formiko wrote:
The Turkic languages are one of my least studied language families, although I think Turkish itself is fascinating. I somehow lump all Turkish languages together (soft of like Scandinavian languages, but truly, how close are they? I'd like this answered by a native or someone who is very familiar with the family. Can an Uzbek read aTurkish newspaper?? Can a Kazakh understand a Turkish conversation? I'üe met quite a few Turks who say those languages are like Chinese to them, but I always sensed a tone of derision and they may not have been completely truthful (for political reasons probably)
I'm not a native or fluent speaker of any Turkic language nor am I an expert but I'll reply anyway.

The Turkic languages are subdivided in to several groups: Arghu, Kypchak, Oghur, Oghuz, Siberian, & Uyghuric. Generally, mutual intelligibility is limited to within each group. For example, Turkish, Azerbaijani & Turkmen are all Oghuz languages & there is strong mutually intelligibility. Uyghur & Uzbek are both Uyghuric but mutual intelligibility is a bit weaker mainly because Uzbek has been bombarded with Persian, specifically Tajik, influence. Kazakh & Kyrgyz are also close, but this also because of language convergence.
In general, a monolingual Turkish speaker probably wouldn't be able to converse with a monolingual Uyghur or Tatar speaker & definitely not with a Chuvash or Tuvan speaker.
Reading is also an issue, because many Turkic languages use different scripts. While Turkish & Azerbaijani use primarily Latin, Uyghur uses primarily Arabic while Kazakh & Kyrgyz use Cyrillic.