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^^^You are wrong, it is not an either or situation. Turks are a very important people to know about, for anyone interested in Black history. At first glance, the site you linked to appears to be informative, however the layout is poor and the text is difficult to read.
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quote:Originally posted by Mike111: ^^^You are wrong, it is not an either or situation. Turks are a very important people to know about, for anyone interested in Black history. At first glance, the site you linked to appears to be informative, however the layout is poor and the text is difficult to read.
Hi!What do you mean with "Black History"?Is it unknown history or something else? Posts: 186 | From: Eurasia | Registered: Jun 2008
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quote:Originally posted by 'Shahrazat': Ohh didnt recognize the black history part
What do you mean mike???
I’m very happy you asked that question Shahrazat. Since the introduction of Turks into the Middle East and North Africa: beginning at about 600 A.D. There has been some profound changes in these areas: Anyone interested in Black history must be aware of these changes, otherwise it would be impossible to properly understand said Black history. Below I give some examples to illustrate my point. [Below: Of course when I say Turkish, I mean ethnically not nationality]
This USED to be an Anatolian (Turkey) king.
Now this Turkish gentleman is an Anatolian (Turkey) King.
This USED to be an Arab.
Now these Turkish gentlemen are Arabs.
This USED to be an Egyptian king.
Now this Turkish gentleman is an Egyptian King
Continued in next frame.
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This turn of events even effects the arts, obviously this man can no longer play the lead in Shakespeare’s play about the Moor (Berber), Othello. A Turkish man must now be found to play the part.
I personally think that this NEW Moor (Berber) gentleman of Turkish stock would be great in the part.
So 'Shahrazat' as you can plainly see, without a good understanding of Turks, it is impossible to understand Black history. (But I still can’t understand how Blacks turn into Turks, that is the weirdest thing).
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Mike you may be able to help me out here. This is sort of similar . . . but with the Persians.
Just finished watching the movie "300" about the Spartans.
Seems like Africans were prominent in the Persian Army. Zekeses(sp?) seem to be a half-breed Obama type trans-sexual and a lot of the lead characters on the Persian side seemed to be Africans.
What is the true story here. Who were the ancient Persians?
Was Hollywood doing there "quota" thing in the movie or were Africans that prominent in the Persian Army?
If there is a web-link let me know. Ta!
-------------------- Without data you are just another person with an opinion - Deming Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007
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xyyman - I am a bit surprised by your question: I thought that you understood what Marc was trying to say; however imperfectly. If nothing else; the post above should have shown you that ALL ancient civilizations were Black. The Turks were NOT the ONLY White people to come from the Eurasian plains. ALL White people come from the Eurasian plains. Whites did not reach Europe until about 1,200 B.C. That is why you get the silly arguments about Cro-Magnons being the ancestors of Europeans. There are NO White skeletons in Europe older than from 1,200 B.C. So they are trying to piggy-back onto Cro-Magnons. Problem is; Cro-Magnons died off by 4,000 B.C. So it's a constant rigmarole. Check out Rasol's posts for examples.
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Mike, I don't know whether the thesis you put here acceptable scientifically or not.But I believe that Turks must have influenced many civilizations,ethnicities after the migrations from Asia. Today, some people say there are connections between American Indians and Turks(migration from Bering Strait).There are some strong similar themes,patterns in between Indian and Turkish carpets and some Turkish vocabulary are being used in Indian language. But all of these are hypothesis and there are alot of black points in history.They need to be proved with strong evidences. By the way the man in 8th picture Jalal Talabani today considers himself as Kurdish not Turkish.
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^^^It's not really my business, but I consider the Kurdish issue, similar to the Irish issue, they are fundamentally the same people.
I think it stupid to believe that only Blacks and Mongols came across the straits. Though Blacks and Mongols were more in the immediate vicinity, (Whites mostly inhabited the western plains), but as you know, Turks were also in the eastern plains: So there is no reason why Whites couldn't have come across, whether they were Turks is another matter.
Aleixo García, a Portuguese adventurer and the first White person to enter Inca territory, was intrigued by reports of "the White King" (Huayna Cápac), perhaps he (Huayna Cápac) was White.
Additionally: In ancient American artifacts, there is clear indication of racial mixture.
Black/Mongol mix.
Black/White mix.
Black/White mix.
Still Aztec, but this one is pure Black
Mongols don't have noses like this, an obvious mix.
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I am adding a few more, just because they are so delightful to look at.
This one is NOT delightful.
Above, we have a priest wearing the skin of a sacrificed victim. A living human, clothed in a sacrificial victim's skin, (this is clearly visible around the mouth and wrists). This type of image is among the most awesome and most disturbing ever created by Mesoamerican artists.
It expresses the deeply held belief that death is necessary to life. Accordingly, such figures were associated with fertility, rain, and the springtime renewal of the earth's vegetation. Perhaps the wearer, upon shedding the skin, was perceived as a sprout, emerging from a withered husk. Such figures also had military meanings.
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quote:Originally posted by Mike111: This USED to be a Hebrew.
Now these Turkish (khazar) gentlemen are Hebrews.
These USED to be Berbers.
Now these Turkish people are Berbers.
This turn of events even effects the arts, obviously this man can no longer play the lead in Shakespeare’s play about the Moor (Berber), Othello. A Turkish man must now be found to play the part.
I personally think that this NEW Moor (Berber) gentleman of Turkish stock would be great in the part.
So 'Shahrazat' as you can plainly see, without a good understanding of Turks, it is impossible to understand Black history. (But I still can’t understand how Blacks turn into Turks, that is the weirdest thing).
´ FYI real Turks look east-asian in phenotype and not like Berbers or turkified Turks from modern day nation of Turkey in anatolia (who are a mix of Greeks, Makedonians, Serbs, Armenians and Syrians.) These were also the people of the christian Byzanine state/empire who later got conquered during the middle ages by the siljuk turks. Turks in Turkey have nothing to do with the real turks from central-asia other than language and islamic religion. They are basically Greeks and Armenians who just happen to speak a turkish language (due to conquest)just like peruvians who speak a latin language instead of their original language. Turks (from Turkey) are hundred times more related to greeks and other balkan population than they are to any turkish group of central asia, they use to speak greek before siljuk invasion. And Berbers have nothing to do with turks since the nomad central-asian turks never conquerd north africa and no one in north africa speaks their turkish language, which makes your berber=turks theory preposterous.
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Thanks for your sharing.Your ideas and pictures of sculptures, statuettes are really interesting. You are completely right about Kurdish.Turks and Kurds have been living for thousand years and actually no difference between them culturally,religiously and ethnically etc.But some exterior political issues,primitive nationalistic thoughts threaten the peace between them unfortunately.
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quote:Originally posted by Millas: Thanks for your sharing.Your ideas and pictures of sculptures, statuettes are really interesting. You are completely right about Kurdish.Turks and Kurds have been living for thousand years and actually no difference between them culturally,religiously and ethnically etc.But some exterior political issues,primitive nationalistic thoughts threaten the peace between them unfortunately.
Kurds are more related to persians and afghans than to other turks of Turkey, while turks are a confederation of Greeks, serbs, syrians , Armenians, makedonians and azerbadjanians who together today speak a central-asian language since the middle-ages after real turks from central asia invaded Anatolia.
