Turanid race is a now obsolete term, originally intended to cover populations of Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

 associated with the spread of the Turanian languages, that is the combination of the Uralic

Uralic languages

The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...

 and Altaic

Altaic languages

Altaic is a proposed language family that includes the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Japonic language families and the Korean language isolate. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe...

 families (hence also "Ural–Altaic race"), in human genetics

Human genetics

Human genetics describes the study of inheritance as it occurs in human beings. Human genetics encompasses a variety of overlapping fields including: classical genetics, cytogenetics, molecular genetics, biochemical genetics, genomics, population genetics, developmental genetics, clinical genetics,...

, physical anthropology

Physical anthropology

Biological anthropology is that branch of anthropology that studies the physical development of the human species. It plays an important part in paleoanthropology and in forensic anthropology...

 and historically in scientific racism

Scientific racism

Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the belief in racial superiority or racism.This is not the same as using scientific findings and the scientific method to investigate differences among the humans and argue that there are races...

.

The latter usage implies the existence of a Turanid racial type or "minor race", subtype of the Europid race with Mongoloid admixtures, situated at the boundary of the distribution of the Mongolid and Europid "great races".
The idea of a Turanid race came to play a role of some significance in Pan-Turkism

Pan-Turkism

Pan-Turkism is a nationalist movement that emerged in 1880s among the Turkic intellectuals of the Russian Empire, with the aim of cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples.-Name:...

 or "Turanism

Turanism

Turanism, or Pan-Turanism, is a political movement for the union of all Turanian peoples. It implies not merely the unity of all Turkic peoples , but also the unification of a wider Turanid "race", also known as the controversial Uralo-Altaic "race," believed to include all peoples speaking...

" in the late 19th to 20th century. A "Turkish race" was proposed as an Europid subtype in European literature of the period.

This literature was absorbed by the Ottoman elite, and was partly even translated into Ottoman Turkish

Ottoman Turkish language

The Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...

, contributing to the idea of an essence of "Turkishness" (Türklük) the honour of which came to be protected under Turkish law until the revision of article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code

Article 301 (Turkish penal code)

Article 301 is a controversial article of the Turkish Penal Code making it illegal to insult Turkey, the Turkish ethnicity, or Turkish government institutions...

 in April 2008.
The most influential of these sources were Histoire Générale des Huns, des Turcs, des Mongoles, et autres Tartares Occidenteaux (1756–1758) by Joseph de Guignes

Joseph de Guignes

Joseph de Guignes , French orientalist and sinologist, was born at Pontoise, the son of Jean Louis de Guignes and Françoise Vaillant. He died in Paris....

 (1721–1800) , and Sketches of Central Asia (1867) by Ármin Vámbéry

Ármin Vámbéry

Ármin Vámbéry, Arminius Vámbéry born Hermann Bamberger, or Bamberger Ármin , was a Hungarian orientalist and traveler...

 (1832–1913), which was on the common origins of Turkic groups as belonging to one race, but subdivided according to physical traits and customs, and l’histoire de l’Asie (1896) by Leon Cahun (1841–1900), which stressed the role of Turks in "carrying civilization to Europe", as a part of the greater "Turanid race" that included the Uralic and Altaic speaking peoples more generally. There was also an ideology of Hungarian Turanism

Hungarian Turanism

Hungarian Turanism is a Hungarian nationalist ideology which stresses the alleged origins of the Hungarian people in the steppes of Central Asia and the affinity of the Hungarians with Asian peoples such as the Turks. The idea of the necessity of "Turanian brotherhood/collaboration" was borrowed...

 in Hungarian fascism.

See also

• Csángó
  Csángó
  The Csango people are a Hungarian ethnographic group of Roman Catholic faith living mostly in the Romanian region of Moldavia, especially in the Bacău County...
  
  
• Eurasian Avars
  Eurasian Avars
  The Eurasian Avars or Ancient Avars were a highly organized nomadic confederacy of mixed origins. They were ruled by a khagan, who was surrounded by a tight-knit entourage of nomad warriors, an organization characteristic of Turko-Mongol groups...
  
  
• Hungarian people
• Huns
  Huns
  The Huns were a group of nomadic people who, appearing from east of the Volga River, migrated into Europe c. AD 370 and established the vast Hunnic Empire there. Since de Guignes linked them with the Xiongnu, who had been northern neighbours of China 300 years prior to the emergence of the Huns,...
  
  
• Iranid
• Pamirid
• Szekely
  Székely
  The Székelys or Székely , sometimes also referred to as Szeklers , are a subgroup of the Hungarian people living mostly in the Székely Land, an ethno-cultural region in eastern Transylvania, Romania...
  
  
• Ural–Altaic languages
• Turanian
• Turanian Society
  Turanian Society
  Turanian Society , a society founded in 1839 by Tatars, aiming at uniting the various Turkic peoples of the Russian Empire.The name is derived from Turan, an ancient Persian name for the land to the East of Iran where many Turkic peoples live, and Turan, the goal of an all Turks uniting state.The...
  
  
• Turanism
  Turanism
  Turanism, or Pan-Turanism, is a political movement for the union of all Turanian peoples. It implies not merely the unity of all Turkic peoples , but also the unification of a wider Turanid "race", also known as the controversial Uralo-Altaic "race," believed to include all peoples speaking...
  
  
• Turkic peoples
  Turkic peoples
  The Turkic peoples are peoples residing in northern, central and western Asia, southern Siberia and northwestern China and parts of eastern Europe. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family. They share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds...