Turkish people
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- This article is about the ethnic Turks of Turkey. For information on residents or nationals of Turkey, see People of Turkey and Demographics of Turkey. Refer to the disambiguation page Turk for other uses of the term.
| File:Turks2.jpg | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Turkey: 58,700,000 Germany: 25,000 | |
| Languages | |
| Turkish | |
| Religion | |
| Predominantly Muslim or nominally Muslim. Small numbers of adherents of Christianity and Judaism. Many have Atheistic or Agnostic beliefs | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Other Turkic peoples Oghuz Turks |
The modern Turks of Turkey (or simply Turkish people) are Turkic inhabitants of the country of Turkey.
A brief historical overview
It All Started with Sam "the turk" Gittins
Some of the earliest known inhabitants include the Hattians also known as Hattis, 2500-2000 BCE, who were quite possibly an aboriginal people of Anatolia. They were followed by the Hittites, 2000-1750 BCE, an Indo-European people from the steppes of modern Russia and the Ukraine, who merged with the local population. Later invaders included Phrygians, Lydians, Assyrians, Urartians, Armenians, Kurds, Greeks, Romans, Galatians, Byzantines, Mongols, Arabs and of course Turkic tribes.
The Oğuz were the main Turkic people who moved into Anatolia after 1072 CE. Small bands of Turks began their migration following the victory of the Seljuks, led by Alp Arslan, against the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert and this paved the way for Turkish dominance in Anatolia. This also marked the beginning of the decline of the Byzantine empire. In the centuries after Manzikert, the relatively small number of Turkic immigrants began to assimilate local populations as their numbers grew. Anatolia was an ethnic mosaic, a region with a wide variety of peoples, but dominated by the Greek-speaking Byzantines (who were themselves Hellenized Anatolians) and other prominent regional groups such as Armenians, Kurds, and others. Over time, as word spread regarding the victory of the Turks in Anatolia, more Turkic ghazis arrived from the Caucasus, Arab lands and Central Asia. These groups in turn merged with the local inhabitants as a slow process of conversion to Islam took place, thanks in large measure to the efforts of the sufis, that helped to bolster the Turkish-speaking population. While most historians believe that the actual migration of Turks was relatively small, genetic testing has revealed that as much as 30% of Turks have varying degrees of Central Asian ancestry.[15] These migrations and later populations movements would continue to impact the modern Turkish people as the rise of the Ottoman Empire made Turkey into a world power and a focal point for a wide variety of peoples.
The Modern Turks
The Turks of Turkey can be broken down into a variety of segments and the majority of self-identifying Turks include four main groupings: Rumelian Turks who are mostly of Balkan origin, Anatolian Turks who compose the bulk of ethnic Turks found in Anatolia, Central Asian Turks who remain a large segment of the population that has been moving to Turkey for centuries, and Eurasian Turks from Russia and the Caucasus such as the Tatars and Azerbaijanis. These Turks share similar languages and cultures.
Turkish phenotypes and diversity
While the majority of Turks do bear a common brunette Mediterranean appearance similar to that of neighboring countries, there are large visible exceptions that are a testament to the legacy of population movements into the region. People walking in a Turkish street or watching a Turkish movie can see Turks of about all physical types prevalent in the country, from the blond haired and-blue-eyed to the Asiatic Mongol individuals, and even people with some partial black African roots, from the times when the Ottoman Empire stretched into Sudan. Turkey, like so many other vast former imperialist powers such as the Romans and the British, in part reflects its imperial past.
Proving the difficulty of classifying ethnicities living in Turkey, there are as many classifications as the number of scientific attempts to make these classifications. Turkey is not a unique example for that and many European countries (e.g. France, Germany) bear a similar ethnic diversity. So, the immense variety observed in the published figures for the percentages of Turkish people living in Turkey (ranging from 75 to 97%) totally depends on the method used to classify the ethnicities. Complicating the matter even more is the fact that the last official and country-wide classification of spoken languages (which do not exactly coincide with ethnic groups) in Turkey that was performed in 1965 and many of the figures published after that time are remain static estimates. It is necessary to take into account all these difficulties and be cautious while evaluating the ethnic identity of the Turks of Turkey. A possible comprehensive list of ethnic origins for Turks living in Turkey could be as follows (based on the classification of P.A. Andrews (1), however this book is more like a review and depends on other people's publications):
- Turkic-speaking peoples: Kirghiz, Karakalpaks, Turkmens, Kazakhs, Kumyks, Yürüks, Uzbeks, Tatars, Azeris, Balkars, Uighurs, Karachays.
- Kurds and Zaza
- Arabs
- Syriacs (in Turkish: Süryani; also called Arameans, Assyrians, Chaldeans)
- Georgians and Laz
- Armenians and Hamshenis
- Greeks, Pontic Greeks and Greek-speaking Muslims
- Other Muslim groups originally from the Balkans (Bulgarians, Albanians, Serbians, Croatians, Romanians and Bosniaks): These people migrated to Anatolia during the Ottoman Era as well as following recent upheaveals in Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia and most have been assumed to accept a Turkish-Muslim identity.
- Circassians and Chechens
- Others: There are small groups and individuals from all over the world living in Turkey, either remnants of past migrations (there is for instance a village near the Bosphorus named Adampol in Polish, Polonezköy, "the Polish village", in Turkish, and there is also a group of Bosphorus Germans) or witnesses of contemporary mass migrations towards the European Union and its periphery (there are also illegal migrants camps with thousands of Africans and others intercepted while trying to embark, or swimming from the wreckage of overpopulated small boats, for the Greek or Italian shores).
References
- Bosworth, Clifford E. The History of the Seljuq Turks: From the Jami al-Tawarikh.
- Findley, Carter Vaughn. The Turks in World History.
- Petkova, Lilia. The Ethnic Turks in Bulgaria: Social Integration and Impact on Bulgaria-Turkish Relations, 1947-2000.
- Shaw, George Stanford. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey.
- Ethnologue report for the Turkish language
- DNA Diversity in Turkey
- Germany's Second Doubts Abouts its Turkish population
- Mitochondrial DNA sequence variation in the Anatolian Peninsula (Turkey)
- The NGM Study "Who were the Phoenicians" and the Return of the Phoenicians (includes links of modern Turks and some ties to the Ancient Phoencians)
- Turkey: Country Studies from the US Library of Congress
- BBC News Country Profile for Turkey
- Council of Europe's Turkey Page