The settlement of Asia Minor by the Turks dates back to the conquest campaigns of the Seljuk Turks. The Seljuks were one of the branches of the Oghuz Turks who lived in the steppes of Central Asia until the 10th century. A number of scientists believe that the Oguzes were formed in the steppes of the Aral Sea region as a result of the mixing of the Türkuts (tribes of the Türkic Kaganate) with the Sarmatian and Ugric peoples.
In the 10th century, part of the Oguz tribes moved to the southeast of the Aral Sea region and became vassals of the local dynasties of the Samanids and Karakhanids. But gradually the Oghuz Turks, taking advantage of the weakening of the local states, created their own state formations - the Ghaznavid state in Afghanistan and the Seljuk state in Turkmenistan. The latter became the epicenter of the further expansion of the Oghuz Turks, also called Seljuks, to the west - to Iran, Iraq and further to Asia Minor.
The great migration of the Seljuk Turks to the west began in the 11th century. It was then that the Seljuks, led by Togrul Bek, moved to Iran. In 1055 they captured Baghdad. Under Togrul-bek's successor Alp-Arslan, the lands of modern Armenia were conquered, and then the troops of Byzantium were defeated in the battle of Manzikert. In the period from 1071 to 1081. almost all of Asia Minor was conquered. Oguz tribes settled in the Middle East, giving rise not only to the Turks themselves, but also to many modern Turkic peoples of Iraq, Syria and Iran. Initially, the Turkic tribes continued to engage in their usual nomadic cattle breeding, but they gradually mixed with the autochthonous peoples living in Asia Minor.
By the time of the invasion of the Seljuk Turks, the population of Asia Minor was incredibly diverse ethnically and confessionally. Numerous peoples lived here, shaping the political and cultural image of the region for millennia.
Among them, the Greeks occupied a special place - a people who played a key role in Mediterranean history. The colonization of Asia Minor by the Greeks began in the 9th century. BC e., and in the Hellenistic era, the Greeks and Hellenized aboriginal peoples made up the majority of the population of all coastal regions of Asia Minor, as well as its western territories. By the 11th century, when the Seljuks invaded Asia Minor, the Greeks inhabited at least half of the territory of modern Turkey. The largest Greek population was concentrated in the west of Asia Minor - the Aegean coast, in the north - on the Black Sea coast, in the south - on the Mediterranean coast up to Cilicia. In addition, an impressive Greek population also lived in the central regions of Asia Minor. The Greeks professed Eastern Christianity and were the mainstay of the Byzantine Empire.
Perhaps the second most important people of Asia Minor after the Greeks were the Armenians before the conquest of the region by the Turks. The Armenian population prevailed in the eastern and southern regions of Asia Minor - in Western Armenia, Lesser Armenia and Cilicia, from the shores of the Mediterranean to the southwestern Caucasus and from the borders with Iran to Cappadocia. In the political history of the Byzantine Empire, Armenians also played a huge role, there were many noble families of Armenian origin. From 867 to 1056, Byzantium was ruled by the Macedonian dynasty, which was of Armenian origin and is also called by some historians the Armenian dynasty.
The third large group of peoples of Asia Minor by the X-XI centuries. there were Iranian-speaking tribes inhabiting the central and eastern regions. These were the ancestors of modern Kurds and their kindred peoples. A significant part of the Kurdish tribes also led a semi-nomadic and nomadic lifestyle in the mountainous regions on the border of modern Turkey and Iran.
In addition to the Greeks, Armenians and Kurds, the Georgian peoples also lived in Asia Minor in the northeast, the Assyrians in the southeast, a large Jewish population in the large cities of the Byzantine Empire, and the Balkan peoples in the western regions of Asia Minor.
The Seljuk Turks who invaded Asia Minor initially retained their characteristic nomadic peoples tribal division. The Seljuks moved westward in their usual order. The tribes of the right flank (buzuk) occupied more northern territories, and the tribes of the left flank (uchuk) occupied the more southern territories of Asia Minor. It is worth noting that, together with the Seljuks, farmers who joined the Turks came to Asia Minor, who also settled in the Asia Minor lands, creating their settlements and gradually becoming Turkic, surrounded by Seljuk tribes. The settlers occupied mainly flat territories in Central Anatolia and only then moved westward to the Aegean coast. Since most of the Turks occupied the steppe lands, the mountainous regions of Anatolia largely retained the autochthonous Armenian, Kurdish and Assyrian population.
The formation of a single Turkish nation on the basis of numerous Turkic tribes and the autochthonous population assimilated by the Turks took a long time. It was not completed even after the final liquidation of Byzantium and the creation Ottoman Empire... Even within the Turkic population of the empire, there were several groups that were very different in their way of life. Firstly, these were actually nomadic Turkic tribes who were in no hurry to abandon their usual forms of farming and continued to engage in nomadic and semi-nomadic cattle breeding, mastering the plains of Anatolia and even the Balkan Peninsula. Secondly, it was a sedentary Turkic population, including the farmers of Iran and Central Asia who came with the Seljuks. Thirdly, it was an assimilated autochthonous population, including Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Albanians, Georgians, who converted to Islam and the Turkic language and gradually mixed with the Turks. Finally, the fourth group was constantly replenished by immigrants from the most diverse peoples of Asia, Europe and Africa, who also migrated to the Ottoman Empire and became Turkic.
According to some reports, from 30% to 50% of the population of modern Turkey, considered ethnic Turks, are in fact Islamized and Turkic representatives of autochthonous peoples. Moreover, the figure of 30% is voiced even by nationalist Turkish historians, while Russian and European researchers believe that the percentage of autochthons in the population of modern Turkey is much higher.
Throughout its existence, the Ottoman Empire ground and dissolved a variety of peoples. Some of them managed to preserve their ethnic identity, but most of the assimilated representatives of numerous ethnic groups of the empire finally mixed with each other and became the foundation of the modern Turkish nation. In addition to the Greek, Armenian, Assyrian, Kurdish population of Anatolia, very numerous groups that took part in the ethnogenesis of modern Turks were the Slavic and Caucasian peoples, as well as the Albanians. When the Ottoman Empire extended its power to the Balkan Peninsula, it controlled vast lands inhabited by Slavic peoples, most of whom professed Orthodoxy. Some of the Balkan Slavs - Bulgarians, Serbs, Macedonians - chose to convert to Islam in order to improve their social and economic situation. Whole groups of Islamized Slavs have formed, such as the Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina or the Pomaks in Bulgaria. However, many Slavs who converted to Islam simply melted into the Turkish nation. Very often, the Turkic nobility took Slavic girls as wives and concubines, who then gave birth to Turks. The Slavs made up a significant part of the Janissary army. In addition, many Slavs in individually converted to Islam and went into the service of the Ottoman Empire.
Concerning Caucasian peoples they also had very close contact with the Ottoman Empire from the very beginning. The most developed ties with the Ottoman Empire were possessed by the Circassian-Circassian peoples living on the Black Sea coast. Circassians have long gone to military service to the Ottoman sultans. When the Russian Empire conquered the Crimean Khanate, numerous groups of Crimean Tatars and Circassians who did not want to accept Russian citizenship began to move to the Ottoman Empire. A large number of Crimean Tatars settled in Asia Minor, who mixed with the local Turkic population. The assimilation process was quick and painless, given the very close linguistic and cultural affinity of the Crimean Tatars and Turks.
The presence of Caucasian peoples in Anatolia increased significantly after the Caucasian War, when many thousands of representatives of the Adyghe-Circassian, Nakh-Dagestan and Turkic peoples of the North Caucasus moved to the Ottoman Empire, not wanting to live in Russian citizenship. This is how numerous Circassian, Abkhazian, Chechen and Dagestan communities were formed in Turkey, which became part of the Turkish nation. Some groups of muhajirs, as the settlers from the North Caucasus were called, retained their ethnic identity up to the present time, others almost completely dissolved in the Turkic environment, especially if they themselves initially spoke Turkic languages (Kumyks, Karachais and Balkars, Nogais, Tatars). 
