Talk:Iraqi Turkmen

Ethnologue/ "Leclerc 2014b"

Ethnologue states that there is "Azerbaijani, South" and "Turkmen" spoken in Iraq. It cites "Leclerc 2014b" to support this, which is actually this questionable source (you can also find this link on Ethnologue's bibliography page). Unfortunately, "Leclerc 2014b" does not provide ANY linguistic sources in its bibliography; rather, it uses mostly political/historical citations -- which raises questions as to why Ethnologue would use this as a "linguistic source". More questionable is the inconsistencies and incorrect claims; for example, at first the source says that Azeris form 4% of the population and then further down the article it changes to 5.9%. I have not found a single academic source supporting these claims. The source also claims that Turkmen form 1% of the population (yet official Iraqi statistics have placed the Turkmen as 9% of the population); and then the source says that "The Turkmen are Sunni", later then changing to "Sunni and Shiite Turkmens". Despite all these inconsistencies, the source claims that the Iraqi Turkmen speak Turkmen, and that this [imagined] Azeri community speak South Azerbaijani; it does not claim that Iraqi Turkmen speak South Azeri. For this reason, I have removed Ethnologue from this article. Selçuk Denizli (talk) 17:08, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Also, I want to mention that Ethnologue has a track record for citing incorrectly. It had previously claimed that there was 50,000 Turkish speakers in Bosnia. This was later corrected and the reply can be found on Talk:Turks in Bosnia and Herzegovina.Selçuk Denizli (talk) 17:10, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

@Selçuk Denizli: Ethnologue is not the only source that describes the Oghuz varieties spoken by the Iraqi Turkmen as being closer to Azeri than to Turkish (so does Doerfer and many others cited in the "Language" section). I do not understand why you are coming back to this issue after a rather exhaustive discussion here, which ended in quite a suitable compromise that you (among others) agreed to. In particular, I am curious as to your reasons for adding a whole sub-section on "Politicization" based on a single opinion by Bulut (whose opinion appears to be in the minority regarding the statements she makes about "Turcological literature" to begin with), which already violates WP:REDFLAG and WP:WEIGHT. Not only did you cherry-pick the information (Bulut does not say that publications from Azerbaijan are the only ones to classify Iraqi Turkmen dialects as Azeri), you also removed the word "often" from the quote, making it seem that any publication dealing with the Iraqi Turkmen that comes from Azerbaijan is necessarily politically biased. The section of "Politicization" is heavily POV in its current state; I suggest integrating it into the "Language" section. Parishan (talk) 18:46, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Find me one source that claims that Azeris make up 5.9% of Iraq's population and then we can talk further about Ethnologue. Otherwise I don't have time for all this Azeri nationalist nonsense. The article already uses the word "often" -- I haven't removed that: "Professor Christiane Bulut has argued that publications from Azerbaijan often use expressions such as...". I wont be wasting my time with you. But funny how this source is suddenly unreliable when many of you used Bulut in the past to claim that she called the language South Azeri (she probably saw the stupidity of Wikipedia and then decided to clarify herself furhter!). Bulut is hardly a "cherry-picking" sources; she has the most publications on the Iraqi Turkmen dialects! Also, Iraqi Turkmen scholar Professor Suphi Saatçi agrees that the terms used are politicized. Not a minority view. Selçuk Denizli (talk) 15:10, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Also, I don't see why you need to go on about Doerfer; it's already in the article (despite the questionable number of publications from Baku in his bibliography). That was part of the compromise. Selçuk Denizli (talk) 15:12, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

@Selçuk Denizli: I do not understand why are you taking this confrontational tone with me. Please familiarise yourself with WP:CIVILITY. I also do not know what you mean by "many of you"; there is only one of me, and I am trying to have a discussion here. If you think Wikipedia is "stupid", then I do not know what you are doing here in the first place. However, let us get on with the main issue:

1. I did not say Bulut was unreliable. I said that Bulut represents a minority opinion because no other source denies the link between the language of the Iraqi Turkmen and Azeri (which is what you are claiming here), and there are at least half-a-dozen sources that disagree with that statement. Dedicating a whole section to an exceptional claim based on a single article violates WP:WEIGHT. Bulut's reference can be kept but it should be integrated into the general language section, and it should be specifically noted that this is only her opinion because she clearly does not cite anyone to support the claim. If Doerfer has to go into the Language section, according to you, then why should not Bulut? The phrase "despite the questionable number of publications from Baku", incidentally, is an extremely POV thing to say - what is the scientific authority you rely on when you question an established scholar's choice of sources?
2. A good example of cherry-picking is the reference to Heidi Stein in the Language section, which is misinterpreted completely. On p. 244 of her article on modality in Irano-Turkic varieties, she mentions that from the point of view of the use of the optative mood, the Iraqi Turkmen dialect she studies is generally closer to Turkey Turkish than to Tabriz Azeri. This modest statement about a single grammatical instance is cited here as Stein generally claiming that "Iraqi Turkmen has greater proximity to Turkish of Turkey".
3. Saatçı does not say anywhere in his article that identifying the language variety spoken by the Iraqi Turkmen as Azeri is "politicisation", so you cannot lump these two arguments together. Saatçı is not a linguist and his opinion falls into the general discussion of the status of the Iraqi Turkmen people in Iraq that is addressed in the Post-Ottoman era section. The arguments advanced by Bulut and Saatçı do not even deal with the same issue; in fact, they contradict each other because Bulut insists that the Turkmen of Iraq call themselves and their language Turkmen (same page as the above reference), while Saatçı claims that the term "Turkmen" was artificially introduced in the 1950s. In any event, right now, the section looks very POV, making it look like the Iraqi Turkmen being equal to Ottoman Turks is the by-default opinion, and all dissent, however scientific, must be labelled as "politicisation". This was not part of the compromise; you added this section without addressing it in the discussion. Parishan (talk) 20:01, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

You accused me of removing the word "often" when it is clearly there. Bulut has never denied similarities between the Iraqi Turkmen dialects and Azeri (nor do I). Both fall under Western Oghuz Turkic, so of course they have similarities! But that does not give Azeri nationalists (I'm not suggesting you are one of them) the right to portray Iraqi Turkmens (ethnically or linguistically) as Azerbaijanis. It's far beyond the reality in Iraq. Saatçı's comments about the use of the term "Turkmen/Turkman" is historically valid; prior to the military coup, "Turkish" was recognized as a minority language. This is fact, not an academic opinion. Wikipedia itself has so much potential, but unfortunately this article has suffered from a lot of Azeri nationalism; it has become very frustrating for me to witness this for almost a year now. Why is it so difficult to accept the reality? Iraqi Turkmen dialects vary region to region; they have unique characteristics as well as influence from Ottoman Turkish, Modern Turkish, and neighboring Azeri (from Iran not Azerbaijan). Selçuk Denizli (talk) 14:52, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I just want to point out the article on the Iraqi Turkmen singer Sinan Erbil to you (before I edit it). Some user decides to portray him as "fluent" in South Azeri and a singer of Azerbaijani music. Where are the sources? If you look at the history of the Turkmeneli TV article you would see that again someone said that the languages used are "Azerbaijani and Turkish", again totally out of touch with the reality (when the official website says Turkish and Arabic). Selçuk Denizli (talk) 15:13, 9 September 2019 (UTC)