, Altay (Turkic) is viewed as part of the western Yenisei Kyrgyz subgroup, closely related to Khakas.

Note that the Altai Republic (capital: Gorno-Altaysk) and the Altai Krai (administrative center: Barnaul) are geographically connected but politically different federal subjects of the Russian Federation that should not be conflated.
Prior to 1948, the Altay languages were confusingly named "Oyrot" after the subgroup of Mongolic languages due to their interaction with the Mongol-speaking Dzungarians in the 18th century.

Khalaj (not to be confused with a Northwest Iranian language of the same name) is a poorly classified Turkic language in wesetern Iran near Tehran (42 000 speakers, bilingual in Farsi), which is famous for several unusual features, such as an initial h-, intervocal -d-, and long vowels. Khalaj had been mentioned in a legend by Mahmud al-Kashgari, and was studied by Doerfer (1978), who nearly went to the extent of viewing Khalaj as one of the most basic and early-separated Turkic languages. Herein, Khalaj is tentatively classified as one of the early offshoots of the Karakhanid expansion, which is supported by (1) the post-Karakhanid sonorization pattern; (2) the presence of intervocalic -D- (as in "aDaq") in Orkhon-Kharakhanid; (3) the lack of profound historical changes glottochronologically consistent with earlier separation, etc. Khalaj has also been strongly influenced by Azeri or other Seljuk-Oghuz, as well as a local Arabic and Iranian adstratum. Economy: agriculture, nomadic sheep breeding.

A language of controversial classification. According to their legends, the Salars are said to have moved into western China (Xunhua Salar Autonomous County, near the location of the Yughurs) from Samarqand (or Khorasan, an Iran province) in 1370, apparently during the rise of Tamerlan, obviously traveling along the Silk Road. Traditionally they were thought to be "Oghuz", but the absence of any Oghuz-Seljuk innovations, striking linguistic mutations, grammatical similarity to Yugur (including the loss of conjugation), and strong Chinese influence (e.g. native numbers no longer in use, phonology, sporadic use of "shï" as copula, etc ) clearly contradict this grouping. Unsurprisingly, there is also some Chagatai-Uyghur influence. By no means should Salar be mindlessly viewed as just "Oghuz", as it seems to be a result of crealized transition of the local Middle Yugur speakers to an early Chagatai with strong Chinese and probably even some Dongxiang and Tibetan influence. Religion: Islam. C. 100.000 ethnic Salars, but the language is now mostly spoken only by the elder. A lovely traditional song in Salar

Kazakhstan (capital: Astana; prominent city: Almaty in the Tian Shan) is just that giant spot on the map of Central Asia. Despite its large size, most of Kazakstan's land is semidesert continental steppe. It was occupied by the Kazakh nomads between the 15-19th centuries. Historically, the Kazakhs seem to be just those Kyrgyz nomads that spread beyond their original Jeti-Su ("Seven Rivers") homeland near the Tian-Shan in the 15th cent. and whose language was accordingly affected by the Tatar-Kypchak-Noghai dialects of the Golden Horde. Since the 1820s, Russians in Kazakhstan began to use this territory for coal mining, agriculture, nuclear tests, and launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Kazakhstan became independent in 1990, emerging as a huge Central Asian power with rapidly growing economy and relatively high level of urbanization. The Kazakhs were named "Kaisak-Kyrgyz" or "Kazak-Kyrgyz" between the 1730s and 1920s (the self-appellation was Kazakh) [Melioranskiy, 1894]. They also understand Kyrgyz to a very considerable extent. Cf. an old Kazakh saying, "Kazakh and Kyrgyz are one kin, but who in the world made Sart? (=a Chagatai city dweller, trader, an Uzbek)." (/qazaq qyrGyz bir tuGan, sart shirkindi kim tuGan/) C. 12 mln speakers. The "Jalgan ay" Kazakh song and its version 2 (by Asemkhan) from Xinjiang with a nice eastern accent with no trace of Russian

Crimean Karaites are a rather odd and presently very small branch of Crimean Kipchaks that includes adherents of Karaite Judaism; essentially, they seem to be descendants of a Kipchakicized Jewish sect. Originally, they were centered only in the Crimean Peninsula, but then were partly relocated as captives to Lithuania in 1392. Presently, only c. 600 persons in Crimea (2002), 257 in Lithuania (1997), c. 1000 in other countries.
The Nogays (Nogais) (90.000) and Kumyks (500.000 speakers) are two ethnic groups occupying the steppe along the northwestern coast of the Caspian Sea in northern Dagestan. The name Nogai is derived from Nogai Khan, a Mongol-Kypchak general. The Nogays are the remnants of the Nogai Horde (c. 1392-1639), a loose nomadic confederation that was centered in Saray-Juk near the Ural (Yaik) River delta and along the southern Volga, and are probably also partly related to the Astrakhan Khanate (1466-1556) defeated by Ivan the Terrible. They were attacked by the Dzungarians (= Kalmyks) from Mongolia and then forcibly resettled by Russians in the 18-19th cent. There is some notable Kazakh influence in Nogai (cf. Ng. yapïrak : Kz. zhapïraq; sh > s, ch > sh). The precise origins of Kumyks are less clear. Also, watch the Nogai Dombyra song with subtitles and a bloody battle from the Mongol movie (2007)

The ethnonym Oghuz goes back to a personal name of a legendary progenitor, described in multiple versions of the oral Oghuz-nama (The Oghuz-Khan Narratives), first witten down probably by the end of the 13th century by Rashid al-Din. [The name itself may presumably have meant öqüz "bull, ox" implying strength]. The earliest known Oghuzes were the tribal confederations of the 6th century located near the Orkhon Göktürks (=Türüks) (and subjugated by them), and regarded at the time as different from Türük, Tatar and Kïrgïz people. The ethnonym was first attested as Altï Oghuz (The Six Oghuz) in a Yenisei inscription, and then mentioned again as the Toquz Oghuz (The Nine Oghuz), Sekkiz Oghuz (The Eight Oghuz) in the Orkhon writings of Mongolia, and as the Üch Oghuz (The Three Oghuz) near Kyrgyzstan. By 775, the Oghuzes are found near Talas in Sogdiana, so we may assume they have arrived there as part of mass migrations to the Western Gökturk Kaganate. Apparently, they eventually travelled along the Syrdarya (Yaxartes) River towards its delta in the Aral Sea where they formed the Transoxanian Oghuz confederation with its capital Yangi Kent and a ruler titled yabgu (=prince), eventually expanding as far as the Caspian Sea. Here in the Transoxanian steppes, they were witnessed by many Arab visitors, including a vivid description by Ibn-Fadlan in 922. Mahmud al-Kashgari (1072) mentioned several Oghuz cities, some of which have been re-discovered by archaeologists; he also claimed that "Turkmen" and "Oghuz" meant essentially the same, which implies that modern-day Turkmens are direct descendants of the Oghuzes. The Oghuz dialect-language of the 11th century is documented in Al-Kashgari's writings mostly as unconnected words and phrases. In the course of the 12th century, the Transoxanian Oghuzes migrated or dissipated due to the Kypchak expansion to the west, possibly producing the Pecheneg raids into the Kievan Rus, but the origins of the latter ethnic group are controversial.

A Turkmen bride

Ashgabad Trade Center