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There I dont really see anything wrong with either picture. However maybe a picture with at least 1 Turkish women might be better? (just a suggestion) DivineIntervention 00:39, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Oh, you guys need to read this...
...the Yuruks. These Anatolian shepherds, nominally Moslems, grazed their flocks in the hinterland of Asia Minor for centuries before the Seldjuks came; they even paid return migrations, now and then as far as Macedonia. No wonder, then, that some of the aura of a fable hangs about the Sarakatsans.."
...The Greek historiography usually encourages the stereotype according to which the Ottomans are presented as conquering Greece from the "Greeks". It has to be understood -to refer only to the Mainland Greece- that neither the major -at that time- city of Salonica (which was a Venetian possession seven years prior to the final Ottoman conquest) nor Athens, which was in the hands of the Florentines, and previously in those of the Catalan Company of Pedro when the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet finally entered it (and has been continuously held by the Catholic ‘Franks’ since 1204) were "Greek" at the time of their sacking by the Turk. The native population, though partly -at surface- Greek speaking, was a complex motley of ethnicities lacking unity or homogeneity despite the attempt of the central Byzantine government to subdue them through taxation, recruitment in the armies, relegating them to the status of parikoi, or dilute their specificity by ascribing (or converting) them to the Greek language officiating Orthodox Church. This heterogeneity rendering the locals passive made even easier for the incisive nomads who were the Yuruk to deeply penetrate Greece and the Balkans.
Source:
http://www.vlachophiles.net/conf.htm (Balkan Borderlands and endless paths: Vlach-Yuruk-Sarakatsani confluences in Rhodope and Macedonia)
People with prior knowledge of Sarikechili, Karakechili, Karakoyunlu will immediately recognize these people. AverageTurkishJoe 02:36, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
To my friends:
I think we should remove the "smyrna" page.There is only one İzmir.We should hinder these seperatist and unfair propagandas of someones(!) -Inanna-
Also see: Yoruk
AverageTurkishJoe 12:51, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
I am writing a draft for the opening paragraphs of this article. Please respond by your comments and concerns since this draft is drastically changing the content by removing the "debate" about "how Turkish the Turks of Turkey are".
Turkish people are the current inhabitants of Asia Minor. Conquest of Asia Minor by the Turks and its transformation into the "Home of the Turks" has always been a contentious issue for the Europeans. In some circles it still is incomprehensible and sometimes intolerable. It is customarily assumed that Asia Minor of the eleventh century must still have been highly urbanized cultivated and Hellenized Asia Minor of the Roman times. However even in the antiquity geographical conditions did not allow the same level of development in the central and eastern Anatolia as the Aegean costs. Even today, western provinces of Turkey in general are remakably more developed compared to the eastern ones. We do not have accurate knowledge of conditions of the central and eastern provinces in the antiquity, whatever they might have been the continued wars against the Arabs and the Persians had profoundly changed Anatolia and the eastern parts were impacted the most. For generations, vast areas, particularly on both sides of the Taurus and Cappadocia, had suffered from retaliatory raids, plundering and devastation. Depopulation of the areas and the creation of no man's land had been employed as a method of defense by all parties. Massacre of the Paulician heretics in Tephrike region (modern Divrigi) is such an example.
There were attempts to repopulate certain zones by the Byzantine Empire. These re-population attempts had a military character. The numerous mercenaries who served both the Emperor and the several thematic strategoi characterized Byzantine army in c. 800. The Turkic peoples of the Eurasian steppe, like the Khazars, the Pechenegs and the Cumans ( Kipchak), were included in the army under the status of foederati and employed mainly as mounted archers. Russ (Scandinavians), Slavs, Normans, Italians, Germans and even Arabs and Seljuk Turks, among many others, were employed either singly or in ready-to-hire units.
The Themata system was developed under Constans II (630 -668))(Constans Heraclius) and Constantine IV (649-685) in order to face the constant threat of the Muslim Arabs who had taken Syria, Egypt and Mesopotamia in the 7th century. Thus, the first Thema appeared in the Eastern provinces, which were both the highest paid and the most endangered. Under this system a plot of land was given to the soldiers to farm. The soldiers were still technically a military unit, under the command of a strategos. (Both Seljuks and Ottomans employed the same system later.)
These frontier-dwellers -Byzantine akritai and Muslim ghazis- though fighting against each other were alike in their physical and spiritual isolation from the governments, which took almost no part in their activity, and as a result they sometimes almost fraternized. Evidence of this is provided in the chivalrous romances or poems, which recount the exploits of both sides.
Turkification of Asia Minor thus followed first a depopulation and later a repopulation of the lands with Turkic elements.
In the 9th century Turkification reached the capital: the Hetaereia regiments (elite cavalrymen imperial guards) although including Greeks, were mainly composed of Khazars and Pharganos (from the Fergana Valley, in Central Asia).
There is also evidence that the Yoruk Turkish tribes were populating both the Balkans and Western Anatolia all the way to Cappadocia centuries before the first Seljuks arrived. Sarakatsani and Karakatsani, (Sarikeçilia and Karakeçili) Turkish nomadic tribes who were trapped in Greece proper and Bulgaria and who still live there attest to the Turkification of Asia Minor and the Balkans long before Battle of Manzikert in 1071.
