UIGHURISTAN: Hoja Niyaz Haji, 1933-1934, AE 20 cash, Kashgar, AH1352, Y-E38.1, PCGS graded VF35. The First East Turkistan Republic, officially the Islamic Republic of East Turkistan, was a short-lived breakaway would-be Islamic republic founded on 12 November 1933. It was centered on the city of Kashgar in what is today the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. With the sacking of Kashgar in 1934 by Hui warlords nominally allied with the Kuomintang government in Nanjing, the First East Turkistan Republic was effectively eliminated.