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Yonis,I think there are alot of exaggeration in your words.Yes,there are small armenian,greek,slavic or arabic minorities in Turkey but we can not say 70 million people are all combination of these ethnicities above. Turkey is the inheritor of Ottoman empire and the substantive element is Turkish originated people as in Ottomans. Can we say that today's people of Greece has pure connections with the Hellenic ancestor of past or Hellenic culture?As for me they are all remains of Ottoman empire.
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quote:Originally posted by Millas: Thanks for your sharing.Your ideas and pictures of sculptures, statuettes are really interesting. You are completely right about Kurdish.Turks and Kurds have been living for thousand years and actually no difference between them culturally,religiously and ethnically etc.But some exterior political issues,primitive nationalistic thoughts threaten the peace between them unfortunately.
Kurds are more related to persians and afghans than to other turks of Turkey, while turks are a confederation of Greeks, serbs, syrians , Armenians, makedonians and azerbadjanians who together today speak a central-asian language since the middle-ages after real turks from central asia invaded Anatolia.
Yes, I can accept the relations between Kurds and Persians,Afghans as a matter of fact They are all related to Turkish based civilization.There are same racial equality with Azerbadjanians and Turks.As I said Greeks, serbs, syrians , Armenians, makedonians are remains of huge imperial domination.The people of Anatolia don't consist of those small minorities.May be they are drops in the sea.
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Yonis - Below is the bust of one of the Turkish rulers of Egypt. Please tell me how he is different from any other White man. Modern Turks will show some difference, simply because they mixed with the Black populations that were conquered and others. Persians should be left out of the conversation, because as has been shown, they were a pure blood Black people. As to the "Turks didn't go to north Africa thing" get serious! It would be nice if you did some research before posting.
quote:Originally posted by Millas: 'As to the "Turks didn't go to north Africa thing" get serious! It would be nice if you did some research before posting' e they were just the conti true analysis
If you have any evidence that central-asian turks entered/invaded north africa then please be kind and share your knowledge since i never heard of it. And don't bring up the Ottomans since they were just a continuation of the byzantine Greek empire (they just changed religion and language but remained the same people) who already controled north africa and levant before the advent of Islam.
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Yonis2 - Basically you are saying that Ottomans were Greeks NOT Turks. As you know; ordinarily I go to great pains to explain and provide accurate information. But In this case I will say nothing. What you suggest is so stupid that to try to dissuade anyone believing it would be a waste of time and effort. Such a person belongs with you, you were made for each other.
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quote:Originally posted by Mike111: Yonis2 - Basically you are saying that Ottomans were Greeks NOT Turks. As you know; ordinarily I go to great pains to explain and provide accurate information. But In this case I will say nothing. What you suggest is so stupid that to try to dissuade anyone believing it would be a waste of time and effort. Such a person belongs with you, you were made for each other.
You haven't even defined "Turk" yet, i don't think you know the meaning of a Turk. For you it seems that everyone that is none-african tropical looking person is a "Turk", right?
I don't have to go to such length so to prove to you that modern turks (of turkey) spoke a greek language before the siljuk Turks invaded them, the trace out there is overwhelming. Also if you took the time to study the real turks of central-asia (like turkmenistan) then you would know how a real "Turk" looks like and they surely don't resemble the people of Anatolia (modern TUrkey) let alone Berbers of NorthAfrica. Your prejudice has clouded how things are in reality, also the reason why no one (with atleast half a brain) will ever take you seriously.
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^^^So now you are saying that the people of modern Turkey are Greeks, it's just that they don't know it. Okay by me, I'm neither Turk nor Greek. But I do want to test what you say, so let's see what we have.
Here is a picture of the Turkmenistan president.
Here is the Turkish president
Here is Greek Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos
Here is Greek President Karolos Papoulias (right)
By george yonis2, you are right, they are COMPLETELY different, it's like night and day: AMAZING!!! To the Rasta's out there, let this be a lesson to you, see what can happen when you use too much.
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quote:Originally posted by Millas: 'As to the "Turks didn't go to north Africa thing" get serious! It would be nice if you did some research before posting' e they were just the conti true analysis
If you have any evidence that central-asian turks entered/invaded north africa then please be kind and share your knowledge since i never heard of it. And don't bring up the Ottomans since they were just a continuation of the byzantine Greek empire (they just changed religion and language but remained the same people) who already controled north africa and levant before the advent of Islam.
Yonnis,excuse me but all these sentences above are nonsensical,especially about the continuatian of the Byzantine.
Ottomans were Turkish dominated people and they conquered many places from east to the west,north to the south including North Africa.And ofcourse they are mixed up with the people of these conquered places.
The founder of the Ottoman empire Osman's father Ertughrul begh was an Seljuk begh, their roots are of the "Turk-Kayi" tribe of Turk-Oghuz tribes from Asia.
There are many Turkic tribes settled in Anatolia, especially the wave of the big affshar tribe that came from Khorasan (a province of Iran, close to Turkmenistan aka central asia) after the defeat of Beyazid against Timurlenk at Ankara Timurlenk brought them and settled them in Anatolia and to west İran, Turkish historians believe the real Turkification of Anatolia had begun then to be exactly not at 1071. Also not to forget, during/before/after WW1 there was a enormous flee of Turkic people into Turkey because of war and conflicts (balkan, middle east and caucasia).
Actually,If we will look at history we can say Turks came into Anatolia firstly in the Hun Turk Period(395-396). Of course there are other sources about maybe earlier time, but the most trustable sources of the first entrance of Turks in Anatolia, is of Hun Turks. But the Period when Turks came to Anatolia to stay there until today's Turkey is the Seljuk Turks Period, with the Malazgirt Victory in 1071. Ottoman Empire was appeared of the Seljuk Empire, from a little beylik(state) to an empire. It is not correct, that Turks were minority when they came to Anatolia, especially not for nowadays.During the First WW, there lived around 10 million people in the Turkey Area, looking at this number in begin of 20th century, you can imagine how many people there were many centuries ago.During the Turkish War of Independence many Turks of Turkish Origin came into Turkey Area of now. They formed the majority of the population of Turkey. It is true that Turks mixed with Arabs,Greeks etc but its not true that Turks in Turkiye have same appearence as them. Of course there are similarities, but there is a basic appearence of Turks, whom is notable. ca. 85% of Turkiye are of Turkish Origin, Most Turks in Turkey are of Oghuz Tribe from central Asia.
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Thanks for the pointers Mike. But I am trying to un-learn what I have been taught for so long. I got the AE bit in my late teens but I trying to make head-way with so called ancient European and Asian history, plus I am a Techno major.. . .but I am hooked on history.
I am taking it one step at a time. First I heard of the Estrucans and Pelagascian(sp?) which on this forum. (Thanks to the vets – you , Jo, Marc, Clyde, Rasol, DJ, The Lord(great mind), Kemson etc , and . . .the trolls) Now I am doing independent research and formulating my own views. Infact this forum opened my eyes to so many false perceptions. Now I can speak with confidence on many of these issues.