AverageTurkishJoe 05:22, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Clive Foss, Byzantine Symposium, Urban and Rural Settlement in Anatolia and the Levant, 500-1000 AD: New Evidence from Archaeology
Cyril Mango. Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome. Scribner's, 1980.
last article is very resourceful for the demographic data. AverageTurkishJoe 04:51, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I noticed that the so hotly debated picture in the infobox is being removed by changing the image file. I think this is misleading, since the changes cannot be found on the history page, and do not appear on the watchlist.
The fact that Orhan Pamuk is currently criticised in his own country, doesn't mean that he isn't a prominent Turkish author. He is throughout the world acclaimed as a distinguished writer.
In Turkish, there's a proverb that says: Kimse kendi memleketinde peygamber olmaz. (No one becomes a prophet in their own country.) -- Benne ['bɛnə] ( talk) 20:52, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Sezen Aksu is a woman. Sezen is a female Turkish name ! I think we should do a Tatar-esque collage. That way we can all get our preferred prominent individuals in there. 4 simply isnt enough. There will always be someone nitpicking about the exclusion of his/her preferred personality(ies) Enter sandman 15:20, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Benne,Thank you for remind me.How did i forget?!
He degraded the Turkish identy.He said "If nationalism rises in Turkey,i will move to France".What is he waiting for? He makes us so happy by getting lost...
Hogiehogie, only enemies of Turkey(as you) love him.They are very small population...
Let's describe hogiehogie:
...Do you want more? I think you should be banned but we cant expect something diffrent form sided web-site.If i were you, i would stop complaining as primary school boys and begging help from others.You really become ridiculous...
TombofTurks, who wants EU? EU needs us, we dont need them.I think you should continue to support of Turkey's membership or our new friends will be russia and iran.We have proved everything.He is a liar and will be punished(by indirect ways).He is hero for you.You declared apo hero before...
We havent forgotten that you got through sack on Turkish soliders yet and we wont.Please dont put your nose everywhere.You dont know anything about Turkish history.I know how americans are unsuccessful at history.Moreover, some of you suppose Turkey is closer to Japan.So stop bullshits about our history.You cant know better than us.You are already sided.I have changed the Tatar Hürrem's picture.This picture will stay.Barbaros was Turkish!!!
For all of you, dont test my patience anymore...
Arkadaşlar bildiğiniz iyi bir "H....r" var mı? Şunlara arık hadlerini bildirmenin zamanı çoktan geldi...
I have never attacked anybody.You should tell this to your impolite and sexist best friend khoikhoi.Judaism is a religion.Jews of imperial russia are Turkic origin.Your all informations are smelling hatred propagandas.Even i am showing resources.Both of you are only trouble makers.You dont have any interest about my country.You always violate the rules but nothing happens to you(!) You should learn stay far from brainwashing and control your senses.Besides, you should learn to think logical and be fair...
TombofTurks:
At least, i have a nation which i can be a nationalist of it.You cant know this sense.That's why it's very easy to destroy you... -Inanna-
Thats what you all want us to do right ? After all according to this article, we turks are descended from greeks, slavs, kurds and armos who were invaded by "savage mongol barbarians" and brainwashed. I wonder where georgians and albanians went. Looks like the albanian and georgian nationalists havent found this page yet. Sarcasm over - Raki-holic 09:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
P.S - AverageTurkishJoe, I agree with you. Some people in here have an agenda to undermine Turkish identity and promote their own hegemony.This article is a farce. Has anyone noticed that there are double entries for Iraq on the significant populations bit ? -
Raki-holic
10:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
Genetics tests says kurds and jews are the closest people(!) Turks are neither mongoloid nor persian.Azeris have persian blood in their veins.But we are not.Sumers were the fathers of early Turks and the first inhabitants of anatolia.It was proved that Hittites were Turkic tribe.They came from back of caucaussia(central asia) and adopted the language of indo-europeans(Hattis).
Central asian Turks are really mongloid because mongolians killed millions of Turks and raped the women.They had razed all the cities and then rebuild again.That's rest of the Turks emigrated to Anatolia.
I really want to end this picture fight.I have shown 3 men and 3 women from diffrent categories.All of them are very famous characters and i suppose someones wont be able to find any reason to errase it at his time.
I always try to compromise but khoikhoi breaks it all time and provoking.Dont worry! He will errase this one soon...
All of them are Turkish.You have no information about anything.You are only problem in here. Senin bilgin ne gerizekalı?!
and it wont be...
We shall see...
It's quite telling that the article consists of a little more than some claims on turks'
supposed origins, Turkish phenotypes etc. What happened to the everything else - culture, religion, population distribution ?
How about the persecution of Bulgarian Turks and Turkish Cypriots ? Why isnt that in the article ?
