Tynchtykbek Chorotegin ( ), also known as Tynchtykbek Kadyrmambetovich Choroyev (), is a Kyrgyz historian, publicist and journalist. He has served as President of the Kyrgyz History Society since his election on 11 February 2012, and holds the degrees of Doctor of History (1998) and the title of Professor at Kyrgyz State National University, named after Jusup Balasagyn (2002). Chorotegin is widely recognised as an independent researcher, Turkologist and journalist. Until September 2011, he worked as a broadcaster at Radio Azattyk, the Kyrgyz Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and served as Director of the Kyrgyz Service from 1 January 2003 to 30 September 2010. Between 30 August 2013 and 4 May 2017, he was chairman of the Board of the Muras (Heritage) Foundation, attached to the Office of the President of the Kyrgyz Republic.
Early life and education Chorotegin was born on 28 March 1959 in the village of Echki‑Bashy, in the On‑Archa rural district of Naryn province, northern Kyrgyzstan. His grandfather, Choro‑Hajji (né Aity uulu), was a prosperous figure who undertook the pilgrimage to Mecca well before the 1916 anti‑Tsarist uprising of the Kyrgyz. Choro‑Hajji died in 1927, shortly before the Stalinist regime launched its campaign of expropriation against wealthy Kyrgyz in the closing years of the 1920s. His mausoleum, built between 1927 and 1928, still stands near the village of Echki‑Bashy. A grandson of Choro‑Hajji through his elder son, Bekbolot, perished in the Stalinist purges on account of the family’s wealthy background.
Choro‑Hajji’s wife, Suyumkan Malay kyzy, was the daughter of a prosperous man from the neighbouring village of Ming‑Bulak. She had received some education before the Soviet period and was able to read the Quran in Arabic. Her elder son, Kadyrmambet Choroev, married his cousin Aliya Kydyraaly kyzy, whose mother, Seidana Malay kyzy, was likewise a literate woman, able to read the Quran and write in Arabic script. The Arabic script was officially suppressed in Kyrgyzstan between 1928 and 1929, when the Soviet Kyrgyz were transferred to the Latin alphabet (which remained in use until 1939–40), and in consequence both of Chorotegin’s grandmothers were officially classed as “uneducated”.
Kadyrmambet and Aliya had five sons and three daughters; Chorotegin was their fourth child. In his earliest years he was raised by both of his grandmothers, Suyumkan and Seidana. Until the autumn of 1966, he would accompany the family to the summer pasture of Solton‑Sary. He was taught the alphabet at home by his older brothers and sister before ever attending school.
In September 1966, Chorotegin entered the village school at Echki‑Bashy. After completing the eighth grade there, he moved to Naryn to continue his studies at the No. 1 Toktogul Satylgan‑uulu Secondary School, from which he graduated with a silver medal in 1976. He then enrolled in the history faculty of the Kyrgyz State University (now the Kyrgyz National University, named after Jusup Balasagyn). While a student in the capital, then called Frunze (present‑day Bishkek), he took an active part in the university’s academic and literary circles. He completed his degree at the university with a so‑called “red diploma” in 1981.
He then studied at the Oriental Institute named after Abu Reihan Beruni of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences in Tashkent from 1983 to 1988, where he defended his first doctoral thesis on the migrations of Eastern Turkic groups in the 9th–13th centuries according to medieval Muslim sources (in Russian language; Tashkent, December 1988).
He led the Chair of Ancient and Medieval History (1989–1991) and the Chair of Asian and African States History (1992–1994) at the Kyrgyz National University. He subsequently studied for his doctorate at the same university (1994–1997) and defended his doctoral thesis on the life and era of Mahmud al-Kashghari (al-Barsqani), an Eastern Turkic scholar of the 11th century, and his scholarly legacy. The thesis was defended at the Kyrgyzstan National Academy of Sciences on 10 April 1998 (in Kyrgyz language). A monograph on the subject was published by the Muras Foundation in September 2017.See a Turkish-language review: Karatayev, Olcobay; Yılmaz, Mehmet Serhat; Yakuboğlu, Cevdet. "Dîvânu Lugâti 't-Türk" Adlı Eserin Tamamlanmasının 940. Yıldönümü: Şarkiyatçı, Tarihçi, Antropolog Prof. Dr. Tınçtıkbek K. Çorotegin'in Araştırmaları (940th Anniversary of the Completion of "Dîvânu Lugâti 't-Türk": Researches of Orientalist, Historian, Anthropologist Prof. Dr. Tınçtıkbek K. Çorotegin) // Alınteri Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi. - Kastamonu Üniversitesi, 2017. - Volume 1 (2). pp. 89–99. - .
His name and surname was officially changed in Kyrgyzstan to Tynchtykbek Chorotegin since 9 June 2026 (it was just his pen name before).https://www.facebook.com/tynchtykbek.chorotegin/posts/pfbid02zYbrDNuk2Si3S2zuQALtG9inyCSLUQ2oDQC6MxF9F3xegC5gbumaXsSdGkTeyHVzl
Textbooks and Turkology publications Chorotegin has published several monographs and books in Kyrgyz and Russian languages (since 1990) and several textbooks devoted to the ancient and medieval history of the Kyrgyz people and their neighbors in Central and Inner Asia.
The first post-Soviet Kyrgyz textbooks for the secondary schools in Kyrgyzstan by him in co-authorship with Professor Toktorbek Omurbekov have been translated from Kyrgyz into Russian and Uzbek languages.
The textbooks for secondary schools have been officially distributed by the Education Ministry in Kyrgyzstan since 1996.