In full force, the warlike Ubykhs, one of the Adyg tribes, were resettled to the Ottoman Empire. Over the century and a half that have passed since the Caucasian War, the Ubykhs have completely dissolved in the Turkish environment, and the Ubykh language ceased to exist after the death of the last native speaker, Tevfik Esench, who died in 1992 at the age of 88. Many prominent statesmen and military leaders of both the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey were of Caucasian origin. For example, Marshal Berzeg Mehmet Zeki Pasha was Ubykh by nationality, Abuk Akhmedpasha, one of the military ministers of the Ottoman Empire, was a Kabardian.
During the XIX - early XX centuries. Ottoman sultans gradually resettled to Asia Minor numerous groups of the Muslim and Turkic population from the outskirts of the empire, especially from regions where the Christian population predominated. For example, already in the second half of the 19th century, the centralized resettlement of Muslim Greeks from Crete and some other islands to Lebanon and Syria began - the Sultan was worried about the safety of Muslims who lived surrounded by Greek Christians. If in Syria and Lebanon such groups retained their own identity due to great cultural differences from the local population, in Turkey itself they rapidly dissolved among the Turkic population, also joining the united Turkish nation.
After the proclamation of the independence of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, and especially after the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the expulsion of the Turkic and Muslim population from the countries of the Balkan Peninsula began. The so-called. population exchanges, the main criterion of which was religious affiliation... Christians were evicted from Asia Minor to the Balkans, and Muslims from the Balkan Christian states to Asia Minor. Not only very numerous Balkan Turks were forced to move to Turkey, but also groups of the Slavic and Greek population professing Islam. The most large-scale was the Greek-Turkish population exchange in 1921, as a result of which Muslim Greeks moved to Turkey from Cyprus, Crete, Epirus, Macedonia and other islands and regions. The same way there was also a resettlement of Turks and Islamized Bulgarians - Pomaks from Bulgaria to Turkey. The communities of Greek and Bulgarian Muslims in Turkey assimilated rather quickly, which was facilitated by the great cultural closeness between the Pomaks, the Muslim Greeks and the Turks, the presence of a centuries-old common history and cultural ties.
Almost simultaneously with the population exchanges, numerous groups began to arrive in Turkey. new wave muhajirs - this time from the territory of the former Russian Empire. The establishment of Soviet power was very ambiguously perceived by the Muslim population of the Caucasus, Crimea and Central Asia. Many Crimean Tatars, representatives of the Caucasian peoples, the peoples of Central Asia preferred to move to Turkey. Immigrants from China also appeared - ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz. These groups also partly became part of the Turkish nation, partly they retained their own ethnic identity, which, however, is increasingly "eroded" in the conditions of living in the environment. ethnic Turks.
Modern Turkish legislation considers everyone who is born of a Turkish father or a Turkish mother to be Turks, thus extending the concept of "Turks" to the offspring of mixed marriages.
1 st row: Osman I Bayazid I Lightning Mehmed II Fatih Suleiman I Magnificent Abdul-Majid I Abdul-Aziz
2 nd row: Safiye Ali Mustafa Fehmi Kubila Khalide Edib Adyvar Mimar Kemaleddin Feriha Tevfik Ali Fethi Okyar
3 rd row: Namyk Kemal Jahide Sonku Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Fatma Aliye Topuz Tevfik Fikret Nigar Khanum
Total: about 60,000,000
Turkey: 55,500,000 - 59,000,000
Germany: 3,500,000 - 4,000,000
Canada: 190,000
Russia: 105.058 (2010), 92.415 (2002)
Kazakhstan: 97,015 (2009)
Kyrgyzstan: 39,534 (est. 2011)
Azerbaijan: 38 000 (2009)
Ukraine: 8 844 pcs (2001)
Tajikistan: 700 (2000)
Belarus: 469 (2009)
Latvia: 142 (2010 est.)
Ethnic history
Asia Minor before the mass migration of Turkic tribes
The beginning of ethnogenesis. Seljuk era. Beyliki
Modern Turks were made up of two main components: Turkic nomadic pastoralist tribes (mainly Oghuz and Turkmens) who settled in the 11th-13th centuries. from Central Asia and Persia, and the local Asia Minor population.
By the beginning of the XIV century, dozens of independent state entities- beyliks that existed until the 16th century. All of them were formed on a tribal basis as associations of nomadic and semi-nomadic Turkic tribes around the ruling clan. Unlike the Seljuks, whose administration language was Persian, the Anatolian beyliks used Turkish as their formal literary language. The rulers of one of these beyliks, the Karamanids, seized the capital of the Seljukids, Konya, where in 1327 the Turkic language began to be used as an official language - in office correspondence, in documents, etc. And although the Karamanids managed to create one of the strongest states in Anatolia, a small Ottoman state, whose rulers came from the Kayy tribe, played the main role in uniting all the Turkic beyliks under their rule.
Ottoman era
Ottoman Empire by 1683.
During Mongol conquests The Oghuz tribe Kayy migrated to the west together with the Khorezmshah Jelal-ad-Din and entered the service of the Seljuk sultan Rum. In the 1230s. the leader of the Kayy tribe Ertogrul received from the Sultan on the border with Byzantium possession on the river. Sakarya with a residence in the city of Shogut. In 1289, the Sultan conferred the title of Bey on his son Osman I, and in 1299 Osman I proclaimed his principality an independent state, becoming the founder of a new dynasty and a state that went down in history as the Ottoman Empire. As a result of the campaigns of conquest, the Ottoman sultans managed to seize the Byzantine possessions in Asia Minor, in the second half of the XIV-XV centuries. they conquered the Balkan Peninsula, and in 1453 Sultan Mehmed II Fatih took Constantinople, ending the existence of the Byzantine Empire. ON THE. Baskakov believes that the Turks as a nationality began to exist only from the end of the XIII century. D.E. Eremeev, in turn, attributes the completion of the formation of the Turkish nation at the end of the 15th to the first half of the 16th century. ... According to the Turkish historian-Ottoman of Crimean Tatar origin Khalil Inaljik, the formed Turkish ethnos consisted of 30% of the Islamized autochthonous population, and 70% were Turks; D.E. Eremeev believes that the percentage of Turks was much lower. On the historical role of the first Ottoman sulatans, Lord Kinross writes:
The historical role of Osman was in the activities of the tribal leader, who rallied the people around him. His son Orhan transformed the people into a state; his grandson Murad I turned the state into an empire. Their achievements as politicians were appreciated by one Ottoman poet of the 19th century, who said: "We raised from a tribe a power that subjugated the world."
In 1516 Selim I the Terrible made an Egyptian campaign against the Mamluks, ending the existence of their Mamluk Sultanate. With the conquest of Egypt, the Ottomans occupied an exceptional position in the Islamic world, taking upon themselves the protection of holy places, in particular the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Khadimu "l-Haremein... According to the widespread version, Selim I received the caliphate from the caliph al-Mutawakkil in the Hagia Sophia mosque. On the role of the Ottoman dynasty in the Islamic ummah, the largest political thinker of Tunisia in the 19th century, Hayraddin at-Tunisia, wrote: "they united most of the Muslim countries under the hand of their just rule, which was established in 699 (1299). Through good governance, respect for the inviolable Sharia, respect for the rights of their subjects, glorious conquests resembling those of the righteous caliphs, and climbing the steps civilization (tamaddun) the Ottomans returned its power to the ummah .... "
In the 18th century, a crisis ripened in the Ottoman Empire. In 1821, the national liberation war began in Greece, which achieved its independence in 1830. The Greek Revolution was accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of Turks and Jews on the one hand and Greeks on the other, which led to the disappearance of a significant Turkish community in the Peloponnese. As William Claire notes: “The Turks of Greece left few traces. They disappeared suddenly and completely in the spring of 1821, not mourned or unnoticed by the rest of the world. Years later, when travelers asked about the origin of the stone ruins, the old people said: "Here stood the tower of Ali Agha. The owner himself, his harem and his slaves were killed in it." It was hard to believe then that the majority of Greece's population was once of Turkish descent, living in small communities scattered throughout the country, prosperous farmers, traders and officials whose families had not known another home for many years. As the Greeks said, the moon devoured them. " .
Recent history
Turkish foot soldiers during the Revolutionary War, 1922
After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and the signing of the Mudros Truce, the victorious powers began to divide its territory, including the Turkish lands proper. A spontaneous popular movement arose among the population against the occupation of a number of regions of the country, which grew into a national liberation struggle under the leadership of the former Ottoman officer Mustafa Kemal Pasha. National liberation movement 1918-1923 contributed to the final consolidation of the Turks into a nation. The Turkish national movement led to the liquidation of the sultanate and the formation of a new state - the Turkish Republic.
Outside Turkey, a large Turkish community was represented in Cyprus. After the Second World War, among the Greek population, there is a growing movement for the unification of the historical Greek territories (enosis), including Cyprus with Greece. In response to the doctrine of enosis, the Turkish population of the island put forward the doctrine of "taksim", i.e. branch. The growing intercommunal tensions in Cyprus soon led to the formation of armed formations - the Greek EOKA and the Turkish TMT. As a result of a coup in 1974, carried out by a military junta in Greece, Greek nationalists from EOKA came to power on the island, which provoked the invasion of Turkish troops into Cyprus and the occupation of the north and northeast of the island. In 1983, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was proclaimed on the territory occupied by Turkish troops.
Self-identification
Ethnonym
The very word "Turk" (Türk) means "strong, strong". In Turkish, "Turk" means "Turks" as a representative of the Turkish ethnos and "Turk" as a representative of the ethno-linguistic community of Turkic peoples. For the first time the terms "Turkey", then "Turkish domination" arose in 1190 in Western European political literature to designate Anatolia, which was under the rule of the Seljukids. In the Ottoman Empire, Turkish peasants called themselves "Turks", and among the feudal elite the name "Ottomans" was widespread, meaning most of all belonging to the empire. However, among the subjects of the Ottoman Empire legal position was determined by belonging to a religious community, and ethnic identity was replaced by confessional. As K. McCoan noted: "national consciousness was subordinated to the religious: a citizen of the Ottoman Empire rarely calls himself a Turk or at least an Ottoman, but always a Muslim"... ON THE. Ivanov also noted that "among the Europeans themselves, not only ethnic, but also religious and political content was invested in the expression" Turks ". In this sense, the word" Turk "denoted Muslims, subjects of the Sultan, or the Great Turk. Hence the expressions" Turkenets "," to become a Turk ", which applied to Europeans, in particular to Russians who converted to Islam ".
Until the beginning of the 20th century, the ethnonym "Turks" was used most often in a derogatory sense. The Turkic-speaking peasants of Anatolia were called "Turks" with a tinge of ignorance (eg. kaba türkler"Rude Turks"). The French traveler of the XVIII century M. Hue noted that the Turk means "peasant", "rude", "uncouth" and that when asked "is he a Turk or not?" the Ottoman answers - a Muslim. , published in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, also noted that "In the scientific literature, the name of the Ottomans, or, better," Osmanli ", has long been established for the European Turks, the Ottomans themselves [In Western European literature they are called Ottomans.] They do not even like to be called" Turks ", considering these latter people to be rude and uneducated" .
It is noteworthy that in the Ottoman era in Bosnia, the Turks meant the Yugoslavian Muslim, and the Bosnian Muslim population called themselves Turks, meaning by this belonging to the dominant religion, while they called the Turks the Ottomans. Christians also called Muslim Slavs Turks. In the 1850s. Russian Slavic scholar gave the following description of the ethnic composition and self-awareness of the population of Bosnia: “The inhabitants of Bosnia constitute, by their own concept and by official recognition, three peoples, although they all belong to the Serbian tribe and speak the same language. These three peoples are: Turks, that is, Muslims, Latins ..., that is, Catholics, and Serbs ... that is, Orthodox. "... In the Armenian language, up to modern times, the Turks were called "tatshiks", which was originally used in relation to Muslims in general.
Turkish identity
D.E. Eremeev, speaking about the ethnonym, touched upon identity:
The core of the Turkish people began to take shape first in the Ottoman Beylik, where the Osmanli tribe occupied a dominant position. All Turks of the Ottoman state later became officially called this tribal ethnonym. However, the word "Osmanli" (Ottoman or, as they sometimes write, Ottoman) did not become an ethnonym, a national self-name of the Turks. At first, it meant belonging to the Osmanli tribe or to the Osman Beylik, and then to the citizenship of the Ottoman Empire. True, neighboring peoples sometimes used this name in relation to the Turks and as an ethnonym, but only to distinguish them from other Turkic peoples. For example, in the Russian language, especially until the 20-30s of the XX century, there was the name Ottoman Turks or Ottoman Turks (other Turks were often also called Turks or Turko-Tatars, Turkish peoples or Turkish-Tatar peoples, like their languages - Turkish-Tatar dialects or languages).
And the ethnonym of the Turks, their national self-name, which spread, however, mainly among the peasants, and not among the townspeople and the feudal elite of the Ottoman society, remained the ancient ethnonym "Turk" (Turk). The reasons for this were as follows. As already noted above, the ethnonym "Turk" was common to all Turkic tribes who moved to Anatolia. With the settling of a part of the nomadic Turks and mixing them with the local population, tribal ties were broken, and tribal ethnonyms were gradually forgotten. In the process of assimilation of local residents by the Turks, the Turkic language won. Spiritual and especially material culture was borrowed, on the contrary, local. However, the newly formed ethnos considered itself Turkic, since it spoke the Turkic language, or rather, the dialects of the Anatolian-Turkic language, and was aware that the Turks played an important role in its origin. But all this was true in relation to the predominantly peasants, Turkish peasants, who arose from a mixture of settled Turkic nomads and local pre-Turkish peasants who converted to Islam. As for the urban population, its self-name was most often not ethnic, but religious — Muslim. The feudal elite also called itself the same. Among these groups of the population, the official name “Ottoman” was also widespread, but it more often meant “subject of the Ottoman state”. This was due to the fact that both the urban population and the feudal elite in the Ottoman Empire often came not from the former nomadic Turks, but from the local Islamized population. The word "Turk" (Turk) in the mouth of the Ottoman ruling class for a long time it was synonymous with "muzhik", "plebeian", as in the Seljuk state of Asia Minor.
Decline of the Ottoman Empire in the 17th-18th centuries led to the degradation of various spheres of cultural life, and the socio-economic development of the Turks lagged more and more behind the development of non-Muslim peoples. The first Turkish book was printed in 1729, while in the Ottoman Empire the first printing house appeared among Jews in 1494, among Armenians in 1565 and among Greeks in 1627. In addition, at the beginning of the 20th century, 90% of Turks remained illiterate , while among the Greeks there were 50% illiterates, and among the Armenians - 33%. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, the history of the Turks was not taught in Ottoman schools, and the doors of religious schools (madrassas) were closed to the Turkish language until the 1908 revolution. Ottoman-Islamic history was taught, which began with the life of the prophet. These circumstances, as well as the policy of the European powers in relation to national movements in the empire, which stimulated the growth of national self-awareness among these peoples, affected the lag of the Turks in terms of the development of national ideas. The first beginnings of Turkish nationalism emerged in the second half of the 19th century among the secret political organization of the “new Ottomans”. The figures of this movement developed the concept of Ottomanism (Ottomanism), which was based on the idea of merging all the peoples of the empire into one "Ottoman nation." The Nationality Law, passed in 1869, secured equal status for all citizens of the Ottoman Empire, proclaiming that "that all citizens of the empire, without distinction, are called Ottomans, regardless of the religion they profess"... Art. 8 of the Constitution of the Ottoman Empire in 1876 reflected the principle of Ottomanism: "All subjects of the empire are called Ottomans without distinction of religion"... The Turkish scholar Taner Akcam writes:
Turkish nationalism, or in general terms, Turkish national identity, appeared on the historical arena quite late. Some anecdotes were often repeated, in which this delay was clearly distinguished. At the end of the 19th century, when some representatives of the Young Turks who settled in Paris were asked what nation they belonged to, they first answered "We are Muslims", and only after it was explained to them that Islam is a religion, they answered "We are Ottomans." It was explained to them that this is not a nation, but it is completely unthinkable for these young people to say that they were Turks. .