Of course it isnt in. It doesnt fit your agenda as far as hegemonial claims are concerned !: - Raki-holic 23:14, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
What is wrong with this article
The title of the article does not match the content. Content sounds like Calvin’s (of Calvin and Hobbes) homework where the bulk of the work is the product of over-active imagination and some facts heard through the grapevine sprinkled in. Ignoring the content’s fable-like style, it belongs more to Demographics of Turkey. Also the article is too weak to be titled “Turkish Ethnology” since it is basically some bizarre jumble of hearsay put together for some unknown reason. It manufactures facts with the “probably” disclaimer like “one third of the Turks identifying themselves as ethnic Turks” or “most historians believe”. And for all the claims mentioned there is no analysis supplied, no numbers were given. It clearly does not fit into an encyclopedic mold.
1. Modern Turkey started with 10 million people with more than 3/4th of the population being rural. This is after 150 year old process of losing of the European lands and ethnic minorities separating from the Ottoman empire. And after the population exchange between Greece of Turkey following the WWI and Turkish War independence. The population of Ottoman Empire at its highest was 90 millions. That is one out of every nine Ottoman subject was deemed a “Turkish person” in 1923. Peoples who fought the Imperial powers in WWI and the Turkish war of Independence were entitled to be owners of the new Turkish Republic. The new Turkish identity was based on the Turkish war of Independence. The founding treaty “Lausanne” specifically prescribed the exchange of the Christian and Muslim populations. Greek and Armenian contribution to Turkish population that the article puts forth is merely a “guess”. Population influx from the lost Balkan lands on the other hand was substantial. The article omits this fact but mentions for example “Balkan people were brought to Turkey as Slaves in the Ottoman times .”
2. There is assumption that Central Asian Turks are more Turkish then western Turks. To back this argument the article claims without evidence is that there were no Turks in the in the west before 1071 c.e. Which is demonstrably wrong.
3. The article claims that “Turks *must* be an amalgamation of Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, etc” as if these ethnicities are monolithic homogeneous entities. There is evidence the said ethnicities absorbed large Turkic contributions even in the late antiquity.
4. Genetic argument totally ignores the Turkic genetic contribution to Balkans and Greece. The fact that Turks are similar to Europeans can also be explained by Turkic contributions to European and especially southeastern European populations. Examples of this are many: Bulgarians are Slavicised Turks and the Balkans were an Avar land for a very long time. Romanians are also very close genetically to Turks. The ethnicities of the nations around the Black Sea were established around 1000 c.e. after their Christening. The Turkic roots and elements in todays “Christian” nations are purposefully ignored and forgotten.
5. Depopulation of Asia Minor in Justinian years is glossed over. This had tremendous demographic effects to the point that the ethnic composition of Eastern Roman Empire changed and Asia Minor was populated with Slavs and Turks by Constantinople itself. Most of the Roman cities in Asia Minor abandoned during this time and archeological evidence backs this. Depopulated lands were filled with imported people from the Balkans. Seljuk invasion of Asia Minor followed this depopulation. Kipchaks (Cumans), Pechenegs, Khazars and Seljuk Turks were in enlisted in the Eastern Roman army some under the Themata system a plot of land was given to the soldiers to farm. Constantinople itself (the Palace) was Turkified during the Iconoclastic rulers. The Khazar royal guards attest to it. Stating that Turkic contribution as being small before the Seljuk’s arrival is just a mere guess. The fact that Avars captured all the lands of todays Greece (Thessaly, Old Epirus, Attica, Euboea, Peloponnese) in 587 attests to the Turkification of Greece itself. The great multitude of so called Slavs of that was transferred to Asia Minor (in Bythnia which is also the birthplace of the Ottoman Empire ) in Justininan II’s reign were most likely Avars which explains why thirty thousand soldiers raised from this group defected to the Mameluke army in their first encounter -an episode repeated in exactly the same manner in Mazikert in 1071 where the Kipchak soldiers defected to Seljuk army - their brethren. History books calls the imported populations Slavs ignoring the fact that Avars were the overlords of the Slavs.
6. Asia Minor has never been totally “Romanized”. Substantial populations in Asia Minor were Turkified before ever being Romanized (which can be explained by their Turkic affiliations in the first place.) The contribution of the Nomadic Turks (Yoruks) were totally ignored while we have evidence that they were in Asia Minor hundreds of years before the arrival of Seljuks and they probably had been there since the Avar times.
7. The “millet” system of Ottomans kept peoples separate. Until the 20th century Turks were farmers and herdsman and lived in segregated villages. Kurds and Turks lived in similar conditions albeit in separate villages. So the melting-pot analogy is fundamentally wrong for the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish Republic started with a huge demographic catastrophe that made almost all the previous demographic structure obsolete. The article is totally devoid of the analysis of how the different ethnicities lived in the Ottoman centuries. It drops in inconspicuous references about people converting to Islam without referencing any numbers or without any indication of their impact on the demographics and it ignores demographically significant data.