Long story short.. .bear with me.
quote:Originally posted by Mike111: xyyman - I am a bit surprised by your question: I thought that you understood what Marc was trying to say; however imperfectly. If nothing else; the post above should have shown you that ALL ancient civilizations were Black. The Turks were NOT the ONLY White people to come from the Eurasian plains. ALL White people come from the Eurasian plains. Whites did not reach Europe until about 1,200 B.C. That is why you get the silly arguments about Cro-Magnons being the ancestors of Europeans. There are NO White skeletons in Europe older than from 1,200 B.C. So they are trying to piggy-back onto Cro-Magnons. Problem is; Cro-Magnons died off by 4,000 B.C. So it's a constant rigmarole. Check out Rasol's posts for examples.
quote:Millas wrote: ca. 85% of Turkiye are of Turkish Origin, Most Turks in Turkey are of Oghuz Tribe from central Asia.
Bullshit!
As i said most turks of Turkey have nothing to do with central-asian turks other than language. They are basicaly Greeks and Armenians who speak a turkish language.
Turks carry as much E3b as Greeks and Albanians (up to 25%) and only 13% central asian lineage, infact semetic speaking syrians have more mongol (central-asian) blood than turks from turkey (as you can see below) and they don't even speak central asian language like turks.
Not surprising, Turks (of Turkey) cluster with greeks and other balkan population and not with central asian tribes. Afterall they use to speak Greek language less than thousand years ago, as you probably know Istanbul the capital of turkey use to be called Constantinopel and was then the capital of Greek Byzantine empire. The people just became muslim and adopted turkish language during the middle ages but biologically they are still Greek and Anatolian.
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To all Yonis,Ionnis,Rumis and Yannis If we focus on the issue with blood relation, proximity of blood ,chromosomes,we get into a big dilemma.All the data you pasted here estimation from a Turkish university. I think Turkey is a very huge laboratory to put absolute adjudication with its more than 800.000 km2 surface area and its more than 70 million population.So, complete explanation of social and ethnic issues with these kind of limited researchs in limited area must have been very difficult. Finally we can not explain the Turkish origin in today’s Turkey only with genetic indication,and we cannot find solution irrespective of culture,language,customs etc, totally social sciences.As I said before, Turks from central asia are mixed up a lot of ethnicities in Anatolia and other places they conquered. But as you know, now the name of this glorious land is TURKEY,people who live on this land called TURK,They speak totally pure TURKISH.The name ANATOLIA comes from Turkish word ANADOLU. And I can’t believe your ignorance that Istanbul is not the capital of Turkey, Ankara is.Istanbul was the capital in Ottoman period. As for Constantinople fallacious, it is as dead as dodo it was 6 centuries ago. It was conquered by TURKS,by Fatih Sultan Mehmet(Mehmet is pure Turkish name derived from the name of great Prophet Muhammad(puh.)) in 1453. Namely it has been Turks’ Istanbul for 6 centuries.As a result,basically,biologically,physically,linguisticly,consequently,the people who live in today’s Turkey are Turks.Yes, there are Greeks living mostly in Marmara region not much more than 15000 people. And one surprising point; Turkish people has no doubt about their origin,but I think there is some problem with Greek people of today’s Greece ,because Greece does not collect data on ethnicity.WHY? https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gr.html#PeoplePosts: 186 | From: Eurasia | Registered: Jun 2008
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You are full of sh1t,so far you have provided nothing other than your opinion on the origin of turks. You claimed that 85% of turks (from turkey) are from central asia yet you haven't posted anything that can back up your bs. I posted genetic studies which refuted your claim. Everyone can see that the people of turkey are not mongoloid like the real turks of central asia, genetically they are not different from greeks and other balkan population. Historically these people spoke greek language before siljuk invasion, the lingustic and religous shift of the anatolian greeks was total but the genetic transformation was minimal. They may today identify as turks but ther ancestors were greek and other anatolian ethnicities and they are no more related to turks of central asia than albanians armenians and greeks are.
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Yonis - If I'm not mistaken, you seem to be trying to make the point that ONLY Mongols come from Asia. So therefore, since the people of Turkey are White, they can't be from Asia. Did I get that right Storm-trooper?
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I don't use useless and simplistic new world terms like "white" and "black" in relation to people. The genetic studies i posted on turks clearly shows that they are not from central-asia but indigenous to anatolia, that's the reality.
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Yonis2 – We seem to have a very unusual and unique situation here: so I will take my time and revisit the parameters before going on. Since coming on the board, I have heard you described a Black South African, I have heard Rasol described as a Black Egyptian, and Djehuti as a Filipino. I of course wondered how anyone could know your ethnicity, in cyberspace; all people know is what you tell them. But since the board seemed satisfied with your description, what the heck.
However, over the years, I noticed that whenever the issue of Whites being indigenous to Europe came up, the three of you fought tooth and nail to defend that lie. I couldn’t help but wonder; why on Earth would two Black men and a Filipino be so steadfast in defending the White man’s lies, most-times with really desperate and pathetic logic.
And now, in this quest to defend the White man’s lies, you have achieved new heights. You have put yourself in the position of telling a Turk (and his entire nation) that they are NOT really Turks, but rather, they are Greeks: and you go further by telling them that they did NOT migrate to Anatolia from Asia, but that they were there all along (funny how they didn’t know that).
And to show your utter absurdity, you produce a study comparing the influence of Turkic tribes in the Balkans with what that idiot thinks is the influence from central Asia, as if he could possibly know what the DNA of those ANCIENT Turks was: (the modern central Asian Turks are necessarily different: owing to movements of people there – and the admixture with Mongols that would naturally occur). It should also be noted that Syria, like ALL the Middle East and North Africa, is rife with Turkic DNA. Now I know that you hoped nobody would understand that the people of the Balkans are mostly Turks too, sorry to burst your balloon.
Over the years, I have heard the Negroes of the board, sing the praises of the three of you many times, even though, when it came to Blacks outside of Africa, you were adamant against any suggestion of it: they obviously don’t understand the concept of steering, or Moles. The three of you must have been laughing your Asses off. But don’t worry, I won’t tell them, if ignorance is bliss, let them be happy.
In any event, there are some lurkers who seem to have some brains, so I am including part of the established explanation of Turks, and another picture of the Black people who were the original people of Anatolia for them. BTW – please save that “there is no such thing as Black and White” Bull **** for your fans, I find it insulting to have such nonsense spoken to me.
Encyclopedia Britannia
Turkic
Any of various peoples whose members speak languages belonging to the Turkic subfamily of the Altaic family of languages. They are historically and linguistically connected with the T'u-chüeh, the name given by the Chinese to the nomadic people who in the 6th century AD founded an empire stretching from Mongolia and the northern frontier of China to the Black Sea. With some exceptions, notably in the European part of Turkey and in the Volga region, the Turkic peoples are confined to Asia. Their most important cultural link, aside from history and language, is that with Islam, for, with the exception of the Sakha (Yakut) of eastern Siberia and the Chuvash of the Volga region of Russia, they are all Muslim.
The Turkic peoples may be divided into two main groups: the western and the eastern. The western group includes the Turkic peoples of southeastern Europe and those of southwestern Asia inhabiting Anatolia (Asian Turkey) and northwestern Persia. The eastern group comprises the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, Kazakhstan, and the Uighur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang in China. Turkic peoples display a great variety of ethnic types.
