The word of Tatar had been used as a tribal name among both Turks and Mongolians from of old. However, it should be reminded that the Tatars among the Mongolians were not the same tatars that constituted a Turkish tribe. Mongolian-Tatars were defeated by Jenghiz (Genghis) Khan in the war of Dalan-Nemürges in the year of 1202 and they were dissolved. All of their members were divided and distributed among the other tribes. Therefore, the Tatar tribe was eradicated among the Mongolians; but this name has been continued to be used by the foreigners sometimes with the meaning of "Mongolian", and sometimes as the "Turks". Some of the historians have examined the public name of "Tatar" as the people of Mongolian roots and some others have alleged that it was used for the people of Turkish roots written in the Orhon Inscriptions that were the oldest documents of the Turkish language. However, it is beyond doubt that the Tatars cited in Kaşgarlı Mahmûd's work titled as "Divan-ı Lûgat-it-Türk" were the members of a Turkish tribe. The Russians had also used the name of "Mongolian" and sometimes "Tatar" for the period of Jenghiz. Moreover, they had always called the Golden Horde and Kazan Khanate, the Turkish States that were established after him and their people as Tatar. In the period of tsardom, they called all the other Turkish tribes as "Tatar" in general that they had subdued. However, they did not ever mean the "Mongolians" with this word, and they had used this term only for the Turkish tribes. (for example; Kazan Tatars, Crimean Tatars, Astrakhan Tatars, Caucasian Tatars, Azerbaijani Tatars, Tashkent, Hive, Bokhara Tatars, Kashgar, Kulca Tatars, Siberian, Altay Tatars, etc.). In the period of the Soviets, the tradition of the usage of the term "Tatar" as an equivalent of the word "Turkish" was abandoned. Instead of it, the procedure of the usage of the names pertaining to each Turkish tribe was accepted. According to this procedure applied for political benefits, it has been tried to create the "nations" such as Bashkurt, Kazak, Khirghiz, Uzbek, Türkmen, Uighur, Karacay, Balkar, Azerbaijani etc. However, despite this application that was executed for political benefits, the fact that these communities were of the "Turkish" lineage could not be denied in the Soviet scientific literature and publications. Therefore, all these groups had been studied together in the science of Soviet Turcology. However, the Soviet Turcology experts use the term of Turkic languages instead of the terms that we use such as "Turkish dialects and accents" since they are so close to each other.
Furthermore, within the Russian scientific literature, the terms of "tyurki, Tyurkskiy" (Turks, Turkish language) were used for the Turkish tribes in Russia in order to study them as a separate group from the Turks in Turkey. The terms used for Turks in Turkey were "Turok, Turki, Turetskiy" (Turk, Turks, Turkish language. Recently, the western world has adopted this application (particularly in the English and American literatures) and it has been observed that the term of "Turkic" (T. peoples, T. languages" Turkic people and Turkic languages" have been used for the Turks in Russia and the term of "Turkish" has been used for the Turks in Turkey. Therefore, it is obvious that the Russian term of "Tjurkskiy" and the English term of "Turkic" have been used instead of the term of "Tatar" that had been a general name for the Turks in Russia until the year of 1917.
Today, the word of "Tatar" has been used for the people of Idyll-Ural, Western Siberia and Astrakhan that we call as "Kazan people" or "Northern Turks" as a Turkish tribal name and the "Crimean people". These tribes that we have stated above have adopted this name as a public name for themselves from now on.
Jenghiz State had been composed of the Mongolians in the beginning periods; but it had expanded within a short time, and turned into a world empire. Then, it gained its final shape as a Turkish- Mongolian Empire. In fact, nearly all the countries with Turkish inhabitants were involved in this state. Various other nations were also the members of this empire. However, most of the main group and population (excluding China that had been under the Mongolian domination for 100 years) were composed of the Turks. The Turkish tribes had become submissive to Jenghiz as a result of sometimes the state of peace and sometimes the wars. These Turkish tribes got along well with him within a short period; and they started to participate in the entire social, military and all the other administrative affairs of the great empire. The Mongolians were in the minority within the empire in respect of their numbers and they had been inferior to Turks in respect of culture. Most of these Mongolians adopted the religion of Islam and became Turks; and the rest of them returned to the main Mongolia. Therefore, when the empire was disintegrated, the new Turkish states such as Golden Horde, Sibir, Chagatai, Ilhanli States, etc. emerged from this empire, not any Mongolian state. The domination of the Mongolians was restricted to their ancient homelands.