AverageTurkishJoe 05:14, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
User:AverageTurkishJoe requested unprotection on WP:RFP. Are we ready to go here? howch e ng { chat} 21:55, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
raki(theTurk), we never throw anything of our greatest leader.We are original.Stop trying to show yourselves similar with us.There are 3,5 million Turks who mixed with Kurds in the east.Their population number includes all the kurdish number of Turkey.There are muslim armenians as well and we know who are them(hemshenis).Greeks were sent to greece by poulation exchange in 1923.Muslim greeks live in blcksea and aegean region and they are not more than 10,000.Already, greeks have Turkish genes because the Turks in anatolia converted to christinaty by pressions of byzantine empire or how could greeks spread in whole anatolia? I didnt know that slavs emigrated to anatolia...
So stop try to have our nation,history and culture...
Khoikhoi, I shouldnt have typed in "deleted". Must have put it in over the top of my head.I actually meant that the article needed a complete rewrite from scratch. My bad.
Inanna, I dont quite get what you are trying to say to me. I never advocated throwing it in the thrash. I just said that the article advocates that Turks should do it, with stuff like Ultimately, it is absurd to speak of any ‘Turkish race. Im Turkish myself, and am very disenchanted with the article, as it seems to imply that real turks are a tiny minority or do not even exist within Turkey. The whole tone of the article seems very wrong to me . :- Raki-holic 22:20, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I am %100 sure about you are not Turkish.No Turk says "i am not the Turkish race".You are probably a kurd and...Lütfen kendi propagandalrın doğrultusunda insanları yanlış bilgilendirip işimizi daha da zorlaştırma.
I didnt know that whole world were so complex about Turks.That's nice also...Can i ask what is mean "tajik"? Has anybody heard it?
Most of the "Turkic" people in the world call themselves Turk. Tamerlane, an Uzbek, referred himself as a Turk in his memoirs. Azeris call themselves Turk. No need to mention Turkmenistan etc. So who decided that the Anatolian Turks were the only Turks? I can understand the Tuurkic terminology due to some differences between these people, but nobody has the rights to say that only Anatolian Turks are Turks, (look at the Göktürk Empire for god's sake). I think this article should be deleted, because we already have a Turkic people article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 164.107.208.103 ( talk • contribs) 16:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC).
The French traveller to the Ottoman Empire, Antoine Galland, recorded in his calendar on September 2, 1674 the following episode:
Today the Turks did a perfidy to a young Greek who was tutored by a Turk. While he was tutored, some Mussulmans, who were nearby, handed over to the teacher a piece of paper with the Islamic creed of faith written on it. They asked the Turkish teacher to turn it over to his young student asking him to read it aloud. They wanted to learn for themselves whether the young Greek could read Turkish fluently. Unsuspicious of the trick, the youth read the paper aloud. No sooner had he finished than the Turks immediately seized him and took him before a judge. They testified that the Greek youth had read in their presence the Moslem creed, the Salabati; therefore, he was expected to become a Moslem. In protest the young man answered that he had been deceived and that he had no intention of changing his Christian faith: The judge ordered that the youth be put to torture. When he insisted on adhering to his faith, he was thrown into prison where he was kept for a month, refusing to apostatise. He must have been between the age of 18 and 20 when he was beheaded (Gatland, 1881).
The French traveller did not record the martyr's name but modern scholarship has identified him as the neo-martyr Nicholas of Karpenision, whose story has been reconstructed as follows:
At the age of fifteen Nicholas came to Constantinople with his father, where the latter opened a shop in Tachtakala. Α Muslim barber, their neighbour, at the request of the father, gave Nicholas lessons in Turkish. The Mussulman looked forward to leading his pupil to change his religion and communicated his plan to the soldiers who frequented his house. And together they hatched a plot. The barber transcribed the Salabati, a profession of the Islamic faith. When the young man presented himself for his lesson, in the presence of the soldiers, the barber placed the paper before him. Suspecting nothing, Nicholas began to read it. When he had reached the end, the soldiers cried: "you have become a Turk; you have pronounced the Salabati." Stupefied and indignant, Nicholas protested hotly: "Ι am a Christian and not a Turk. Ι read what my master gives me for my lesson." But he was dragged before the Caimacan. The fatal paper served as proof of the odious accusation. After a long imprisonment and all sorts of ill treatment Nicholas was condemned to death (Delehaye, 1921, p. 705; Perantones, 1972). He was beheaded on September 23, 1672. His martyrdom was recorded by a third person, De la Croix, secretary of the French Embassy in Constantinople (De La Croix 1695).
These stories are quoted from the site: http://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/constantelos_altrouistic_4.html
You will notice that the second story is a rerun of the first after 40 years. 1881 is when the Thessaly is annexed by Greece and 1921 is when the Invading Greek army needed a boost of morale after their defeat at Sakarya . They appealed to the Allies for help, but early in 1922 Britain, France and Italy decided that the Treaty of Sèvres could not be enforced and should be revised. ( Battle of the Sakarya)
These are the so-called conversion stories. AverageTurkishJoe 05:55, 31 January 2006 (UTC) But recemtly there have been more objective analysis of he Christian populations in the Ottoman years: This is from Hellenic Communication Service, LLC
Apparently no mass conversions took place since 1453. So all the alleged amalgamation -if there is any merit to this argument- should have taken in 380 years. This is not a short period. We just need to show whether it withstands scrutiny. AverageTurkishJoe 02:59, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
There I dont really see anything wrong with either picture. However maybe a picture with at least 1 Turkish women might be better? (just a suggestion) DivineIntervention 00:39, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Oh, you guys need to read this...