Original text(English)
Turkish nationalism or, in more general terms, Turkish national identity, appeared on the historical stage very late. Certain anecdotes are often repeated which clearly highlight this lateness. Toward the end of the 19th centure, when certain members of the Young Turks who were located in Paris were asked what nation they belonged to, they would at first reply, "We are Muslims," and only after it was explained that Islam was a religion would they reply, "We are Ottomans." They would then be reminded that this was not a nation either, but it was utterly inconceivable for these youths to say that they were Turks.
Turkish nationalism is the last national trend that arose belatedly during the collapse of the empire. The masters of the empire, that is, the Turks, having seen its disintegration and realizing that the state they rule is an empire that arose in foreign territories and with a foreign population, may have realized themselves as Turks. The concepts of Turkish nation, Turkish homeland, Turkish language and Turkish culture - all this arose in those days and was developed .
After the Kemalist revolution and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the ethnonym “Turks” replaced the names “Muslims” and “Ottomans”. In Art. 88 of the Turkish Constitution of 1924 stated: "All residents of Turkey, regardless of religion and nationality in terms of citizenship, are Turks"... At one time it was supposed to introduce the name Anatolian (Anadolulu) instead of the ethnonym "Turks" in order to finally eliminate the confusion between the ethnonyms "Turks" and "Turk" in the Turkish language.
Language
Ottoman language
Until the 20th century, there was a literary language of the Ottoman Empire, which was quite different from the spoken Turkish speech - the Ottoman language (Ottoman. لسان عثمان, lisân-ı Osmânî, tour. Osmanlı Türkçesi, Osmanlıca), which, although it was the language of the Turkic group, but up to 80-90% consisted of Arabic and Persian words. So in some monuments of the 17th, 18th and subsequent centuries, the Turkish layer occupies an insignificant place (approximately 10-15%). The Old Ottoman language was the direct successor to the extinct Seljuk language. In terms of vocabulary and grammar, the Ottoman language was divided into three varieties:
- "Exquisite" (tur. Fasih Türkçe) - the language of court poetry, official documentation and aristocracy;
- “Medium” (tur. Orta Türkçe) is the language of the urban population, merchants and craftsmen;
- "Vulgar" (Tur. Kaba Türkçe) is the language of the broad masses of the people, mainly the peasantry.
The modern Turkish language was formed on the basis of the "vulgar" version of the Ottoman language.
Turkish language
The beginning of the 20th century was marked by the growth of Turkish national identity; ideas for the purity of the Turkish literary language were spreading more and more among the Turkish intelligentsia. A. Tyrkova recorded the statement of one, by her definition, "a prominent Turkish writer", made in 1911: “The Turk has forgotten his origin. Ask him who he is? He will say that he is a Muslim. Everything was taken from him, even his tongue. Instead of a healthy, simple Turkish language, he is given a foreign, incomprehensible, speckled with Persian and Arabic words. "
Having come to power, the Kemalists waged a struggle to cleanse the language of Arab and Persian influences. In order to study the issue of reforming the alphabet, on January 15, 1928, the Council of Ministers of Turkey formed a "Language Commission" (tur. Dil Encümeni) under the Ministry of Education, which was soon disbanded. Instead, on June 28, a new organization was created - the "Alphabet Commission" (round . Alfabe Encümeni), which adopted at the meetings on 8 and 12 July the draft alphabet based on the Latin script. In his famous speech on August 8 of the same year in Istanbul, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk stated:
| “Citizens, we must adopt a new alphabet for our beautiful-sounding language. We must free ourselves from signs we do not understand, in the iron grip of which our brain languishes for centuries. Learn these new Turkish letters without delay. Teach them all the people, peasants, shepherds, porters and hawkers, consider it as a patriotic and national duty. " |
On November 1, 1928, at the first meeting of the regular session of the VNST, parliament adopted a law introducing a new alphabet. The modern Turkish alphabet consists of 29 letters (21 consonants and 8 vowels) and 2 spelling signs. On June 12, 1932, Ataturk founded the Turkish Linguistic Society.
The northwestern dialects of the Turkish language are phonetically very close to the Gagauz language, and Turkish itself (in particular its northwestern dialects) and Gagauz are both close to the Pechenezh language.
The dialects of the Turkish language are divided into 2 main groups ":
- Western or Danube-Turkish: Adakali, Adrianople, Bosnian and Macedonian dialects
- East Anatolian: Aydin, Izmir, Karaman, Kenyan, Sivass dialects. This group also includes the Cypriot dialect and the urban dialect of Ankara.
As the basis of the literary language, the Istanbul dialect is used, which has recently been influenced by the dialect of the capital of the country - the city of Ankara.
Anthropology
Turkish woman, between 1880 and 1900
Turkish girl in Ottoman costume
In the most generalized way - the basis of the anthropological type of the Turks is the Near Asian variant of the Balkan-Caucasian race as part of the large Caucasian race.
Anthropologically, most Turks are of the Mediterranean race. The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, published in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, gives a brief description:
The Ottomans (the name of the Turks is considered mocking or abusive) were originally the people of the Ural-Altai tribe, but due to the massive influx from other tribes, they completely lost their ethnographic character. Especially in Europe, today's Turks are mostly descendants of Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian and Albanian renegades, or descended from marriages of Turks with women from these tribes or with natives of the Caucasus. By virtue of a kind of natural selection, the Turks now represent a tribe of tall, good and beautiful physique of people with noble features. The dominant traits of their national character are importance and dignity in treatment, moderation, hospitality, honesty in trade and me, courage, exaggerated national pride, religious fanaticism, fatalism, and a penchant for superstition. .
In the article "Ottoman Turks" ESBE describes widely the anthropological features of the Turks:
Anthropologically, the Ottoman Turks have almost completely lost the original features of the Turkic tribe, presenting at the present time the most heterogeneous mixture of various racial types, depending on one or another of the peoples they have absorbed, generally approaching the types of the Caucasian tribe. The reason for this fact is that the initial mass of Ottoman Turks who invaded Asia Minor and the Balkan Peninsula, in the subsequent period of their existence, without receiving any new influx from among other Turkic peoples, due to continuous wars, gradually decreased in number and was forced to include in its composition the peoples forcibly Turkified by them: Greeks, Armenians, Slavs, Arabs, Kurds, Ethiopians, etc. Even under the Seljuks, the mass of Greek Christians became renegades, and under the Ottomans, massive violent conversions, the formation of Janissary corps , polygamy, which filled the harems of the Ottoman Turks with beauties of various countries and races, slavery, which introduced the Ethiopian element into the houses of the Ottoman Turks, and finally, the custom of expulsion of the fetus - all this gradually reduced the Turkic element and contributed to the growth of alien elements.