Little is known about the origins of the Turkic peoples, and much of their history even up to the time of the Mongol conquests in the 10th–13th centuries is shrouded in obscurity. Chinese documents of the 6th century AD refer to the empire of the T'u-chüeh as consisting of two parts, the northern and western Turks. This empire submitted to the nominal suzerainty of the Chinese T'ang dynasty in the 7th century, but the northern Turks regained their independence in 682 and retained it until 744. The Orhon inscriptions, the oldest known Turkic records (8th century), refer to this empire and particularly to the confederation of Turkic tribes known as the Oguz; to the Uighur, who lived along the Selenga River (in present-day Mongolia); and to the Kyrgyz, who lived along the Yenisey River (in north-central Russia). When able to escape the domination of the T'ang dynasty, these northern Turkic groups fought each other for control of Mongolia from the 8th to the 11th century, when the Oguz migrated westward into Persia and Afghanistan. In Persia the family of Oguz tribes known as Seljuqs created an empire that by the late 11th century stretched from the Amu Darya south to the Persian Gulf and from the Indus River west to the Mediterranean Sea. In 1071 the Seljuq sultan Alp-Arslan defeated the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Manzikert and thereby opened the way for several million Oguz tribesmen to settle in Anatolia. These Turks came to form the bulk of the population there, and one Oguz tribal chief, Osman, founded the Ottoman dynasty (early 14th century) that would subsequently extend Turkish power throughout the eastern Mediterranean. The Oguz are the primary ancestors of the Turks of present-day Turkey.
Farther east, in Central Asia, the Uighur were driven out of Mongolia and settled in the 9th century in what is now the Xinjiang region of northwestern China. Some Uighur moved westward into what is now Uzbekistan, where they forsook nomadic pastoralism for a sedentary lifestyle. These people became known as Uzbek, named for a ruler of a local Mongol dynasty of that name.
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Yonis2 - Is your pale behind red yet? If not, maybe this will do it.
Michigan State University
Twenty-Five Lectures on Modern Balkan History Lecture 1: Geography and ethnic geography of the Balkans to 1500
One can't understand the Balkans without understanding its ethnic groups, and one can't understand the ethnic groups and their history without knowing the influence of the region's geography.
Even the geographic extent of the "Balkan" region is a matter of controversy. Many scholars, especially those writing in the Cold War era, have included only the Communist states and linked them with Czechoslovakia, Poland and East Germany, while omitting Greece and ignoring Turkey and the Ottoman era. Other historians exclude Hungary, Croatia and other Habsburg lands, because of their "central" European character, supposedly contrary to Balkan themes. But the presence of contradictory themes is itself characteristically Balkan.
For the purposes of this course of lectures, the Balkan area includes Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania, Albania and Hungary. Most of this area was once under Ottoman Turkish rule; the rest under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The lectures will not deal with all of the Ottoman Empire, which extended into Asia and Africa, or other former Habsburg lands such as Czechoslovakia and parts of Poland. Physical geography
Balkan geography revolves around three features: the area's situation as a peninsula, its mountains, and its rivers. Leften Stavrianos has pointed out the influence of geography on Balkan history.
The Balkan region is a triangular peninsula with a wide northern border, narrowing to a tip as it extends to the south. The Black, the Aegean, the Mediterranean and the Adriatic Seas surround it; they have served as both barriers and entry points. Unlike some peninsulas, the Balkan area has not been physically isolated from nearby regions. In the northeast, Romania is exposed to the steppe regions of the Ukraine, an easy invasion route from prehistoric times to the present. In the northwest, the valley of the Danube and the flat Hungarian plain are easy points of entry. Most (but not all) of the ethnic groups in the region entered by one of these paths.
While it is surrounded on three sides by water, the peninsula is not cut off from neighboring regions to the east, west or south. To the east, the narrow straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles are a natural pathway between the Balkans and Anatolia, and Asia beyond. To the west, the Italian peninsula is only forty miles away across the Adriatic from Albania, and influence from that direction has been another constant. Finally, the Aegean and Mediterranean islands to the south are stepping stones to the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt. Not surprisingly, the Balkan region has been a crossroads for traffic passing to and from all these destinations.
The mountains which divide the region are a prominent internal physical characteristic. The region takes its name from the "Balkan" mountain range in Bulgaria (from a Turkish word meaning "a chain of wooded mountains"). On a larger scale, one long continuous chain of mountains crosses the region in the form of a reversed letter S, from the Carpathians south to the Balkan range proper, before it marches away east into Anatolian Turkey. On the west coast, an offshoot of the Dinaric Alps follows the coast south through Dalmatia and Albania, crosses Greece and continues into the sea in the form of various islands.
The first effect of these mountains is to divide the region into small units within which distinct ethnic groups have been able to sustain themselves. This area, a little smaller in size than France and Germany or the states of Texas and Oklahoma, is home to a dozen or more prominent ethnic groups.
Second, the mountains have been physical obstacles, hampering efforts at regional combination, whether political, economic or cultural. The ethnic groups have tended toward distinct national cultures, local economies and political autonomy.
Third, the mountains have subdivided every district into vertical ecological zones, ranging from more valuable lowland farming areas to less valuable wooded or rocky uplands. This variety of ecological niches supports various cultures in close proximity: traders, farmers, transhumant herders, forest dwellers. In general, the higher up the zone, the less productive the land, and so the upper regions of the mountains act as places of exile and refuge for defeated ethnic groups expelled from more desirable coast and valley lands. In general, then, the mountain features of the Balkans have contributed to the continued fragmentation of human groups in the area.
The rivers of the region are short; their influence is usually local, with one exception. The small rivers of the area typically rise in coastal mountains and drop into the nearest sea after a short course. They are too small to carry water traffic; instead they cut ravines that block travel along the coasts. The great exception is the Danube. It enters from the northwest, passes through the Hungarian plain, skirts the south Slavic states, and exits through Romania into the Black Sea on the east. Despite its size, the Danube also fails to be a source of regional integration. Several factors prevent easy use of the Danube for regular communication and trade: low water in the summer, marshes obstructing access to the river bank, the narrow passage of the Iron Gates between Serbia and Romania (fully opened to shipping by modern engineering techniques only in 1896), and the tendency of the Black Sea delta to silt up. Instead, the Danube acts to introduce outside influences. The western reaches of the river point to the German world; the eastern reaches lead to a dead end in the Black Sea, and leave travel at the mercy of Russia and Turkey. The Danube serves the needs of powerful external forces far more than it helps the internal needs of the Balkan peoples. Like the mountains, the Balkan rivers have done little to foster unity in the area. Ethnic geography
The Balkans have been inhabited since prehistoric times. but today's ethnic groups descend from Indo-European migrants or ethnic groups that arrived in historical times. The pre-Indo-European inhabitants left little behind except for archaelogical remnants and a few place names (like Knossos on the island of Crete).
Knowledge of the area's national and ethnic groups is fundamental to Balkan history: they are the alphabet, the periodic table of elements. At a minimum this means recognizing a dozen major ethnic groups, where they live (now and in the past), and how their religions, languages and cultures compare and interconnect.
Placing these ethnic groups on the map in the order in which they came to the region is a simple way to introduce them. It has the virtues of the chronological and helps explain how some later arrivals affected their neighbors.
