Mongols (Mongolian:  Монголчууд (help·info)), Mongolchuud) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. Owing to wars and migrations, Mongols are also found in some Central Asian states such as Kazakhstan. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia (a smaller number of Mongols can also be found in Xinjiang in northwest China). The Buryat branch of the Mongol ethnic group can be found in the autonomous republic of Buryatia, Russia. Ethnic Mongols are bound together by a common language and culture. They speak languages belonging to the Mongolic languages. The contiguous territories inhabited by ethnic Mongols is also known as Greater Mongolia^{[disambiguation needed ]}. There are approximately 10 million ethnic Mongols in total.

A definition includes the Mongols proper, who can be approximately divided into the eastern Mongols (the Khalkha Mongols, the Inner Mongolians, the Buryats), and the Oirats. In a wider sense, the Mongol people includes all people who speak a Mongolic language, such as the Kalmyks of eastern Europe.

The Chahar (Mongol: Цахар) is a subgroup of the Mongol people that speak the Chahar dialect of the Mongolian language and predominantly live in southeastern Inner Mongolia.

The Chahars were originally one of estates of Kublai Khan located around Jingzhao (now Xi'an). They moved from Shaanxi to southeastern region controlled by the Mongolia-based Northern Yuan Dynasty in the 15th century. The Chahar became a tümen of six tümen Mongols under Dayan Khan and were led by his successors, thus becoming personal appanage of the Mongolian Khans.

Oppressed by Altan Khan, the Chahars, led by Darayisung Gödeng Khan, moved eastward onto the Liao River in the middle of the 16th century. In the early 17th century Ligden Khan made an expedition to the west because of the Manchu pressure. When he died in Gansu on his way to Tibet, his son Ejei surrendered to the Manchus in 1635.

The Chahar royal family kept favorable relations with the Manchu imperial family until Makata gege, who was a daughter of Hong Taiji and married to the Chahar Mongol prince, died in 1663. When the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories erupted in 1673, the Chahar Mongol prince revolted against the Qing Dynasty. He was soon crushed and, as a result, the Chahar Mongols were reorganized into the Chahar Eight Banners and moved to around Zhangjiakou Hill. The Chahar Mongols did not belong to a league but were directly controlled by the Emperor. The Qing authority resettled part of them from suburbs of Hohhot and Dolonnur to Ili after the fall of the Zunghar Khanate in c. 1758. They were largely mixed with Ööled and Torguud of the region.

The Turkic peoples are a collection of ethnic groups that live in northern, central and western Asia, 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. The term Turkic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people including existing societies such as the Turkish, Azerbaijani, Chuvashes, Kazakhs, Tatars, Kyrgyzs, Turkmens, Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Bashkirs, Qashqai, Gagauzs, Yakuts, Crimean Karaites, Krymchaks, Karakalpaks, Karachays, Nogais and as well as past civilizations such as the Göktürks, Kumans, Kipchaks, Avars, Bulgars, Turgeshes, Khazars, Seljuk Turks, Ottoman Turks, Mamluks, Timurids and possibly Huns and the Xiongnu.

The distribution of people of Turkic cultural background ranges from Siberia, across Central Asia, to Eastern Europe. As of 2011^[update] the largest groups of Turkic people live throughout Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan, in addition to Turkey and Iran. Additionally, Turkic people are found within Crimea, East Turkistan region of western China, northern Iraq, Pakistan, Israel, Russia, Afghanistan, and the Balkans: Moldova, Bulgaria, Romania, and former Yugoslavia. A small number of Turkic people also live in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Small numbers inhabit eastern Poland and the south-eastern part of Finland. There are also considerable populations of Turkic people (originating mostly from Turkey) in Germany, United States, and Australia, largely because of migrations during the 20th century.