Talk:Anatolia

Comments

Comment

Could someone put a better map on the page? The current one is nice-looking but it doesn't put the area into a world perspective. If you know what I mean.

The opening section needs to emphasize that Anatolia is a cultural region and home to important places, like Çatalhöyük, IIRC. Starting with its etymology seems odd. It's a place, primarily, not a word.

It's also a place with a strong Pre-Turkish identity.

Boundaries

The maps of the Anatolian peninsula seem to include all of the Asian part of modern Turkey, but as I look on the map, only the part east of the Syrian coast is really a peninsula. So which of the 2 definitions is the historically accurate one?

Maybe the map of Anatolia should show its boundaries, and, if not just the peninsula, an explanation why. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.41.0.50 (talk) 02:41, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes the definition of the actual boundaries of Anatolia make a good question. Because, if you want to refer to Anatolia as a peninsula, you need to stick to a strictly geophysical definition of its boundaries. For example, Italy and Iberia, as peninsulas, have their borders well defined by waters-divides (the Alps and the Pirenees, respectivelly). If you consider the waters-divide as a criteria, then Cilicia, Kurdistan and the historical Armenia will fall completelly off Anatolia as a geophysical conception of peninsula. Unless you chose to consider Anatolia as a geopolitical conception. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.8.71.79 (talk) 00:15, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

sleepinbuff

sleepinbuff Asia Minor

A user added it recently. Edit summary: [1]

63.93.96.62, is that your website?deniz^T_C 22:51, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Anatoli in Lithuanian language means 'the land who is far away' and has nothing to do with the sunrise or rise —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.240.2.136 (talk) 18:10, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Ana, dolu

Hi, Deniz, thanks for fixing my typo. Here is what the cited article says about "Ana, dolu":

No less important a role for national survival is motherhood. At school, boys and girls learn to link men’s military deeds to women’s nurture. This lesson was impressed on fourth-graders in one of their readings, “Anatolia” (Anadolu). The author of the passage traces the etymology of the word “Anatolia” to a legend about a virtuous old woman who serves buttermilk to mobilized Ottoman soldiers. Every time she tells the soldiers “fill up my brave men” (doldurun yig˘itlerim), they answer “Mother, it is full” (Ana, dolu). What is relevant here is not the legendary etymology of the peninsula, but the links between milk and womanhood, on the one hand, and nationhood, on the other. In fact, in a class I attended, some seventh-graders added that mother’s milk gives strength to Turkish soldiers.

The author cites İlkokul Türkçe Ders Kitabı 3 (İstanbul: Media Print, 1990) as a source for this story. Here is another version of that legend: [2]. Of course, "ana dolu" without the comma would mean "full of mothers", but that is not what these sources give as the story. Perhaps there is more than one folk etymology, and another one explains it as "full of mothers". If so, perhaps you could find a source for that story? --Macrakis 22:34, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

There doesn't have to be one or more than one folk etymologies. The root is simple, Ana means mother in Turkish and Dolu means full. But in Turkish, "Ana dolu" completely means "Full of mothers", even the way the word is pronounced. To say "Mother it is full", it has to be "Ana, dolu" but this is not as correct as "full of mothers" 85.101.56.73 22:25, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

85.101.56.73, why are you trying to legitimize one of these two claims by using grammar? We all know that the name of Anatolia comes from the ancient times, not from the Turkish times. It is like Ancyra turning into Ankara. Of course, if we take Sun Language Theory as our approach, these ancient languages also have their roots at Central Asia. Honestly, everybody knows it is a low possibility ;) Deliogul 13:31, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

All of this is very interesting, but the "Sun Language" idea needs to yield to actual linguistics, such as work by Merritt Ruhlen (Stanford). Proto-World is the proper term for the ur-language, and proto-Boreal is the proper term for the language spoken by the out-of-Africa migrants who firsted settled in Asia Minor and then moved up through Anatolia into Europe. DrKamaila (talk) 00:11, 23 November 2007 (UTC)Kamaila

Removed table

I removed this table because it is totally redundant with the "History of Anatolia" box.Dave (talk) 16:23, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Table

Dave, where do you get off removing the table? I liked it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.122.62.231 (talk) 20:27, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Weasel-words in sections of this entry

Hiding historical events behind weasel-worded phrases. Unspecified "events of World War I", we are told, did something also unpecified to "wipe out the indigenous Christian Armenian population of Eastern Anatolia" (leaving every Armenian in northern, southern, central, and western Anatolia alone, presumably). I changed it to the more concise, accurate and wikilinked "Beginning in 1915, the indigenous Christian Armenian population of Anatolia was systematically wiped out", However, it was reverted without explanation.

Also removed was my edit to remove the jargon-phrase "ethnically cleansed", this is not a proper term, and only one source calls it that. If someone wants to rewrite it to say that an author, McCarthy, characterised what happened as, quote, "ethnic cleansing" then do that, but do not reinsert a bald phrase that should not be there, or use colloquialisms like "flocked" (this is not an article about birds), or insert fantasy history, like claiming that the Ottoman empire "collapsed" during the Balkan wars, or that Greeks living in Anatolia only started to be expelled as a result of the Treaty of Lausanne. If someone like McCarthy uses such stupid phrases or such gross generalisations in his books then that is his buisness, but they have no place in an encyclopedia. Meowy 21:16, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Relax, friend. We, too, are trying to write an encyclopedia. It would perhaps help if you not elevate yourself above Justin McCarthy. Accept him as one of the people (like Bernard Lewis, and your own favorites) who have studied and pronounced on this issue. Then approach this article as a negotiation, not as the transcription of a truth which you alone possess.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 03:08, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Some might say that even a humble worm could elevate itself above the level of Justin McCarthy. Please address the issues that I raised, and not your or my opinion of McCarthy. Is it appropriate to use colloquialisms like "flocked", or media-generated jargon like "ethnic cleansing", or have inaccuracies like "collapsed", or euphemisms like "events of WW1"? Meowy 15:54, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