Therefore, among the Ottoman Turks, we meet all the transitions to the type with gentle, graceful outlines of the face, spherical structure of the skull, high forehead, large facial angle, perfectly formed nose, lush eyelashes, small lively eyes, upward curled chin, delicate physique, black, slightly curly hair, rich facial hair. Often there are even blond and red-haired individuals among the Turks (Riegler). In particular, in individual regions, Vambery notes: the predominance of Kurdish-type features in the region of Ancient Armenia (starting from Kars to Malatia and the Karodzhsky ridge), although with a darker complexion and less elongated outlines of the face, Arab along the northern border of Syria, finally, homogeneous Greek type in Northern Anatolia, a type that, however, becomes less and less monotonous as it approaches the sea coast. As for European Turkey, even Istanbul is a mixture of the most diverse types of Western Asia, Greco-Slavic and Caucasian, a mixture that seems homogeneous only thanks to the uniform cut of clothing, headdress, shaved head and uncut beard, etc. Measurements by Weisbach and Ivanovsky above one hundred skulls from different places European Turkey was given the overwhelming majority of dolichocephaly (average head figure: 74), the rest with the indicator. 80-81 (subrachycephaly). In 143 Ottoman Turks, measured by Eliseev in Asia Minor, the growth was on average 1,670, and the head index was 84, with brachycephalic and subbrachycephalic 60% (predominantly among nomads) dolichocephalic and subdolichocephalic only 20% (among the urban population) .
Culture
Literature
The first written works in the Turkish language date back to the middle of the 13th century, and in Asia Minor the Turkic-language written texts were exclusively Sufi in nature. The earliest Sufi work is the Book of Fate by Ahmed Fakikh, whose disciple Sheyad Hamza wrote the poem Yusuf and Zelikha. The first significant work in Turkish dates back to 1330, when the Sufi Ashik Pasha created the mesnevi poem "The Book of the Wanderer."
In the middle of the 15th century, the so-called classical period of the development of Turkish poetry begins, which lasted until the beginning of the 17th century. During this period, court poetry developed rapidly. The founder of the new Turkish literature was the writer and publicist Shinasi Ibrahim, who created the first dramatic work in Turkish literature - the one-act satirical comedy The Marriage of a Poet (1860).
Music
Traditional Turkish music is associated with the Arab-Iranian culture, absorbing the characteristic features inherent in the art of the peoples inhabiting Anatolia. In folk musical art, melodies of a small range with a uniform rhythm - kyryk hava (short melody) and melodies of a wide range, rhythmically free, do not fit into clear metro-rhythmic schemes (changing beat division prevails) - uzun hava (long melody).
During the Ottoman Empire, a new musical genre was formed - orchestral military music, which accompanied many of the campaigns and campaigns of the imperial army. At the beginning of the 18th century, a set of traditional instruments of the military orchestra of the Janissaries appeared in Europe, which at that time included a big drum (daul), 2 small drums (sardar nagara), 2 cymbals (tsil), 7 copper pipes (bori) and 5 shalmeys (zurnader ). Janissary music as a specific timbre complex (a bass drum with cymbals, to which a triangle was often joined) had a noticeable influence on European opera and symphonic music. ESBE described Turkish music as the music of the Janissaries, whose percussion "moved to military brass bands in Austria, and then in other countries, but with more limited and meaningful use."
In the 20th century, Turkish music was enriched with new genres that originally emerged in Europe. However, symphonies, operas, ballet, etc. did not receive large distribution in Turkey. Contemporary Turkish music is strongly influenced by Western music.
Turkish diaspora
Main article: Turkish diaspora
Historically, the first known Ottoman (Turkish) diaspora existed in the Crimean Khanate, a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire. However, by the 18th century, when Crimea became part of Russia, the Turks were almost completely integrated into the Crimean Tatar ethnos. The southern dialect of the Crimean Tatar language belongs to the Oguz group of languages (two other dialects of Kypchak origin differ significantly from it lexically and grammatically).
Currently, the largest Turkish diasporas are in the countries that were previously part of the Ottoman Empire. In the Arab countries (the Maghreb countries, Egypt, Syria, Iraq), the Turks do not experience religious pressure, but at the same time, their ability to learn their native language and maintain cultural ties with Turkey is seriously limited.
Turkish Cypriots
In Cyprus, as a result of an unsuccessful attempt to annex the island to Greece and the ensuing 1974 war, the unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was formed. Northern Cyprus as an independent state is recognized only by Turkey, which, according to a number of UN resolutions, illegally occupies this territory, which was torn away from the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus as a result of the military invasion in 1974. According to international law, the Republic of Cyprus retains sovereignty over the entire territory that was part of it until 1974. In the year, Cyprus was admitted to the EU without the northern (Turkish) part.
Turks in Germany
The Turkish diaspora in Germany was formed as a result of the "economic miracle" of the 1960s, when, as a result of economic growth, the demand for labor increased, while the German population not only did not grow, but even decreased. In this regard, a large number of Turks arrived in Germany. There were clashes between Turks and German nationalists, often with fatalities. In the 1990s, however, the situation began to change for the better: the German government launched a targeted program to integrate Turks into German society while preserving their national identity.
Turks in other European countries
see also
Notes (edit)
- Milliyet... 55 milyon kişi "etnik olarak" Türk. Retrieved July 21, 2011.
- KONDA Research and Consultancy, Social Structure Survey 2006
- Library of Congress - Federal Research Division Country Profile: Turkey. Archived from the original on February 4, 2012. Retrieved February 6, 2010.
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- European Institute Merkel Stokes Immigration Debate in Germany. Archived from the original on February 4, 2012. Retrieved November 15, 2010.
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- & n_page = 5 2001 All-Ukrainian Population Census. Distribution of the population by nationality and native language. State Statistics Committee of Ukraine.
- Mikhail Tulsky Results of the 2000 census of the population of Tajikistan: national, age, gender, family and educational composition. "Demoscope". Archived from the original on August 25, 2011.
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- Distribution of the population of Latvia by nationality and nationality as of 01.07.2010 (Latvian)
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- USSR Academy of Sciences. The World History . - State. publishing house polit. literature, 1956 .-- P. 253.
Original text(Russian)
Along with large and ancient centers of economic and cultural life, there were regions that preserved ancient forms of relations dating back to the primitive era. Asia Minor had an unusually variegated ethnic composition, and its population often spoke several languages within a relatively small territory.
- , from. 49-73
- , from. 52: “In the west of Anatolia and in the coastal regions, they were mostly Greeks. And in the east, the ethnic composition of the population was much more complicated: in addition to the Greeks, there lived Lazes, Georgians, Armenians, Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians. "
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- , from. 73
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- VII International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnographic Sciences // 1964 Moscow. Volume 10 page 98
Original text(Russian)
In the most general terms, the ethnogenesis of the Turks is characterized by the fact that the Turkish people formed from many ethnic components, but the determining component was the Turkic tribes - the Oguzes, Turkmens, Uzes (Western Oguzes), Pechenegs, Kipchaks, etc. Another component was the groups of the local population assimilated by the Turks - Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Lazes, Georgians, etc. The assimilation of the local population was "facilitated by the fact that the Turks created a powerful feudal state in Asia Minor - the Seljuk Sultanate (70s of the 11th century - 1307), that is, they were a politically dominant community.
- , from. 126
- Gábor Ágoston, Bruce Alan Masters.... - Infobase Publishing, 2009. - P. 40. - ISBN 0816062595, 9780816062591
Original text(English)
Combined with the Seljuks and the immigration of Turkic tribes into the Anatolian mainland, they spread Turkish and Islamic influence in Anatolia. Unlike the Seljuks, whose language of administration was Persian, the Karamanids and other Anatolian Turkish emirates adopted spoken Turkish as their formal literary language. The Turkish language achieved widespread use in these principalities and reached its highest sophistication during the Ottoman era.
- , from. 131
- USSR Academy of Sciences. The World History . - State. publishing house polit. literature, 1957 .-- S. 733.
- Institute of Ethnography named after N.N.Miklouho-Maclay. Proceedings. - State. publishing house polit. literature, 1963 .-- T. 83 .-- S. 58.
- ON THE. Baskakov Turkic languages. - M .: Publishing house of oriental literature, 1960 .-- P. 141.
