Isa Yusuf Alptekin was a Uyghur politician who served in the Chinese Nationalist government and opposed both the First East Turkistan Republic and the Second East Turkestan Republic. When Xinjiang came under Chinese communist control in 1949, Alptekin went into exile and became an ultra-nationalist and pan-Turkic separatist.

Pan-Turkism or Turkism is a political movement that emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals who lived in the Russian region of Kazan (Tatarstan), Caucasus and the Ottoman Empire, with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Turanism is a closely related movement but it is a more general term, because Turkism only applies to Turkic peoples. However, researchers and politicians who are steeped in the pan-Turkic ideology have used these terms interchangeably in many sources and works of literature.