Unfortunately the early history of some groups is incomplete and the evidence is controversial. The question of who has lived where, when and for how long is critical for several modern political and territorial disputes. The story of the Albanians illustrates these points about evidence, and the controversies about its use. The Albanians
The Albanians, or more accurately their ancestors the Illyrians, "appeared" in the western Balkans around 1200 BC (or BCE, Before Christian Era). More precisely, we can say that around 1200 BC the archaeological record shows a "discontinuity," a significant break in material culture during a short span of time. Objects left in graves and the structure of grave sites changed. Nineteenth century writers explained this (and similar events, especially among the Greeks) by describing supposed waves of Indo-European invaders: men, women and children travelling in wagons out of the steppes, driving their herds before them and wiping out the existing population. Modern scholars argue for scenarios with less drama. Alterations in burials can mean a total change in population, but they can also mean that an existing population adopted new customs, with or without the arrival of large numbers of new people. For example, future archaelogists should not see the sudden appearance of Japanese VCRs in late twentieth century American landfills as evidence of migration or invasion, but only of trade and cultural contact. The same thing is true in Balkan prehistory. In 1200 BC, people in the Western Balkans took up the cultural practices that we call "Illyrian". Some new people probably entered the area, and some of the old population probably remained.
After 1200 BC, classical Greek records describe the Illyrians as a non-Greek people to the north and west. The Illyrians left no "historic" or written records of their own. We have to use linguistic and archaeological evidence to trace their story. Based on this evidence, scholars will say that the Illyrians inhabited the region which today makes up Albania and the former Yugoslavia. Their descendants have remained in the mountains of present-day Albania continuously since 1200 BC: today's Albanians are in fact linked to the Illyrians. In the rest of former Illyria, other peoples took their place.
Albanian is an Indo-European language, but one without relatives; it is believed to be the only surviving language descended from ancient Illyrian. The linguistic evidence is not simple. Modern Albanian is obviously very different from the language of its neighbors, but we have nothing written in the language before the year 1555 of the Christian era, unlike Greek and the Slavic languages, for which we have classical and/or medieval writings dating back to a very early period. Direct linguistic descent is easy to trace in those kinds of records, but not for Illyrian/Albanian. The linguistic evidence here relies on fields like "onomastics", the study of place names and the names for everyday objects, and complex reasoning from meagre facts.
Archaeology is the second source for Albanian prehistory. Scholars can trace a continuous evolution of burial goods, ornamentation on costumes, and cultural practices (deduced from material remains) from 1200 BC forward to the historic Middle Ages. Based on that, and on the lack of recorded migration to the area by other groups, scholars believe the Illyrians became the modern Albanians.
The Albanians today number about five million. Three and a half million live within Albania, another 1.7 million in the adjacent Kosovo region of Serbia, and half a million in the new state known as the "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia." Historically most Albanians have been Muslim since the time of the Ottoman conquest, with Eastern Orthodox and smaller Catholic minorities. The Kosovo region is a good example of competing historical claims to Balkan lands. Kosovo is a region of great cultural significance for Serbia, the site of important medieval events. At the same time, it has a majority Albanian population today, and the Illyrian evidence says that proto-Albanians were there long before the Serbs. Both nations claim it. In cases like this, scholarship is mixed with nationalist politics: that is why controversy accompanies history here. The Greeks
The Greeks are as ancient as the Albanians in their Balkan ties. The 19th century model for Greek entry to the area involved three "waves" of invaders riding in carts, driving cattle and overwhelming the pre-Indo-European inhabitants. Each wave was associated with historic sites and a later dialect group -- Achaeans, Ionians and Dorians -- with intricate dating squabbles. The current view is simpler. Scholars now see a single immigration, with the dialects evolving later. The image of the "tribal mass" in motion has been discarded in favor of two competing theories. According to the first model, the "invasion" consisted of individuals, families and small groups blending into the indigenous population. The second model sees a small clique of well-armed conquerors, who used the innovation of the chariot to defeat and displace the existing rulers. In either case, the old inhabitants simply took on the new culture, adopting new tools and a new religion, and creating a mix which is classical "Greek" culture.
Ancient Greece encompassed not only today's Greek state but the Aegean islands and lands in Anatolia. Greek colonies appeared all around the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean, and followed Alexander the Great all over the Middle East.
We have copious historic records about Greece, but there are still some questions. The most mysterious episode in Greek national history takes place at the end of the Roman period. The Greek world was part of Rome, but Greek culture survived under Roman rule. Greek was the language of the earliest Christian gospels. The eastern half of the Roman Empire was culturally Greek and survived as the Byzantine Empire until 1453 AD (or CE, Christian Era). Between 600 and 800 AD, Slavic invaders washed over Greece as far south as the Peloponessus. These "barbarians" created a "dark age" in the Balkans during which written Greek records cease. In 800 AD Greek written culture reappears. Apparently these "invasions" can also be characterized as an intermingling of peoples. Greek civilization seems to have survived in small cities, and ultimately the newly arrived Slavs became Hellenized. Are we then dealing with the same Greek identity? It persists in a cultural sense, but the 19th century notion of "blood" might say that these are not quite the same people. This is worth keeping in mind later as one wrestles with questions of ethnic identity.
In 1453, the Byzantine Empire fell under Ottoman rule, but Greek culture and language once again survived. Today there are over ten million Greeks in Europe. Most Greeks live in the Greek state. However, until the 1920s there were substantial Greek populations in Anatolia. Today the chief "irredenta" (or minority populations outside the borders of Greece) are in Istanbul, on Cyprus and in southern Albania (excluding Greeks in America, and others abroad).
The Greeks are overwhelmingly Eastern Orthodox, under the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Many Americans fail to know that there are a dozen independent branches of the Eastern Orthodox church, identified with separate Balkan and East European ethnic groups. Just as the Roman Catholic Pope in Rome and the Greek Patriarch in Constantinople split over issues of doctrinal authority in 1054 AD, the other national Orthodox churches have often rejected the authority of the Greek patriarch. The Greek Orthodox Church has to be distinguished from the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Bulgarian Church, and so on.
The Greek language has continued to evolve since classical times. Today it includes a formal written version called katharevousa, a less formal spoken version called dimotiki, and an archaic version used in church services. Until this century, notable Greek communities elsewhere in the Balkans or in Anatolia spoke other languages (such as Turkish) but this is not common today. The Romanians
The Romanians also have origins in the classical era, but their history is complicated and controversial. Romanian and Hungarian nationalists disagree fundamentally about the origin of the modern Romanians. The Romanian position is this. In 106 AD Rome conquered the kingdom of the Getes, in what is today Transylvania (this event is the subject matter of Trajan's Column). The Getes, Roman settlers, administrators and merchants mixed to form a new Latin-speaking Dacian ethnic group. In 271 AD, Dacia was evacuated in the face of barbarian invasions. Soldiers, townspeople, merchants and administrators fled south. Peasants and country folk probably did not leave, but moved to safety in the wooded Carpathians during the barbarian invasions. During this period the Magyars (Hungarians) settled in parts of Transylvania. In a document of 1247 AD, Romanians reappear in historical records, both in Transylvania and in Moldavia and Wallachia. Romanian nationalists say that this shows the descent of the original Daco-Roman population from the Carpathians. Hungarian nationalists say instead that the Romanians of 1247 are remnant Dacians who fled south and survived for a millenium as herdspeople in Serbia and northern Greece before migrating north again. A Romanian-speaking Vlach ethnic group does live by herding in the southern Balkans. In the Magyar view, the Dacians who remained behind were wiped out. By implication, Romania thereby loses any claim to Transylvania.
Western scholars tend to accept the Romanian interpretation. The linguistic evidence supports the Romanian position: Romanian lacks Greek loan words for religious or pastoral terms, which should have come into use if Romanians spent such a long time in a Balkan exile. Romanian includes many Turkish and Slavic loanwords, but its basic grammar and vocabulary are recognizable as based on Latin.
Twenty million ethnic Romanians live in the Romanian state. Outside the state, there are nearly 3 million "Moldovans" in that part of the former Soviet Union. Romania in turn has substantial minorities within its own borders: some one and a half million Hungarians in Transylvania and at least half a million Gypsies. There is a distinct Romanian Orthodox Church, but there are other religions present, especially in Transylvania. The Slavs
Migrating Slavs reached the Balkans during the waves of "barbarian" invasions at the end of the Roman Empire. Many groups entering at that time left no mark. The South Slavs, as well as the non-Slavic Magyars, concern us here.
The South Slav (Yugo-Slav) groups that became the Slovenes, Croatians, Serbians and Bulgarians entered the Balkans from the north between 500 and 700 AD. They settled in an arc stretching from the head of the Adriatic in the north, southward and eastward to the Black Sea. These groups were divided into tribes before they arrived, but there was little variation between one group and its neighbors. The hard and fast distinctions among them, especially in languages, are largely a product of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ethnic maps that draw neat lines around these groups tend to oversimplify.
The Slovenes arrived first, in the 500s AD. Slovene resembles Slovak in some ways, and is quite distinct from Serbo-Croatian. Some 1.7 million Slovenes live in the northwest corner of the former Republic of Yugoslavia. Austrian and Italian influences have created a Central European culture and Slovenes are chiefly Roman Catholic.
The other south Slavic peoples arrived in the 600s AD. Slavs probably occupied parts of the Hungarian plain and Greece as well, but those Slavs later were absorbed into other cultures.
The south Slavic Croatians reached the Balkans in the late 500s and early 600s AD (arriving at the same time as the Serbs). In the 800s, they fell under the nominal control of Charlemagne and his heirs. The chief result was not political, but religious. Western Frankish missionaries followed and began the process by which Croatia became a Catholic country (while the Serbs became Orthodox). In 879 AD a Croatian state was recognized by the Pope. The acceptance of Christianity by the Balkan nations tends to follow similar patterns, worth pointing out here. South Slav tribes lacked anything like a strong king: they were organized into smaller units under warlords or village chiefs, who evolved into a nobility. A strong central figure like a king generally arose when the tribe united in response to some outside military threat. Once that threat receded, the nobles ceased to obey the control of the central authority. The early kings adopted Christianity because in return for leading mass conversions, the pope (or the patriarch) would grant a stamp of religious authority to the monarch of the country. Thus conversion to Catholicism or Orthodoxy tended to take place at the same time as the creation of an enduring monarchy.
Croatia reached its medieval pinnacle under Tomislav in the 900s, but the kings were still weak relative to the nobility. In 1102 AD a coalition of nobles made a deal with the Hungarian king, whose remote power was more attractive than the nearby king's authority. In return for Magyar recognition of their control of local administrative and judicial affairs, the nobles pledged their military service, and the Hungarian king also gained the right to approve all the laws of the Croatian Diet of nobles. Thereafter Croatia existed as a feudal state under the kings of Hungary.
Today, some three and a half million Croatians or Croats live within the traditional borders of the Croatian state, with perhaps 700,000 others in nearby Slovenia and Bosnia. Croatian culture has Central European and Roman Catholic features. The Croatian language, made up of several distinct dialects, overlaps with Serbian; in the former Yugoslavia a combined Serbo-Croatian was an official language. The most obvious difference is the use of the Roman alphabet for Croatian, and the Cyrillic for Serbian. There are also distinctions in vocabulary (for example, the Croation use of listopad or "leaf-fall" for the month of October, vs. the Serbian use of oktobar).
The south Slavic Serbians arrived at the same time as the Croatians, with an essentially identical culture and language. The Serbs were closer to Byzantium so Serbian culture took on Byzantine features (just as Croatian culture came to resemble that of the Franks) with Eastern Orthodox missionaries at work (rather than Catholic ones) and a central state modelled on Byzantine forms. Serbian feudalism also followed Byzantine patterns. All land was owned by the ruler, parcelled out as "usufruct fiefs" (which were not heritable) for the support of feudal vassals, churches and monasteries. The chief impetus for state-building was protection from the Bulgarians. The Serbian medieval state peaked in the 1300s under Stefan Dushan. When Serbia was conquered by the Turks in the 1400s, the impact of the Ottoman conquest was reduced for most peasants because the Ottomans had already accepted and preserved the same Byzantine practices being used by the Serbs. Serbs not only survived physically, but were able to preserve much of their culture as well as their lives.
The 1981 Yugoslav census counted 9 million Serbs, some 7 million of them concentrated in the Serbian Republic and Montenegro, but with important communities in Bosnia and Croatia (many of them subsequently displaced by civil war during the 1990s). There is a separate Serbian Orthodox Church which has always helped define Serbian ethnic identity.
"Bosnia" is a geographic, not an ethnic or linguistic entity. Medieval Bosnia was a border zone between Croatia and Serbia, just as it is today. The chief ethnic marker of the so-called "Bosnians" today is their Islamic faith, and this came about only later. In terms of language and descent, the modern Bosnians are of the same origin as Croats and Serbs.
The south Slavs who became the Bulgarians also reached the Balkans in the early 600s AD. The Turkic and nomadic "Bulgars" later conquered the area. They were few in numbers and after a few centuries the more numerous Slavs absorbed them in terms of culture and language. In 886 AD the missionary saints Methodius and Cyril (for whom the Cyrillic alphabet is named) converted tsar Boris to Orthodox Christianity. In the 900s, Tsar Symeon's First Bulgarian Empire defeated Byzantine and Serbian armies. The Second Bulgarian Empire was a rival of Byzantium around 1200 AD, but Bulgaria absorbed and adopted Byzantine culture, law, land use patterns and political organization. Today some six and a half million Bulgarians live in the Bulgarian state. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church has been a leading factor in national identity.
There are also 1.4 million Macedonians in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, which achieved independence after the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1989. These South Slavs reached Macedonia in the 600s AD. Citing historical, cultural or linguistic grounds, Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria often have advanced claims to Macedonia in terms of both territory and ethnic affiliation with the population. Macedonian history illustrates the complicated relationship between ethnic identity, language and national independence. The Hungarians
The Hungarians or Magyars came to Europe in 895 AD, crossing the Carpathians from the Ukraine and conquering the Slavs who lived in the Pannonian basin (and thereby dividing the south Slavs from the Czechs, Slovaks and Poles). Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language, the only one in the Balkans, with connections to Turkish and the languages of Central Asia. For many years, the Magyar cavalry raided Europe but in 955 it was decisively defeated. Believing that their "luck" had ended, superstitious Magyar rulers accepted Christian missionaries and in 1000 AD King Stephen converted to Catholicism. In return, the Pope recognized Hungarian rule over the so-called "lands of the Crown of St. Stephen." This term now stands for the maximum geographic possessions of the Hungarian state, including Slovakia, Transylvania and Croatia.
More than 10 million people live in Hungary. Hungary has a smaller proportion of ethnic minorities than most of the Balkan states, with over 90% of the population consisting of ethnic Magyars (the largest minority is half a million Roma or Gypsies). One and a half million Magyars live in Romanian Transylvania, with several hundred thousand in Slovakia and several hundred thousand in the Vojvodina region of Serbia. The separation of these populations is the legacy of backing the losing side in two consecutive world wars. Hungary shares in much of Central European culture, and two thirds of Hungarians are Roman Catholic, the other third mostly Protestant. Other nationalities
Most of the ethnic groups mentioned are identified with states (the Macedonians and Bosnians being exceptions until recently). A few other groups have had a presence since medieval times which has not lead to enduring political entities. They are nevertheless important.
The "Gypsies" or Roma, a nomadic people traditionally employed as itinerant entertainers and metalworkers, entered the Balkans in the 1300s AD, spreading from Asia Minor west into Europe. Scholars identify their language as related to Indian languages like Sanskrit. Thanks to widespread discrimination, most Balkan censuses tend to undercount the Roma minority, but an estimated one million Roma live in the former Yugoslav areas, up to one million in Romania, and about one million more scattered elsewhere in the Balkans, a total of three million or more.
There was never a Jewish state in the Balkans, but the area had a large Jewish population until the Second World War. There have been Jewish communities in the Balkans since Roman times. The Ottoman conquest of the area actually made the region more attractive than Western Europe for Jews, because of Ottoman policies of religious toleration. From 1200-1500 AD, many Jews expelled from Western European countries made their way to the Turkish Balkans. After the Spanish expelled the Moors from Spain in 1492, they also expelled 200,000 Jews, most of whom went to Salonika and Istanbul. The Jewish population of Hungary and Romania dates from the 1700s, mostly consisting of Jews who moved south from Poland. On the eve of the Holocaust, there were over one and a half million Jews in the Balkan countries, mostly in Romania and Hungary. About half were murdered and most of the survivors emigrated after 1945. The present Jewish population of the Balkans is about 100,000, mostly living in Hungary. The Jewish populations of the Balkans typically spoke the languages of the country in which they lived, although the Sephardic Jews of Greece spoke Ladino, a dialect of Spanish.
Until the end of the Second World War, there were important colonies of Germans in east central European cities, including Hungary and Transylvania. Craftsmen and miners were invited to the region for economic purposes by medieval rulers. These Volksdeutsch spoke German and maintained separate communities. Accused of collaboration with the Nazis, most fled or were expelled after 1945.
Finally, the Turks now have possession of only a small corner of the Balkans, but at one time ruled much of it, and there were large Turkish populations in many areas, especially the cities. The Turks entered Anatolia from Central Asia around 1240 as tribal nomads converted to Islam. Turkish warriors were granted possession of any land that they could conquer as "ghazis" along the borders of the growing Islamic world. The Ottomans, named for their leader Osman, were the most successful of many tribal groups. The Byzantines hired them as soldiers for pay but soon lost control over them. The Ottoman Turks crossed into Europe in 1352 AD as mercenaries hired to defend a Byzantine fortress at Gallipoli on the Western side of the Straits of the Dardanelles; they never left and the place became a springboard for conquest. The Ottomans soon overran Thrace and Bulgaria. In 1389 at the battlefield of Kosovo, they destroyed the Serbian army, an event of legendary importance in Serbian national memory.
The Turks were able to capture Constantinople in 1453 AD, attacking a Byzantine state weakened by injuries inflicted by its Christian rivals. The Bulgarian and Serbian medieval states had taken away many of its Balkan provinces. The Western "Franks" earlier dealt the greatest single blow to Byzantine power, while Western European kings and knights were in the Balkans as "crusaders" headed for Palestine. Thirty thousand soldiers of the Fourth Crusade camped outside Constantinople in 1203-1204. The Byzantines and the Crusader leaders disagreed about who would pay for ships to take them on to the Holy Land, and the Venetians then exploited the situation to make an attack on their Byzantine trading rivals. The Crusaders sacked Constantinople and divided the Byzantine Empire among themselves. While Byzantium eventually reemerged, the outer provinces remained separate as miniature kingdoms that were easy pickings for the Turks. There was little or no Western aid when the Ottoman challenge appeared, and the Byzantine Orthodox Greeks regarded the Western Catholic Franks with hatred, further preventing any cooperation against the Ottomans. In 1453 the Turks took Constantinople by siege. In 1526 at Mohacs they destroyed the Hungarian army, killing the king and most of the Hungarian nobles. This was their high water mark, although they were still strong enough to besiege to Vienna in 1683. The story of their gradual withdrawal from "Rumeli" or Europe is a major part of this course.
In 1831, about a third of the population of the Balkans was "Muslim," including Turks and Albanians. The present population of Turkey is over sixty million, but only about seven million Turks live in European Turkey, around Istanbul. 700,000 Turks form a prominent minority in Bulgaria, despite efforts since the early 1980s to Slavicize their names and pressure them to leave the country.
Turks have historically been Sunni Muslims, although in the 20th century the modern Turkish Republic is secular. Turkish is a Turkic language, and thus related to other Altaic languages of central Asia.
Next lecture
This lecture is a portion of a larger Web site, Twenty-Five Lectures on Modern Balkan History (The Balkans in the Age of Nationalism); click here to return to the Table of Contents page. This page created May, 1996; last modified 29 November 2005. Population figures have been updated based on the 2002 CIA World Factbook.
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^^^For the brain-dead Negroes of the board: When they say "The pre-Indo-European inhabitants" they mean the original Black people. When the say "steppes" they mean the Eurasian steppes or grasslands; which extend from the Caspian Sea to Manchuria in China. It is the original home of ALL White people.
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Yonis2: [QB] You are full of sh1t,so far you have provided nothing other than your opinion on the origin of turks. You claimed...
YONIS, WHAT ARE THESE NONSENSICAL IDEAS BEGINNING WITH BULLSHIT,FULL OF **** ETC.?ARE THESE THE SIDE EFFECTS OF YOUR PURE ABYSMAL IGNORANCE?OR DO YOU HAVE COMPREHENSION PROBLEM? FIRST I DON'T NEED YOUR TURKISH ORIGINATED GENETIC STUDIES.
THEN IT LOOKS LIKE, AS FOR YOU, ALL 70 MILLION OF TURKEY’S PEOPLE ARE STUPID BECAUSE THEY CONSIDER THEMSELVES AS PURE TURKS AND PROUD OF BEING TURK AS WELL YOU SAID ACTUALLY THEY ARE ALL GREEK OR ANY OTHER ABSURDITIES.
TURKS RULED OVER ENORMOUS SIZE OF A LAND FOR CENTURIES AND OFCOURSE THEY MIXED UP DIFFERENT ETHNICITIES.YOU CAN SEE EVERY KIND OF PEOPLE FROM BALKANIC ETHNICITIES TO CENTRAL ASIAN ETHNICITIES EVEN AFRICAN ETHNICITIES.TURKEY IS THE ONLY INHERITOR OF OTTOMAN EMPIRE.THERE HAVE BEEN A LOT OF IMMIGRATIONS FROM OTTOMAN HINTERLAND.THIS IS THE RICHNESS OF TURKEY.TURKEY’S SPIRITUAL HINTERLAND IS TOO LARGE FROM ADRIATIC SEA TO THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.