- , from. 135
- , from. 149
- Kinross Lord. The rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire. - M .: KRON-PRESS, 1999 .-- S. 37. - ISBN 5-232-00732-7
- History of the Ottoman state, society and civilization. - M .: Vostochnaya literatura, 2006 .-- T. 1. - S. 25-26. - ISBN 5-02-018511-6, 5-02-018509-4
- Ivanovna. Transactions on the history of the Islamic world. - M .: Eastern Literature, 2008 .-- S. 207 .-- ISBN 978-5-02-036375-5
- Greece. Brief Jewish Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on February 4, 2012.
Original text(Russian)
The uprising of the Greeks against the Ottoman Empire (1821) proved to be a serious disaster for the Jews of Greece, which were loyal to the Turkish government. In the cities captured by the rebels, many Jews were killed. In the Peloponnese alone, five thousand Jews perished. Despite the fact that independent Greece proclaimed the equality of Jews, after 1821 they lived until the end of the century under the constant threat of pogroms.
- William St Clair.... - Open Book Publishers, 2008 .-- S. 1. - ISBN 1906924007, 9781906924003
Original text(English)
The Turks of Greece left few traces. They disappeared suddenly and finally in the spring of 1821 unmourned and unnoticed by the rest of the world. Years later, when travelers asked about the heaps of stones, the old men would explain, "There stood the tower of Ali Aga, and there we slew him, his harem, and his slaves". It was hard to believe then that Greece had once contained a large population of Turkish descent, living in small communities all over the country, prosperous farmers, merchants, and officials, whose families had known no other home for years. As the Greeks said, the moon devoured them.
The territory now called Turkey is in fact the territory of the Romeian (Byzantine) Empire, which was captured by the Turks at one time.
The Turks, on the other hand, arose in the 10th century on the territory of the Ural region of Kazakhstan. Initially, it was a tribe called the Kynyk, who lived on the banks of the Syr Darya at its confluence with the Aral Sea. The Kynyk tribe to this day lives in the Kamystykol area in the Chapaevsky district of Western Kazakhstan and is part of the baybakty from the Younger Zhuz.
The Kynyks were part of the Bejene tribal association, known in Russia as the Pechenegs. The appearance of the Turks is closely connected with the events in the neighboring Pechenegs. In 740, one of the Khazar rulers Bulan, having married a Jewess, converted to Judaism and adopted the Hebrew name Sabriel. However, the main population of Khazaria remained pagans, among whom Mohammedanism gradually took root, spread by preachers from Khorezm. The Khazar Jews were immediately exempted from taxes, and the entire burden of the tax burden fell on the non-Jewish part of the population. The tax oppression was so severe that people fled to the steppe or voluntarily asked for slavery to the Jews. Naturally, such a government did not enjoy popularity among the indigenous population, and did not want to fight for its interests, going over to the side of the enemy at the first opportunity. Therefore, the Jewish government of Khazaria was forced to use foreign mercenaries to maintain order within the country and to keep the vassal countries in obedience. The basis of the Khazar army was formed by the ancestors of the future - the speakers of the Nakh-Dagestan languages. However, in order for them not to come to an agreement and make a coup, the Khazars began to dilute the army with mercenaries from the Pechenegs living in present-day Western Kazakhstan. One of such detachments was commanded by a certain tribal bek Seljuk Dukakovich Kynykov. Seljuk enjoyed the confidence of King Joseph, since in 955, at the age of 20, he converted to Judaism.
After the defeat of the Khazar Kaganate by our troops, the mercenaries found themselves on free bread. The Pechenegs who served the Khazars began to attack Russia. In 968, the Pechenegs besieged Kiev, but were defeated. In 970 they participated in the battle of Arkadiopol on our side, but after the conclusion of the Russian-Byzantine peace (July 971), a new Russian-Pechenezh conflict began to mature. In 972, the Pechenegs of Prince Kuri at the Dnieper rapids killed the Grand Duke Svyatoslav Igorevich, and made a cup from his skull. In the 990s, there was a new deterioration in relations between Russia and the Pechenegs. Grand Duke Vladimir defeated them in 992 at Trubezh, but in 996 he was defeated by them at Vasiliev. Vladimir built fortresses on the steppe border with a warning system to effectively counter the invasions of the Pechenegs. Seljuk declared himself a Muslim and was accepted with his detachment by the Khorezmshah Abu-Abdallah Muhammad to serve in the rank of muqaddam. The city of Jend in the Kyzyl-Orda region of present-day Kazakhstan and its environs was handed over to him for feeding. Seljuk received the right to rob the population of the controlled territories and undertook to protect the section of the Khorezm border entrusted to him.
In 995, the last Khorezmshah from the Afrigid dynasty, Abu-Abdallah Muhammad, was captured and killed by the emir of Urgench, Mamun ibn-Muhammad. Khorezm was united under the rule of Urgench. In 1017, Khorezm was subordinated to Sultan Mahmud Ghaznevi. By that time, the Seljuk detachment had grown to a large army, the corps of which were commanded by the eldest sons of Seljuk Israel and Michael, and the younger Musa, Yusuf and Yunus, who were born after Seljuk converted to Islam. Since during the seizure of Khorezm the sons of Seljuk did not support the former ruler and recognized the power of Mahmud Ghaznevi, the latter began to distribute governor posts to the sons and grandsons of Seljuk. However, in 1035, the Kynyks, who were called Turkmens in the Iranian-speaking Khorezm, led by Seljuk's grandson Togrulbek Mikhailovich, his brother Daud (David) and their uncle Musa Seljukovich left Khorezm. They crossed the Amu Darya and settled in the territory of modern Turkmenistan. Mahmud's successor Ghaznevi Masud, fearing to lose Khorasan, moved his army against the Turkmen in the summer. The Turkmen ambushed and defeated the Sultan's army.
In 1043, the Turkmens captured Khorezm itself, as well as almost all of Iran and Kurdistan. In 1055, the Turkmens captured Baghdad and all of Iraq. Under the sultan Alp-Arslan, nephew of Torgul, who died on September 4, 1063, who ruled in 1063-72, Armenia was conquered (1064) and the Byzantines were defeated at Manzikert (1071). In this battle, one of the Byzantine commanders Andronicus Duca, announcing that the emperor had died, deserted from the battlefield, as a result of which the battle was lost, and the Byzantine emperor Roman IV Diogenes was captured by Alp-Arslan. A week later, he was released by Alp-Arslan under the condition of extradition of Seljuk prisoners and payment of a million gold pieces.
From that moment on, the conquest of Asia Minor began, that is, the territory that is now the Asian part of Turkey. This territory belonged to Rome and made up several Roman provinces - Asia, Bithynia, Pontus, Lycia, Pamphylia, Cilicia, Cappadocia and Galatia. After the division of the Roman Empire, Asia Minor was part of the Eastern Roman Empire. Asia Minor was captured by the Turks from 1071 to 1081, mainly during the reign of Alp-Arslan's son and successor Melik Shah. The state of the Seljuk Turks reached its greatest political power during the reign of Sultan Melik-Shah (1072-92). Under him, the Turks subordinated Georgia and the Karakhanid state in Central Asia.
After the collapse of the Seljuk state under the blows of the Tatar-Mongols, the Rum Sultanate continued to exist in Asia Minor from the Turkic name of Rome Rum. The original center of the state was Nicaea, since 1096 the capital was moved to the city of Konya, which is why the Rum Sultanate is often called the Konya Sultanate in our literature. As a result of feudal strife and the invasion of the Mongols, the Konya Sultanate disintegrated into a number of beyliks by the beginning of the 14th century. Bey Osman ruled in one of these bailiks. In 1299 he separated from the Rum Sultanate, and in 1302 defeated the troops of Byzantium under the command of George Muzalon. rural areas Bithynia, because of which, in the course of further sieges, it lost the remaining isolated fortresses. The defeat caused a massive emigration of the Christian population, which changed the demographic situation in the region. Nevertheless, the Ottoman conquest of Bithynia was gradual, and the last Byzantine stronghold, Nicomedia, was captured by them in 1337. Osman's last campaign, before dying of old age, was directed against the Byzantines in the city of Bursa. After the death of Osman I, the power of the Ottoman Empire began to spread over the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans.