We all know what happened. Call it wiped out, de-populated, ethnically cleansed, moved, forced to move, exchanged, genocided, etc... do not impose your sense of vocabulary and pc on others. You do not actually own these terms. They are common epressions and not quotes. WWI and disintigration of the Ottoman Empire was the real root cause of population moves, both in and out of Anatolia. They did not move because of Lausanne for pete's sake! One of course needs to add all the later groups that were ethnically cleansed from their homes and found refuge in Anatolia in later decades. The events we all watched on cnn. This needs to be further expanded maybe, since the mosaic so rich actually. What part of this does anyone have a problem with?--Murat (talk) 03:26, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Should "events from World War I" be used? The expulsion of the Armenians continued for quite some time after (like in Cilicia). Many also tried to return to their homes, but were not allowed to do so. Studied and pronounced on the issue? Robert Faurisson and David Irving have studied and pronounced as well, but I don't see them on the Holocaust or gas chamber articles. Hakob (talk) 09:31, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

That's why I used "Beginning in 1915", that and the fact that it avoids a resemblence to McCarthy's genocide denialist line that it was all just "events in WW1" (or as the wikipedia entry on him puts it, "subsumes into the general chaos of World War I"). Meowy 16:38, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I think "WWI events" is appropriate as it is a root cause. I have (tried) to list others as well. Population moves continued well into our time of course. What does attempt at returning home have anything with this?--Murat (talk) 12:36, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Murat, sorry I didn't explain why I had removed your material. I did it because it was off-topic here. This is just a general entry for Anatolia, with a subsection of it dealing with its populations. It is not an article about the post WW1 population exchanges so we can't have in this entry detailed stuff like the names of specific islands that are not even in Anatolia. However, I think there is a place to mention population changes in the 20s and 30s and later - such as the continued loss of Anatolia's remaining Armenian population. If there were also Turks or other Muslims arriving from Crimea, Bulgaria, etc, then that too should be mentioned. Meowy 16:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

It is all fine but why so many paragraphs then singaling out Armenians and secondarily Greeks, their specific history and fate and who and when etc., when there was so much (more actually) population movement also involving Muslims and other ethnic groups? Locations are mentioned as they are the origins of people moving in and distinguish them, such as "Ahiska Turks" vs "Crimean Tatars". Maybe there should be a another heading: "Peoples of Anatolia".--Murat (talk) 01:21, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it would be hard to separate out "Peoples of Anatolia" material from the "history" section without having a lot of duplication. Trouble is this is just a general article about Anatolia and there won't be space to consider things in detail. Regarding incoming Turks in the modern period, if they did not change the culture or ethnic makeup of Anatolia, for example if Anatolia was 95% Turkish and 100,000 Turks arrive from Bulgaria making it 95.1% Turkish, then should they be mentioned at all? However, some Muslim groups, like Chechens or Circasians, kept and still keep their ethnic identity. Meowy 20:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Very rarely did the refugees from the Caucasus "keep their ethnic identity." Many Turks do remember that their ancestors came from these areas, but they view themselves as Turks, and seldom speak a Caucasian language. Assimilation worked very well, much like it did with early waves of European immigrants to the United States. The article Turkification deals with assimilation in Anatolia, though it currently focuses on assimilation during the Seljuk period, when Armenians and other autochthonous peoples converted to Islam and adopted the Turkish language.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 12:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

can we add an image of an ancient coin?

I added some content about Asia Minor being the birthplace of coinage and a link to my site about this interesting subject. It would be great to upload an image of an early ancient (gold) coin that was minted in Ephesos for demonstration of the point. How can we do that? Would that be of interest to the article? Syennesis (talk) 13:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

You will have to provide a proper reference for that claim, and not just a link to your website. Meowy 20:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

That's fairly easy to do. It's common knwoledge really that the first coin was minted and used as a currency in Lydia.-- Ευπάτωρ ^Talk!! 20:43, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It might be common knowledge to Classical coin collectors, but it won't be to anyone else! Meowy 14:21, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there are many books on the subject and the site is devoted to the subject as a whole (we also have many references listed at Reference page). But many thanks to the user who provided the Howgego reference on Lydian coinage, though I might add that Ephesos also has a claim to the proposition (a coin of which I was going to post). Syennesis (talk) 09:37, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

It has always been my understanding that the Lydian one predated the Ephesos coin?-- Ευπάτωρ ^Talk!! 20:23, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I would agree that electrum was first found (and probably traded) in Lydia, but it is an open question where those naturally occurring chunks of metal (found on riverbanks) were first standardized in weight and struck with some insignia. Much recent evidence points to Ionia, with Ephesos being the natural candidate as the main city of the time. Please take a look at these coins - Ionia Uncertain. They appear (based on style and fabric) to be older than the traditional Lydian lions (at least to me). I believe the recent archeological evidence also points to Ephesos as being settled earlier than previously thought, and certainly the finds at the Temple of Artemis (The Phanes Hoard - see here) reveal that electrum coins were struck at Ephesos at a very early time -- we are talking about mid to late 7th century BC. Syennesis (talk) 05:37, 5 October 2008 (UTC)