Countries like Iran, Iraq, and Syria have a Turkmen population. Azerbaijani people call themselves Turks. And historically the Caucasus used to have a larger Turkish population before they were forced to migrate towards Turkey during WW1, fled to save their own lives during the war. Or got mass murdered during WW1 and during WW2.
The North Caucasus has the Turkic groups listed below. Some of them are still living there, but most got either deported or mass murdered in 1944 when Joseph Stalin was ruling the USSR.
Before Turkmenistan, Kazachstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan got occupied by the USSR, that region was called Turkestan.
And when we look at countries like Iraq, the region where Turkmens live in Iraq is called Turkmeneli. Cities like Kirkuk have a majority Turkmen population. However, the Iraqi government has deliberately neglected to count the Turkmen population in Iraq for years. It is estimated that the current Turkmen population in Iraq is 3–3.5 million. The last official count was in 1957 though the government back then counted 567,000 Turkmens.
Iran also has a region where Azerbaijani Turks live. It is also known as (Iranian) Azerbaijan. It is estimated that between 15 and 16 million or 16–24% of the Iranian population exists out of Azerbaijani Turks. Iran has actually a bigger Azerbaijani population than Azerbaijan the country. Even the current ayatollah of Iran, Ali Khamenei, is an Azerbaijani Turk.
And Syria has a population of 500,000 to 3 million Syrian Turkmens. Some estimate higher some lower. Here again the government deliberately doesn’t count the amount of Turkmens.
So there are no seperate countries between Turkmenistan and Turkey that are ruled by Turkish people. But these countries do have a Turkish population. Even the Balkans used to have a Turkish population before WW1. But once those countries became independent, most Turks were forced to move or fled during the war.
Even Crimea (yes, that region Ukraine and Russia are fighting about) used to have a Turkish population known as the Crimean Tatars. But they also faced the same destiny as the Caucasus Turks. They either got mass murdered, deported or fled to Turkey under Joseph Stalin in 1944.
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