In 1352, the Ottomans, having crossed the Dardanelles, for the first time independently set foot on European soil, capturing the strategically important fortress of Tsimpu. The Christian states missed a key moment in order to unite, knock the Turks out of Europe, and after a few decades, taking advantage of the civil strife in Byzantium itself, the fragmentation of the Bulgarian kingdom, the Ottomans, having strengthened and settled down, captured most of Thrace. In 1387, after a siege, the Turks captured the largest city of the empire after Constantinople, Thessaloniki.
The Turkish state, which was rapidly gaining power and successfully fought to expand its borders both in the west and in the east, had long sought to conquer Constantinople. In 1396 ottoman sultan Bayezid I brought his troops under the walls of the great city and blocked it from land for seven years, but Byzantium was saved by an attack on the Turkish possessions of Emir Timur. In 1402, the Turks suffered a crushing defeat from him at Ankara, which delayed a new major siege of Constantinople by half a century. Several times the Turks attacked Byzantium, but these attacks did not succeed due to dynastic conflicts in the Turkish state. So the campaign of 1423 was thwarted, when Sultan Murad II lifted the siege of the city because of rumors of uprisings in his rear and the aggravation of court intrigues.
In 1451, Mehmed II came to power in the Ottoman Sultanate, who killed his brother in the struggle for the throne. In the winter of 1451-1452. Mehmed began building a fortress at the narrowest point of the Bosphorus, thus cutting off Constantinople from the Black Sea. Byzantine ambassadors those sent by Constantine to find out the purpose of the construction were sent back without an answer; those sent again were captured and beheaded. This was a de facto declaration of war. The fortress Rumelihisar or Bogaz-kesen (from Turkish - "cutting the strait") was completed by August 1452, and the bombards installed on it began to fire on Byzantine ships sailing through the Bosphorus to the Black Sea and back. Mehmed II, after the construction of the fortress, approached the walls of Constantinople for the first time, but retreated three days later.
In the fall of 1452, the Turks invaded the Peloponnese and attacked the brothers of the emperor Constantine, so that they could not come to the aid of the capital (Sfrandizi George, "Great Chronicle" 3; 3). In the winter of 1452-1453, preparations began for the storming of the city itself. Mehmed issued an order to Turkish troops to capture all the Roman cities on the Thracian coast. He believed that all previous attempts to take the city had failed due to the support of the besiegers from the sea. In March 1453, the Turks managed to take Messembria, Achelon and other fortifications on Pontus. Silimvria was besieged, the Romans were blockaded in many places, but they continued to own the sea and devastated the Turkish coast with their ships. In early March, the Turks set up camp at the walls
Constantinople, and in April excavation work began to siege the city. On April 5, the main part of the Turkish army approached the capital. On April 6, Constantinople was completely blocked.
On April 9, the Turkish fleet approached the chain that blocked the Golden Horn, but was repulsed and returned to the Bosphorus. On April 11, the Turks concentrated their heavy artillery against the wall above the Lykos river bed and began a bombardment that lasted 6 weeks. On May 16, the Turks began to dig under the walls near the Blakherna quarter, at the same time, to the sound of pipes and drums, on May 16, 17, and on May 21, the Turks approached the chain at the Golden Horn, trying to attract attention to themselves in order to hide the noise of the tunnel from the Greeks. but the Romans still managed to find the trench and began to carry out counter-trenches. The underground mine war ended in favor of the besieged, they blew up and flooded the passages dug by the Turks with water. On May 29, 1453, after a long siege, the city fell. Constantinople became the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
Emperor Constantine IX Palaeologus rushed into battle as a simple warrior and was killed. His brother Thomas was his heir, whose daughter Sofya Fominichna became the wife of our Grand Duke Ivan III. In 1490, her brother Andrei arrived in Moscow, who after the death of his father became the heir to the Byzantine throne, and transferred the rights to the throne to his son-in-law. His daughter Maria married our voivode of the Verei appanage prince Vasily Mikhailovich Udalgo, a second cousin of the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III Vasilyevich.
TURKS-SELDZHUK
Everyone probably knows about the Turkish Ottoman Empire that existed for many centuries. But it was the Ottoman Turks empire. Here we will touch upon the topic of their predecessors - the Seljuk Turks, who managed to seize vast territories by the 11th century.
The Seljuk Turks in the middle XI century
Their original history is practically unknown, historians can only speculate and speculate about who they were and where they came from. Judging by the names of the rulers, these were the Turks who came from Central Asia. By the name of one of them - Seljuk, who allegedly lived 107 years (this already speaks not in favor of the veracity of this whole story), they began to be called Seljuk Turks. For several decades, the descendants of the Seljuk managed to capture a significant part of the Baghdad Caliphate, including Baghdad itself. But, oddly enough, according to traditional history, the Caliphs of the Abbas clan still continued to rule in Baghdad. Historians explain this by the fact that the Seljuk sultans, having deprived the caliphs of secular power, left them spiritual administration, and after a while gave them Baghdad with the adjacent lands. A beautiful but awkward tale of traditional history.
In the middle of the 13th century, Baghdad was conquered by the Mongols, and the Abbasid caliphs immediately moved to Egypt, where they nominally headed the country. This does not interrupt the dynasty. What can be said here?
We see a clear chronological layering: if in other cases the traditional chronology duplicated and scattered the same events over different centuries, here on the same historical segment and in the common territory there were two different historical events... One is the rule of the Arab caliphs, the other is the rule of the Turkic sultans.
This can only be explained by the fact that the sources that have survived to this day are fragmentary and largely contrived. The Abbasid dynasty, according to TV, stretches continuously from 750 to 1517. I suspect that most of the caliphs represented in it are simply invented. We find exactly the same inventions when we consider an endless line of popes, and this is one of the main arguments of TV supporters: since there is an unbroken chain of popes, the traditional chronology is correct. However, just like many Baghdad caliphs, a significant portion of the Roman pontiffs are medieval fictions.
Symptomatically, the Seljuk Turks appear on the historical stage immediately after the defeat of the Khazar Kaganate by Prince Svyatoslav. The number of Turks in Asia Minor has been growing rapidly since the second half of the 11th century. In the same years, on the southern borders of Ancient Rus, the Polovtsians, who were also Turks, appeared. The Turks even seize power in Egypt. TV's explanations of such a Turkic ubiquity are unconvincing, since a reasonable question arises: where and why did the activity of the Arabs disappear so suddenly? There is a feeling that the Arabs, if they do not disappear from the territory of the Caliphate, then at least become invisible.
The newcomers of the Turks eventually assimilate the population of the territories of modern Azerbaijan, Turkey and part of Iran, although these lands have been inhabited since ancient times by peoples of high culture by those standards. However, the savage horde somehow managed to assimilate them. This is difficult to explain. However, if we assume that the population of these territories by the time of the arrival of the Turks was rare, that is, significant territories of Asia Minor were sparsely populated, then the process of their assimilation by the Turks, of course, could well become successful. The sparse population of these lands, according to AB, can be fully explained by the consequences of the Semitic invasion of this region and their policy of extermination of the local population.
However, the success of assimilation, nevertheless, must imply the presence of a certain culture among the invading Turks. Traditional historians are trying to present the opinion that due to the fact that Islam spread among the Turkic tribes in the 9th and 10th centuries, they had the beginnings of a higher Arab culture, and military art also grew under Arab influence. Without denying this statement, I would nevertheless note that these are only factors of a later period, which made it possible to successfully continue assimilation. But they could not yet exist at the initial stage, when the Turks were just beginning their conquests.
The solution to this problem can be found in A. Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe. He writes that “the great Seljuk dynasty, it seems, was closely associated with the Khazars. Bar Gebrey reports about it. " Further on Koestler: “Bar Gebrey reports that Seljuk's father Tukak was a commander in the army of the Khazar Kagan and that after his death Seljuk himself, the founder of the dynasty, was brought up at the court of the Kagan ... One of the four sons of Seljuk was named with the Hebrew name Israel, and one of the grandsons - Daud (David) ".