...the Yuruks. These Anatolian shepherds, nominally Moslems, grazed their flocks in the hinterland of Asia Minor for centuries before the Seldjuks came; they even paid return migrations, now and then as far as Macedonia. No wonder, then, that some of the aura of a fable hangs about the Sarakatsans.."
...The Greek historiography usually encourages the stereotype according to which the Ottomans are presented as conquering Greece from the "Greeks". It has to be understood -to refer only to the Mainland Greece- that neither the major -at that time- city of Salonica (which was a Venetian possession seven years prior to the final Ottoman conquest) nor Athens, which was in the hands of the Florentines, and previously in those of the Catalan Company of Pedro when the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet finally entered it (and has been continuously held by the Catholic ‘Franks’ since 1204) were "Greek" at the time of their sacking by the Turk. The native population, though partly -at surface- Greek speaking, was a complex motley of ethnicities lacking unity or homogeneity despite the attempt of the central Byzantine government to subdue them through taxation, recruitment in the armies, relegating them to the status of parikoi, or dilute their specificity by ascribing (or converting) them to the Greek language officiating Orthodox Church. This heterogeneity rendering the locals passive made even easier for the incisive nomads who were the Yuruk to deeply penetrate Greece and the Balkans.
Source:
http://www.vlachophiles.net/conf.htm (Balkan Borderlands and endless paths: Vlach-Yuruk-Sarakatsani confluences in Rhodope and Macedonia)
People with prior knowledge of Sarikechili, Karakechili, Karakoyunlu will immediately recognize these people. AverageTurkishJoe 02:36, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
To my friends:
I think we should remove the "smyrna" page.There is only one İzmir.We should hinder these seperatist and unfair propagandas of someones(!) -Inanna-
Also see: Yoruk
AverageTurkishJoe 12:51, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
I am writing a draft for the opening paragraphs of this article. Please respond by your comments and concerns since this draft is drastically changing the content by removing the "debate" about "how Turkish the Turks of Turkey are".
Turkish people are the current inhabitants of Asia Minor. Conquest of Asia Minor by the Turks and its transformation into the "Home of the Turks" has always been a contentious issue for the Europeans. In some circles it still is incomprehensible and sometimes intolerable. It is customarily assumed that Asia Minor of the eleventh century must still have been highly urbanized cultivated and Hellenized Asia Minor of the Roman times. However even in the antiquity geographical conditions did not allow the same level of development in the central and eastern Anatolia as the Aegean costs. Even today, western provinces of Turkey in general are remakably more developed compared to the eastern ones. We do not have accurate knowledge of conditions of the central and eastern provinces in the antiquity, whatever they might have been the continued wars against the Arabs and the Persians had profoundly changed Anatolia and the eastern parts were impacted the most. For generations, vast areas, particularly on both sides of the Taurus and Cappadocia, had suffered from retaliatory raids, plundering and devastation. Depopulation of the areas and the creation of no man's land had been employed as a method of defense by all parties. Massacre of the Paulician heretics in Tephrike region (modern Divrigi) is such an example.
There were attempts to repopulate certain zones by the Byzantine Empire. These re-population attempts had a military character. The numerous mercenaries who served both the Emperor and the several thematic strategoi characterized Byzantine army in c. 800. The Turkic peoples of the Eurasian steppe, like the Khazars, the Pechenegs and the Cumans ( Kipchak), were included in the army under the status of foederati and employed mainly as mounted archers. Russ (Scandinavians), Slavs, Normans, Italians, Germans and even Arabs and Seljuk Turks, among many others, were employed either singly or in ready-to-hire units.
The Themata system was developed under Constans II (630 -668))(Constans Heraclius) and Constantine IV (649-685) in order to face the constant threat of the Muslim Arabs who had taken Syria, Egypt and Mesopotamia in the 7th century. Thus, the first Thema appeared in the Eastern provinces, which were both the highest paid and the most endangered. Under this system a plot of land was given to the soldiers to farm. The soldiers were still technically a military unit, under the command of a strategos. (Both Seljuks and Ottomans employed the same system later.)
These frontier-dwellers -Byzantine akritai and Muslim ghazis- though fighting against each other were alike in their physical and spiritual isolation from the governments, which took almost no part in their activity, and as a result they sometimes almost fraternized. Evidence of this is provided in the chivalrous romances or poems, which recount the exploits of both sides.
Turkification of Asia Minor thus followed first a depopulation and later a repopulation of the lands with Turkic elements.
In the 9th century Turkification reached the capital: the Hetaereia regiments (elite cavalrymen imperial guards) although including Greeks, were mainly composed of Khazars and Pharganos (from the Fergana Valley, in Central Asia).
There is also evidence that the Yoruk Turkish tribes were populating both the Balkans and Western Anatolia all the way to Cappadocia centuries before the first Seljuks arrived. Sarakatsani and Karakatsani, (Sarikeçilia and Karakeçili) Turkish nomadic tribes who were trapped in Greece proper and Bulgaria and who still live there attest to the Turkification of Asia Minor and the Balkans long before Battle of Manzikert in 1071.