Some of his articles on Kyrgyz history and medieval sources were published by UNESCO, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Kyrgyz National Encyclopedia, Soviet Encyclopedia, etc. (in Kyrgyzstan, the United States, Western Europe, Russia, Turkey, China, Uzbekistan).
Public activities
In his youth, Chorotegin was a member of the Kyrgyzstan Komsomol, as was common for young people in the Soviet Union at the time.
At the time, he was unaware that his father's elder brother had been a victim of the Stalinist purge and had died in a Gulag camp somewhere in Soviet Russia. His worldview gradually shifted between 1980 and 1988, a period that encompassed the Perestroika era. In 1987–1988, he was among the Kyrgyz intellectuals who campaigned for the Kyrgyz language to be granted equal status alongside Russian as an official language of the republic. In 1989, he became one of the young Kyrgyz intellectuals who advocated for the national identity of the Kyrgyz people.p He was a founding member and one of the leaders of the Kyrgyzstan's Young Historians Association, the first nongovernmental organization of the Kyrgyz historians to challenge the official Soviet Kyrgyz historiography. The Kyrgyz Soviet parliament adopted the State Language Law on 23 September 1989, which permitted Kyrgyz citizens to adopt the surname suffix '-tegin' in place of the Russian suffixes '-ov' or '-ev'. Shortly after the law was implemented, Tchoroev began using the name "Chorotegin". Thus, most of his post-Soviet works were published under the surname Chorotegin.
He served first as deputy chairman and later as chairman of the Kyrgyzstan Young Historians Association, which had been established on 3 June 1989 despite opposition from the Communist leadership in Kyrgyzstan. It was the first nongovernmental organization to hold its founding conference in the Kyrgyz language with a simultaneous Russian translation. The Kyrgyzstan Writers Union, led by the writer and statesman Chingiz Aitmatov, supported the young Kyrgyz historians by providing the Union's hall for their conference at no cost.
He was the co-author of the new program of the Kyrgyz history for the secondary schools published in September 1989 in both Kyrgyz and Russian languages in the Mugalimder Gazetasy (The Teachers' Newspaper), the official media outlet of the Kyrgyz Education Ministry, where the previous Kyrgyz historiography views were challenged by the new ideas.
He was elected as a member of the Board of the Kyrgyz Republic's Public Radio and TV Broadcasting Company (KTRK) by the Kyrgyzstan Parliament on 18 April 2012 and served until the end of the term (April 2017).
He became a member of the official commission for the development of historical science under the Kyrgyz President, established by a decree signed by President Almazbek Atambayev on 25 April 2012.
Political activities In 1990 January and February, Tchoroev (Chorotegin) participated at the protest rally of the democracy-oriented Kyrgyz youth in Bishkek. Then he was one of the main organizers of the round tables with participation of the young Kyrgyz scholars, students and young workers and the Kyrgyz Soviet officials (February – April 1990).
In April, Tchoroev (Chorotegin) became a member of the underground political party of Asaba (Flag), and participated at the first ever anti-Communist rally organized by the party on 1 May 1990 in Bishkek. The columns of the rally participants followed by the officially allowed Communist-run columns through the Central Ala-Too square in Bishkek.
The difference of the Asaba Party's column was in their slogans written on the blue placards demanding to build democracy and to stop the one-party-ruling system in Soviet Kyrgyzstan.
Tchoroev (Chorotegin) was one of the organizers of the Democratic Movement of Kyrgyzstan (Kyrgyzstan Demokratialyk Kyimyly, KDK), the first umbrella bloc for several opposition parties, movements and nongovernmental organizations in Kyrgyzstan (1990 - 1993). (See: Democratic Movement of Kyrgyzstan.)
The founding Congress of the KDK was held in Bishkek on 25–26 May 1990. At the Congress, he presented a report on the Regulations of the KDK (he was the author of the draft of the Regulations. The core ideas of the KDK's Regulations were based upon similar documents of the anti-Communist democratic movements of the Baltic states).
In October 1990, he participated at the international conference of the anti-Communist organizations from several Soviet republics, including some separatist republics, in Kiev. He witnessed the anti-Communist hunger strike of the Ukrainian students there.
In 19–27 October 1990, Tchoroev (Chorotegin) also was amongst organizers and active participants of the similar hunger strike action in Frunze (nowadays Bishkek), the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, organized by the KDK.
The protest action with demands to democratize then the Soviet Central Asian republic, ended with the victory of the democracy-oriented politicians: Askar Akayev, a Kyrgyz academician who started to criticize the ruling Communist regime, was elected by the parliament as the first ever Kyrgyzstan President.
In 1992, he was one of the co-authors of the alternate draft of the post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan Constitution (published in both Kyrgyz and Russian). He was a member of the Free Kyrgyzstan (Erkin Kyrgyzstan) Democratic Party at that time.
At the beginning of 1993, Tchoroev (Chorotegin) ceased all the political activities (including the party membership) due to his journalism duties and scholarly career.
Journalism, literature, and reporting His first political pamphlet was published by the monthly satirical magazine Chalkan (Stinging-Nettle) in October 1974, when he was still a schoolboy. It was written under the influence of the Soviet propaganda apparatus regarding the Western world.
Chorotegin published numerous humorous short stories in Kyrgyz in various newspapers, magazines, almanacs and a small book (1974–1986).
He published numerous reports and journalistic articles on the cultural and social life of Kyrgyzstanis and peoples of Central Asia and China, in both Kyrgyz and Russian.