The defeat of the Khazars by Svyatoslav allowed the Turkic tribes under the rule of the Khazars to gain independence and begin expansion into the Transcaucasus. At the same time, the Seljuk Turks were no longer as savage as TV portrays us. From contacts with the Khazars, they received the basics of culture and, most importantly, the basics of military art. The presence of Jewish names among the members of the Seljuk clan may well be explained by Judaism among some of the Turks. But in Transcaucasia, they encountered an actively operating Islam, which ultimately led to the transition of the Seljuks to the Muslim religion.
There is one more explanation of the Turkic ubiquity in the pages of history. Yes, there were many of them, but not all historical Türks were such in reality. Thus, many Ugric tribes were declared Türks. The same Pechenegs, Huns, Khazars (more precisely, their Ugric components before contacts with the Semites). And if the nations of the Hungarians and Ossetians had not survived to this day, then the Hungarians and some of the Alans, too, most likely would have been declared Turkic historians.
The famous historian Professor A. G. Kuzmin in his work "Khazar sufferings" gave an example of deciphering the Saltov-Mayatsky inscriptions (the area of the forest-steppe part of the Don region, where mainly Alans lived). “Without denying the Alano-Bulgarian belonging of the settlements and burial grounds of the Don region, MI Artamonov began to incline to the idea that these peoples were also assimilated by the Turkic-speaking Khazars. This idea seemed to be checked and confirmed by the Türkologist AM Shcherbak, having read a number of inscriptions of the Saltov-Mayak culture as Türkic, and MI Artamonov immediately accepted this reading as a fact of great importance. " This was in 1954. And in 1971 it turned out that “Shcherbak not only translated incorrectly, but even reproduced all the inscriptions incorrectly, since he had not even seen them in the original. In reality, some inscriptions turned out to be Alano-Ossetian, and others - Circassian. "
But here's what is curious: in 1976, that is, five years later, S. A. Pletneva's book "Khazars" was published. “The conclusion of M. I. Artamonov was also accepted by S. A. Pletneva, recognizing it likely that by the middle of the VIII century,“ mutual language“, Which was accepted by“ even the Iranian-speaking Alans ”” (A.G. Kuzmin). Turkism is still triumphant!
In Masudi's work “Placers of gold” we read: “Then comes the kingdom of Alan (al-Lan), whose king is called K. rk. 'ndaj, which is the common name for all their kings. " In the notes to the work it is reported that K. pk. ndaj is possibly a Turkish honorary title (ker-kun-dej), and the element ker is found in many Turkish names and words. A little more and you look, historians recognize in some Alanian tribes not Indo-Europeans at all, but Turks.
Meanwhile, the appearance of this title among the Alans is quite understandable from the point of view of AB. In the same notes to Masudi's work, the names of the North Caucasian emirs are reported: Ishak ben Kundaj and Ishak ben Kundajik ben Urhur. And the names are Jewish! Ishaq, SON of Kundaja. Ben is the Hebrew word for "son" (in Arabic, "son" is ibn). Therefore, we are immediately told that these emirs could have been of Khazar origin. And here I agree with traditional historians. Indeed, these names are of Khazar, i.e., JEWISH (according to AB) origin. Kundaj is also, it turns out, the name of a Semitic root.
What were the names of the Alanian kings? K. pk. ndaj. Otherwise: Ker Kundaj. But "ker" is a slightly spoiled Semitic "sar", that is, "king, ruler"! Thus, we have that the Alanian king was called "King Kundaj". Where did the Alans have Semitic names? It is quite possible that this king Kundaj was a native of the Khazars, i.e. Jews. The Semites practiced planting their tribesmen on the throne of their subordinate tribes.
A few centuries later, the Seljuks were replaced by their kindred Ottoman Turks. At the very end of the 15th century, when the persecution of Jews began in Spain, it was the Ottomans who invited these refugees (infidels!) And even created conditions for their life and trade.
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A number of media outlets write that there was a real commotion in Turkey due to the launch of a family tree verification system. Since many modern Turks have discovered Slavic, Kurdish, Circassian, Armenian, Greek and Jewish roots.
Less than two weeks ago, a new function was launched on the portal of public services in Turkey, with the help of which citizens of the country can restore their family tree by entering their first name, last name and date of birth into the system, writes the Sputnik resource, created by the largest Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
In reality, many Turks already knew that their ancestors were representatives of other ethnic communities. So, in Turkey, many can confess to you that his grandfather was a Circassian, Albanian or Georgian. At the same time, your interlocutor himself will be quite convinced that he is a full-fledged Turk.
A striking example of such a Turkish identity is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is of Turkish origin Muslims known as Laz. So, he told the whole country that his father answered him when he asked who are they by nationality - Turks or Laz?
Since the time of the Ottoman Sultanate, the Turks have assimilated a huge number of representatives of various peoples - Arabs, Kurds, Slavs, Greeks, Georgians, Armenians, Circassians, Albanians. So, representatives of all these peoples could become influential commanders or viziers in the sultanate, subject to the transition to Islam and the Turkic language.
The mothers of many Ottoman sultans were Georgians, Circassians. A large number of the Muslim leaders and scholars of Turkey revered by today's Turks were not Turkish in origin. Thus, the rapid assimilation and Turkification of hundreds of thousands of representatives of other peoples allowed the Ottomans to build their sultanate, and Kemal Ataturk to build the Turkish Republic.
That is why the Turkification of huge ethnic masses of other peoples, drawn into the orbit of the Ottomans and the Turkish nation, has historically been a powerful tool for building and strengthening Turkish society and state. Therefore, questions of the ethnic origin of a particular family were quite natural topics in Turkish society.
But only at the level of the family or close interpersonal communication. Moreover, considering that the majority of modern Turks, who once had non-Turkic ancestors, have completely forgotten about this and confidently consider themselves pure Turks. Moreover, at the state level, it was considered dangerous to raise topics of different ethnic origins of Turkish citizens.
Officially, since the founding of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, all citizens of the country were considered only Turks. And it was precisely such an aggressive assimilation policy that the Iranian-speaking Kurds, whom Ankara also stubbornly continued to call "mountain Turks", resisted for many decades.
It is for this reason that the ethnic roots of Turkish citizens were a matter of national security. Why the population register was still a closed book, and its details were considered a state secret. This is stated in an article by Robert Fisk on the pages of the Independent.
This article tells about the reasons for the violent reaction of Turkish citizens to the opened databases on their genealogical origin. Some Turks, who have always boasted of their "pure" Turkish ancestry, were shocked to learn that they actually have other ethnic and religious backgrounds.
Moreover, the reaction of the Turks to the sudden and unexpected opening of the database was so violent that the electronic system went out of order within several hours. Some public figures and journalists opposed the opening of the registers, noting that the situation could have unpredictable social consequences.
In 2004, the editor of the Armenian newspaper "Agos" Hrant Dink wrote that the first female pilot of Turkey, Sabiha Gokcen, had Armenian roots. This and his other articles became the reason for an investigation against him by the Turkish Ministry of Justice. In 2007, he was killed. Dink's story shows why the theme of origin remains a sensitive issue to this day.
The confidentiality of data that identifies the ethnic origin of Turkish citizens is considered a national security issue. Because the Turkish authorities are convinced that a single Turkish identity is the foundation of the Turkish nation state. And the promotion of the topic of the multinational nature of Turkish society threatens the country with inevitable collapse.
At the same time, the Greek media reported that many Turkish citizens, who suddenly discovered their Greek roots, began to apply to the Greek consulates for citizenship. Perhaps also because it opens up a "path to Europe" for them. Since the EU countries are now rapidly granting citizenship, they claim, to representatives of the "oppressed in the Muslim world" ethnic minorities.