AverageTurkishJoe 05:22, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Clive Foss, Byzantine Symposium, Urban and Rural Settlement in Anatolia and the Levant, 500-1000 AD: New Evidence from Archaeology
Cyril Mango. Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome. Scribner's, 1980.
last article is very resourceful for the demographic data. AverageTurkishJoe 04:51, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I noticed that the so hotly debated picture in the infobox is being removed by changing the image file. I think this is misleading, since the changes cannot be found on the history page, and do not appear on the watchlist.
The fact that Orhan Pamuk is currently criticised in his own country, doesn't mean that he isn't a prominent Turkish author. He is throughout the world acclaimed as a distinguished writer.
In Turkish, there's a proverb that says: Kimse kendi memleketinde peygamber olmaz. (No one becomes a prophet in their own country.) -- Benne ['bɛnə] ( talk) 20:52, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Sezen Aksu is a woman. Sezen is a female Turkish name ! I think we should do a Tatar-esque collage. That way we can all get our preferred prominent individuals in there. 4 simply isnt enough. There will always be someone nitpicking about the exclusion of his/her preferred personality(ies) Enter sandman 15:20, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Benne,Thank you for remind me.How did i forget?!
He degraded the Turkish identy.He said "If nationalism rises in Turkey,i will move to France".What is he waiting for? He makes us so happy by getting lost...
Hogiehogie, only enemies of Turkey(as you) love him.They are very small population...
Let's describe hogiehogie:
...Do you want more? I think you should be banned but we cant expect something diffrent form sided web-site.If i were you, i would stop complaining as primary school boys and begging help from others.You really become ridiculous...
TombofTurks, who wants EU? EU needs us, we dont need them.I think you should continue to support of Turkey's membership or our new friends will be russia and iran.We have proved everything.He is a liar and will be punished(by indirect ways).He is hero for you.You declared apo hero before...
We havent forgotten that you got through sack on Turkish soliders yet and we wont.Please dont put your nose everywhere.You dont know anything about Turkish history.I know how americans are unsuccessful at history.Moreover, some of you suppose Turkey is closer to Japan.So stop bullshits about our history.You cant know better than us.You are already sided.I have changed the Tatar Hürrem's picture.This picture will stay.Barbaros was Turkish!!!
For all of you, dont test my patience anymore...
Arkadaşlar bildiğiniz iyi bir "H....r" var mı? Şunlara arık hadlerini bildirmenin zamanı çoktan geldi...
I have never attacked anybody.You should tell this to your impolite and sexist best friend khoikhoi.Judaism is a religion.Jews of imperial russia are Turkic origin.Your all informations are smelling hatred propagandas.Even i am showing resources.Both of you are only trouble makers.You dont have any interest about my country.You always violate the rules but nothing happens to you(!) You should learn stay far from brainwashing and control your senses.Besides, you should learn to think logical and be fair...
TombofTurks:
At least, i have a nation which i can be a nationalist of it.You cant know this sense.That's why it's very easy to destroy you... -Inanna-
Thats what you all want us to do right ? After all according to this article, we turks are descended from greeks, slavs, kurds and armos who were invaded by "savage mongol barbarians" and brainwashed. I wonder where georgians and albanians went. Looks like the albanian and georgian nationalists havent found this page yet. Sarcasm over - Raki-holic 09:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
P.S - AverageTurkishJoe, I agree with you. Some people in here have an agenda to undermine Turkish identity and promote their own hegemony.This article is a farce. Has anyone noticed that there are double entries for Iraq on the significant populations bit ? -
Raki-holic
10:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
Genetics tests says kurds and jews are the closest people(!) Turks are neither mongoloid nor persian.Azeris have persian blood in their veins.But we are not.Sumers were the fathers of early Turks and the first inhabitants of anatolia.It was proved that Hittites were Turkic tribe.They came from back of caucaussia(central asia) and adopted the language of indo-europeans(Hattis).
Central asian Turks are really mongloid because mongolians killed millions of Turks and raped the women.They had razed all the cities and then rebuild again.That's rest of the Turks emigrated to Anatolia.
I really want to end this picture fight.I have shown 3 men and 3 women from diffrent categories.All of them are very famous characters and i suppose someones wont be able to find any reason to errase it at his time.
I always try to compromise but khoikhoi breaks it all time and provoking.Dont worry! He will errase this one soon...
All of them are Turkish.You have no information about anything.You are only problem in here. Senin bilgin ne gerizekalı?!
and it wont be...
We shall see...
It's quite telling that the article consists of a little more than some claims on turks'
supposed origins, Turkish phenotypes etc. What happened to the everything else - culture, religion, population distribution ?
How about the persecution of Bulgarian Turks and Turkish Cypriots ? Why isnt that in the article ?
