CHAT: Qipchaq as a lingua franca?

Pan-Turkism is alive and well.

I just read in a Wikipedia article that a large number of Turkic people in
Russia and other former Soviet republics are using a form of a West Turkic
language, Qipchaq (or Kypchak), as a lingua franca. The language is called
_yeni qipchaq_ (I think), currently written in the Cyrillic alphabet which
is to be replaced by the Latin-Turkish alphabet. The languages united by
this are Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Karakalpak, the Tatar dialects, Bashkir, Nogay and
Kumyk. This does not include Southern Turkic languages like Anatolian and
Gagauz Turkish, Turkmen or Azeri; neither East Turkic languages like Uzbek
and Uighur.

A few links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Kypchak_Language
http://www.kipchak.com/
http://www.unesco.kz/qypchaq/Home.htm
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Kypchak_Renaissance/
(Don't click the link that says 'Qipchaq language linx' unless you want to
be led to a bunch of popups instead.)

Which means that all the West Turkic languages may essentially be different
dialects of the same language after all, like I kinda expected.

Anybody have more information on this? And could there be a lingua franca
for Southern/Oghuz, Eastern/Chagatai and Northern Turkic languages? Will
Bulgar/Chuvash be left out? And are some nationalists proposing resurrecting
the pre-Islamic Kök Turki runes?

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