Post by yenilira on Nov 24, 2011 21:54:02 GMT 1
The simplest questions can be the most difficult to answer.
The Turks are obviously a people separate from other peoples, but a people can be defined in many ways-language, religion, cultural traits, citizenship, loyalty to a ruling house, or many other feelings of kinship.
The Turks of today are citizens of the Turkish Republic. The name Turk is also used to describe the people in Turkey who share the distinctive Turkish culture, especially the Turkish language, which all Turkish citizens do not share, no more than all Americans speak English.
Or a Turk can also mean a member of the great linguistic and cultural family of the Turks, a family that stretches from China to Europe, bound together by language and history. The best way to define a Turk may be to consider which people make up the Turks of Turkey and how they defined themselves politically, first as subjects of the Ottoman Empire, then as citizens of the Turkish Republic.
The original speakers of the Turkish language lived in Central Asia. They roamed as nomads over a vast region that today lies in Siberia, Western China, and Kazakhstan and other ex-republics of the U.S.S.R. They were known at an early time to both the Chinese and the Middle Eastern Persians and Arabs, but they first appeared in the Middle East in large numbers, as nomadic soldiers, in the tenth century.
Finding the Middle East more pleasant than the cold steppes of Central Asia, they remained.
The Turks had converted to Islam while in Central Asia. Although some of the Turks in history had been Christians and Jews, Islam became the religion of the vast majority and remains so today.
The Turkish nomads expanded westward under the leadership of the Seljuk family of sultans. The Seljuks quickly took Iran and Iraq, capturing Baghdad, the capital of the old Abbasid Empire, in 1055.
Their forces were unlike what is ordinarily thought of as an army. The first Seljuk troops were nomads who brought all their lives with them - families, dwellings (tents), animals, and belongings. They were at home wherever the pastures were good for their sheep. Relatively soon after their arrival so many Turks had come that the region to the southwest of the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, was Turkish.
Large groups of Turks were also spread over other regions of Iran and Iraq.
These nomads did not stop once Iran and Iraq were conquered as they were soon raiding into the Byzantine Empire, which lay to the west of Iran, in Anatolia. In 1071, the Byzantine defeat to the Seljuks in a great battle at Manzikert opened Anatolia to Turkish settlement.
Over the next two hundred years the nomads kept moving into Anatolia in great numbers. Although the Turks themselves did not use the term, Anatolia had become Turkey.
Many other peoples remained there: Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, and others shared the land, and many of them adopted the Turkish language, converted to Islam (forced conversion was almost unknown), and became Turks themselves.
Because the Turks had no concept of "race" that would exclude anyone, they accepted those who wished to be Turks as Turks. The Turkish people were thus made up of the descendants of the Turks of Central Asia and those who had become Turks.
Nineteenth and early twentieth century refugees added to the numbers of Turks in Anatolia. In the time of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish population had spread throughout the Balkans. The descendants of these Turks lived for five hundred years in the areas of today's Bulgaria, Greece, and other countries of Southeastern Europe. Large numbers of these Turks were either killed or exiled when the countries rebelled against the Ottoman Empire and became independent. Russian invasions of the Ottoman Balkans and the creation of new Balkan states resulted in the expulsion of more than a million Turks. The exiles eventually settled in Anatolia and Eastern Thrace.
The Russians were also responsible for the immigration of more than two million Turks and other Muslims from the Crimea and the Caucasus Region. Both regions were overwhelmingly Muslim in population.
This then brings us to the years of the Balkan Wars, through the War of Independence, both of which are well-documented, to the formation of the Republic of Turkey (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti) in October 1923.
The Turks are obviously a people separate from other peoples, but a people can be defined in many ways-language, religion, cultural traits, citizenship, loyalty to a ruling house, or many other feelings of kinship.
The Turks of today are citizens of the Turkish Republic. The name Turk is also used to describe the people in Turkey who share the distinctive Turkish culture, especially the Turkish language, which all Turkish citizens do not share, no more than all Americans speak English.
Or a Turk can also mean a member of the great linguistic and cultural family of the Turks, a family that stretches from China to Europe, bound together by language and history. The best way to define a Turk may be to consider which people make up the Turks of Turkey and how they defined themselves politically, first as subjects of the Ottoman Empire, then as citizens of the Turkish Republic.
The original speakers of the Turkish language lived in Central Asia. They roamed as nomads over a vast region that today lies in Siberia, Western China, and Kazakhstan and other ex-republics of the U.S.S.R. They were known at an early time to both the Chinese and the Middle Eastern Persians and Arabs, but they first appeared in the Middle East in large numbers, as nomadic soldiers, in the tenth century.
Finding the Middle East more pleasant than the cold steppes of Central Asia, they remained.
The Turks had converted to Islam while in Central Asia. Although some of the Turks in history had been Christians and Jews, Islam became the religion of the vast majority and remains so today.
The Turkish nomads expanded westward under the leadership of the Seljuk family of sultans. The Seljuks quickly took Iran and Iraq, capturing Baghdad, the capital of the old Abbasid Empire, in 1055.
Their forces were unlike what is ordinarily thought of as an army. The first Seljuk troops were nomads who brought all their lives with them - families, dwellings (tents), animals, and belongings. They were at home wherever the pastures were good for their sheep. Relatively soon after their arrival so many Turks had come that the region to the southwest of the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, was Turkish.
Large groups of Turks were also spread over other regions of Iran and Iraq.
These nomads did not stop once Iran and Iraq were conquered as they were soon raiding into the Byzantine Empire, which lay to the west of Iran, in Anatolia. In 1071, the Byzantine defeat to the Seljuks in a great battle at Manzikert opened Anatolia to Turkish settlement.
Over the next two hundred years the nomads kept moving into Anatolia in great numbers. Although the Turks themselves did not use the term, Anatolia had become Turkey.
Many other peoples remained there: Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, and others shared the land, and many of them adopted the Turkish language, converted to Islam (forced conversion was almost unknown), and became Turks themselves.
Because the Turks had no concept of "race" that would exclude anyone, they accepted those who wished to be Turks as Turks. The Turkish people were thus made up of the descendants of the Turks of Central Asia and those who had become Turks.
Nineteenth and early twentieth century refugees added to the numbers of Turks in Anatolia. In the time of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish population had spread throughout the Balkans. The descendants of these Turks lived for five hundred years in the areas of today's Bulgaria, Greece, and other countries of Southeastern Europe. Large numbers of these Turks were either killed or exiled when the countries rebelled against the Ottoman Empire and became independent. Russian invasions of the Ottoman Balkans and the creation of new Balkan states resulted in the expulsion of more than a million Turks. The exiles eventually settled in Anatolia and Eastern Thrace.
The Russians were also responsible for the immigration of more than two million Turks and other Muslims from the Crimea and the Caucasus Region. Both regions were overwhelmingly Muslim in population.
This then brings us to the years of the Balkan Wars, through the War of Independence, both of which are well-documented, to the formation of the Republic of Turkey (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti) in October 1923.