Of course it isnt in. It doesnt fit your agenda as far as hegemonial claims are concerned !: - Raki-holic 23:14, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
What is wrong with this article
The title of the article does not match the content. Content sounds like Calvin’s (of Calvin and Hobbes) homework where the bulk of the work is the product of over-active imagination and some facts heard through the grapevine sprinkled in. Ignoring the content’s fable-like style, it belongs more to Demographics of Turkey. Also the article is too weak to be titled “Turkish Ethnology” since it is basically some bizarre jumble of hearsay put together for some unknown reason. It manufactures facts with the “probably” disclaimer like “one third of the Turks identifying themselves as ethnic Turks” or “most historians believe”. And for all the claims mentioned there is no analysis supplied, no numbers were given. It clearly does not fit into an encyclopedic mold.
1. Modern Turkey started with 10 million people with more than 3/4th of the population being rural. This is after 150 year old process of losing of the European lands and ethnic minorities separating from the Ottoman empire. And after the population exchange between Greece of Turkey following the WWI and Turkish War independence. The population of Ottoman Empire at its highest was 90 millions. That is one out of every nine Ottoman subject was deemed a “Turkish person” in 1923. Peoples who fought the Imperial powers in WWI and the Turkish war of Independence were entitled to be owners of the new Turkish Republic. The new Turkish identity was based on the Turkish war of Independence. The founding treaty “Lausanne” specifically prescribed the exchange of the Christian and Muslim populations. Greek and Armenian contribution to Turkish population that the article puts forth is merely a “guess”. Population influx from the lost Balkan lands on the other hand was substantial. The article omits this fact but mentions for example “Balkan people were brought to Turkey as Slaves in the Ottoman times .”
2. There is assumption that Central Asian Turks are more Turkish then western Turks. To back this argument the article claims without evidence is that there were no Turks in the in the west before 1071 c.e. Which is demonstrably wrong.
3. The article claims that “Turks *must* be an amalgamation of Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, etc” as if these ethnicities are monolithic homogeneous entities. There is evidence the said ethnicities absorbed large Turkic contributions even in the late antiquity.
4. Genetic argument totally ignores the Turkic genetic contribution to Balkans and Greece. The fact that Turks are similar to Europeans can also be explained by Turkic contributions to European and especially southeastern European populations. Examples of this are many: Bulgarians are Slavicised Turks and the Balkans were an Avar land for a very long time. Romanians are also very close genetically to Turks. The ethnicities of the nations around the Black Sea were established around 1000 c.e. after their Christening. The Turkic roots and elements in todays “Christian” nations are purposefully ignored and forgotten.
5. Depopulation of Asia Minor in Justinian years is glossed over. This had tremendous demographic effects to the point that the ethnic composition of Eastern Roman Empire changed and Asia Minor was populated with Slavs and Turks by Constantinople itself. Most of the Roman cities in Asia Minor abandoned during this time and archeological evidence backs this. Depopulated lands were filled with imported people from the Balkans. Seljuk invasion of Asia Minor followed this depopulation. Kipchaks (Cumans), Pechenegs, Khazars and Seljuk Turks were in enlisted in the Eastern Roman army some under the Themata system a plot of land was given to the soldiers to farm. Constantinople itself (the Palace) was Turkified during the Iconoclastic rulers. The Khazar royal guards attest to it. Stating that Turkic contribution as being small before the Seljuk’s arrival is just a mere guess. The fact that Avars captured all the lands of todays Greece (Thessaly, Old Epirus, Attica, Euboea, Peloponnese) in 587 attests to the Turkification of Greece itself. The great multitude of so called Slavs of that was transferred to Asia Minor (in Bythnia which is also the birthplace of the Ottoman Empire ) in Justininan II’s reign were most likely Avars which explains why thirty thousand soldiers raised from this group defected to the Mameluke army in their first encounter -an episode repeated in exactly the same manner in Mazikert in 1071 where the Kipchak soldiers defected to Seljuk army - their brethren. History books calls the imported populations Slavs ignoring the fact that Avars were the overlords of the Slavs.
6. Asia Minor has never been totally “Romanized”. Substantial populations in Asia Minor were Turkified before ever being Romanized (which can be explained by their Turkic affiliations in the first place.) The contribution of the Nomadic Turks (Yoruks) were totally ignored while we have evidence that they were in Asia Minor hundreds of years before the arrival of Seljuks and they probably had been there since the Avar times.
7. The “millet” system of Ottomans kept peoples separate. Until the 20th century Turks were farmers and herdsman and lived in segregated villages. Kurds and Turks lived in similar conditions albeit in separate villages. So the melting-pot analogy is fundamentally wrong for the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish Republic started with a huge demographic catastrophe that made almost all the previous demographic structure obsolete. The article is totally devoid of the analysis of how the different ethnicities lived in the Ottoman centuries. It drops in inconspicuous references about people converting to Islam without referencing any numbers or without any indication of their impact on the demographics and it ignores demographically significant data.
AverageTurkishJoe 05:14, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
User:AverageTurkishJoe requested unprotection on WP:RFP. Are we ready to go here? howch e ng { chat} 21:55, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
raki(theTurk), we never throw anything of our greatest leader.We are original.Stop trying to show yourselves similar with us.There are 3,5 million Turks who mixed with Kurds in the east.Their population number includes all the kurdish number of Turkey.There are muslim armenians as well and we know who are them(hemshenis).Greeks were sent to greece by poulation exchange in 1923.Muslim greeks live in blcksea and aegean region and they are not more than 10,000.Already, greeks have Turkish genes because the Turks in anatolia converted to christinaty by pressions of byzantine empire or how could greeks spread in whole anatolia? I didnt know that slavs emigrated to anatolia...
So stop try to have our nation,history and culture...
Khoikhoi, I shouldnt have typed in "deleted". Must have put it in over the top of my head.I actually meant that the article needed a complete rewrite from scratch. My bad.
Inanna, I dont quite get what you are trying to say to me. I never advocated throwing it in the thrash. I just said that the article advocates that Turks should do it, with stuff like Ultimately, it is absurd to speak of any ‘Turkish race. Im Turkish myself, and am very disenchanted with the article, as it seems to imply that real turks are a tiny minority or do not even exist within Turkey. The whole tone of the article seems very wrong to me . :- Raki-holic 22:20, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I am %100 sure about you are not Turkish.No Turk says "i am not the Turkish race".You are probably a kurd and...Lütfen kendi propagandalrın doğrultusunda insanları yanlış bilgilendirip işimizi daha da zorlaştırma.
I didnt know that whole world were so complex about Turks.That's nice also...Can i ask what is mean "tajik"? Has anybody heard it?
Most of the "Turkic" people in the world call themselves Turk. Tamerlane, an Uzbek, referred himself as a Turk in his memoirs. Azeris call themselves Turk. No need to mention Turkmenistan etc. So who decided that the Anatolian Turks were the only Turks? I can understand the Tuurkic terminology due to some differences between these people, but nobody has the rights to say that only Anatolian Turks are Turks, (look at the Göktürk Empire for god's sake). I think this article should be deleted, because we already have a Turkic people article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 164.107.208.103 ( talk • contribs) 16:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC).
The French traveller to the Ottoman Empire, Antoine Galland, recorded in his calendar on September 2, 1674 the following episode:
Today the Turks did a perfidy to a young Greek who was tutored by a Turk. While he was tutored, some Mussulmans, who were nearby, handed over to the teacher a piece of paper with the Islamic creed of faith written on it. They asked the Turkish teacher to turn it over to his young student asking him to read it aloud. They wanted to learn for themselves whether the young Greek could read Turkish fluently. Unsuspicious of the trick, the youth read the paper aloud. No sooner had he finished than the Turks immediately seized him and took him before a judge. They testified that the Greek youth had read in their presence the Moslem creed, the Salabati; therefore, he was expected to become a Moslem. In protest the young man answered that he had been deceived and that he had no intention of changing his Christian faith: The judge ordered that the youth be put to torture. When he insisted on adhering to his faith, he was thrown into prison where he was kept for a month, refusing to apostatise. He must have been between the age of 18 and 20 when he was beheaded (Gatland, 1881).
The French traveller did not record the martyr's name but modern scholarship has identified him as the neo-martyr Nicholas of Karpenision, whose story has been reconstructed as follows:
At the age of fifteen Nicholas came to Constantinople with his father, where the latter opened a shop in Tachtakala. Α Muslim barber, their neighbour, at the request of the father, gave Nicholas lessons in Turkish. The Mussulman looked forward to leading his pupil to change his religion and communicated his plan to the soldiers who frequented his house. And together they hatched a plot. The barber transcribed the Salabati, a profession of the Islamic faith. When the young man presented himself for his lesson, in the presence of the soldiers, the barber placed the paper before him. Suspecting nothing, Nicholas began to read it. When he had reached the end, the soldiers cried: "you have become a Turk; you have pronounced the Salabati." Stupefied and indignant, Nicholas protested hotly: "Ι am a Christian and not a Turk. Ι read what my master gives me for my lesson." But he was dragged before the Caimacan. The fatal paper served as proof of the odious accusation. After a long imprisonment and all sorts of ill treatment Nicholas was condemned to death (Delehaye, 1921, p. 705; Perantones, 1972). He was beheaded on September 23, 1672. His martyrdom was recorded by a third person, De la Croix, secretary of the French Embassy in Constantinople (De La Croix 1695).
These stories are quoted from the site: http://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/constantelos_altrouistic_4.html
You will notice that the second story is a rerun of the first after 40 years. 1881 is when the Thessaly is annexed by Greece and 1921 is when the Invading Greek army needed a boost of morale after their defeat at Sakarya . They appealed to the Allies for help, but early in 1922 Britain, France and Italy decided that the Treaty of Sèvres could not be enforced and should be revised. ( Battle of the Sakarya)
These are the so-called conversion stories. AverageTurkishJoe 05:55, 31 January 2006 (UTC) But recemtly there have been more objective analysis of he Christian populations in the Ottoman years: This is from Hellenic Communication Service, LLC
Apparently no mass conversions took place since 1453. So all the alleged amalgamation -if there is any merit to this argument- should have taken in 380 years. This is not a short period. We just need to show whether it withstands scrutiny. AverageTurkishJoe 02:59, 4 February 2006 (UTC)