YOU ONLY POSTED HERE A GENETIC STUDY OF MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF TURKEY AND I SAID THIS COULDN’T BE AN ABSOLUTE DATA FOR TURKEY’S GENETIC MAP.IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO COME TO A JUDGEMENT WITH THESE LIMITED GENETIC STUDIES IN LIMITED AREA.SOCIOLOGICAL,CULTURAL,HISTORICAL STUDIES ARE MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN THOSE OF GENETIC STUDIES.AND I THINK THAT’S WHY GREECE DOES NOT COLLECT DATA ON ETHNICITY.I WONDER IF THE PEOPLE OF TURKEY ARE GREEK THEN WHO ARE THOSE PEOPLE LIVING IN GREECE.MAY BE THEIR GENETIC ORIGIN ARE TURKISH., WHO CAN PROVE THE CONTRARY OF THAT?
Posts: 186 | From: Eurasia | Registered: Jun 2008
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^^^ thanks for the schooling Mike. I picked up on the pre-Indo-European term also. But I know Rasol'spin will be - it's a language NOT a people. missing the "inhabitants" part.
-------------------- Without data you are just another person with an opinion - Deming Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007
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Yes, I also want to thank to Mike for his sharing here.Although some people don't want to understand what is written here,thanks Mike.
Posts: 186 | From: Eurasia | Registered: Jun 2008
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AFROTURKS Afro-Turks, descendents of African citizens of the Ottoman Empire, have come together under the African Solidarity and Cooperation Association (ASCA) to revitalize one of their oldest traditions: Dana Bayramı, the Calf Festival in İzmir.
Turks with African ancestors want their existence to be felt
While preparing a barbecue in the crowded picnic area of İzmir’s Eşrefpaşa district, they sing old Turkish pop songs and eat Turkey’s indispensable picnic food: stuffed grape leaves cooked with olive oil.
As in any typical Turkish family, the men are preparing the “mangal” barbecue while talking about soccer matches or recent political developments. The heroic acts of their grandparents in the War of Independence also feature prominently in discussions. The old women chat with one another and wear headscarves, as do most older women in Turkey. Who are these people? Mehmet, Ali, Ayşe, Rabia, Arzu, Emine, Hatice and Hüseyin, to name a few. Everything is typically Turkish except for one detail: They are black. Afro-Turks, as they prefer to be called, are the descendents of African citizens of the Ottoman Empire. They have come together under the African Solidarity and Cooperation Association (ASCA) to revitalize one of their oldest traditions -- a holiday celebrated by their grandparents: Dana Bayramı, or the Calf Festival. According to Deniz Yükseker, a professor in Koç University’s department of sociology, gave a speech on the culture of Afro-Turks during a conference held at Ege University. Dana Bayramı was celebrated from 1880 until the end of the 1920s. “Leaders of the Afro-Turk community, known as ‘godya,’ used to collect money in order to buy a cow. On the first Saturday of each May, they sacrificed this cow. Failing to make this sacrifice would cause draughts, according to popular folklore,” Yükseker explains. She adds that in those years, Dana Bayramı was celebrated in İzmir for three weeks. Things have changed over time and this year’s celebrations only lasted two days. On the first day, Yükseker presented at the conference on the history of Afro-Turks and a photo exhibit prepared by Özlem Sümer showed snapshots from daily life as experienced by the community. The second day saw a large picnic at which Boğaziçi Gösteri Merkezi and Ege University’s Music Band performed. Melis Sökmen, a famous jazz singer whose grandmother is from Ghana, joined the band and gave a small concert. During this year’s Dana Bayramı, the focus was on having fun and a cow was not sacrificed. “Some of our friends said that it would be fine to sacrifice a sheep, but maybe next year,” says ASCA Chairman Mustafa Olpak. He points out that Dana Bayramı used to be an opportunity for their ancestors to have a family reunion. The festival served as a venue at which members of a family dispersed by slavery would come together. Gülay Kayacan, who works for the History Foundation, an institute that researches and publishes articles on Turkish history, says that some of the Afro-Turks are descendents of slaves who used to work on farms or in houses. Slaves working in agriculture were concentrated in areas where cotton production was high. It is for this reason that most Afro-Turks today live on the Aegean coast and some in the Mediterranean region. “Some 10,000 slaves, black and white, were brought into the Ottoman Empire every year. During the constitutional monarchy period (1876-1878), slavery was abolished and former slaves settled in areas where they used to work. Some of them were even given land by the government,” Kayacan says. Kayacan is the coordinator of the History Foundation’s “Voices Coming from a Silent Past” project, supported by the European Union Commission Delegation in Turkey. She underlines that their oral history project aims to form an archive that will aid in researching the cultural, economic and social status of Afro-Turks today and to place them in the mosaic of history. To this end, the foundation is recording the personal histories of the Afro-Turk community. “Unfortunately, most of the elders of the Afro-Turk community who could remember the stories of immigration and the cultural aspects of the community have passed away. Written documentation is also scarce, so we are trying to preserve this undocumented past before it is too late,” Kayacan says. According to personal accounts collected so far, the ancestors of Afro-Turks came from various countries, including present-day Niger, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Kenya and Sudan. In fact, the Embassy of Sudan sent a representative to participate in this year’s Dana Bayramı. Kayacan also notes that some of the descendents of former slaves remain poor. Educational opportunities for them have been scarce and they are generally not property owners. The number of Afro-Turks graduating from universities is below the national average and most women tend to be agricultural workers if they live in villages or housewives if they live in the urban areas. The women that have found opportunities to become educated work as mid-wives or nurses. Not all or the Afro-Turks’ ancestors were slaves. Some came from the island of Crete following the Lausanne Treaty, signed in 1924. This treaty called for a population exchange between the Greek Orthodox citizens of the young Turkish Republic and the Muslim citizens of Greece. Most of the black on Crete were Muslims, so they were subjected to this population exchange. Like many others who were moved through this population exchange, they settled on the Aegean coast, mainly around İzmir. Eighty-year-old Emine Konaçer’s mother and Olpak’s family were among these immigrants. Konaçer’s mother spoke only Greek, which explains why Konaçer is bilingual. She and her husband have four children, including Mehmet Konaçer (48), a physical education teacher. “When I was young, our neighbors would sometimes speak in Greek on our street in Ayvalık and I used to shout at them: ‘Citizen, speak Turkish!’” he says. At the time, the Turkish government had launched a program calling on all citizens to speak only Turkish. Mehmet Konaçer enjoys dancing the traditional folklore dances of the Aegean area and he performed a dance for the crowd at this year’s Dana Bayramı. As with every teacher, his students coin nicknames for him. “They first used to call me Clay [after the famous African-American boxer Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali]. But nicknames come and go. As other blacks become famous, the nickname my students choose for me changes,” he says. Konaçer is married and has two children. As is the case with multiracial children, they take on the features of both parents. This is the case with many Afro-Turks as the small community has many interracial marriages. Some Afro-Turks are blond and some have green eyes, like Konaçer’s cousin, Hüseyin Hançer. Being “different” has, however, also led to discrimination. The society at large holds many misconceptions about Afro-Turks. “Our interviews show that Afro-Turks living in villages do not feel discriminated against. They are not labeled as the ‘other’ or excluded. In a village, everyone has known one another since birth. Cities, on the other hand, are a different matter altogether, though Anatolia is still a land that is able to absorb a variety of cultures,” Kayacan says. Ayşe Sözer, a young Afro-Turk, says that Turkish society does not have a racist approach, but that sometimes the Afro-Turk community does experience “exaggerated interest” and social discrimination from society. “I am asked many odd questions; for example, some ask if I get whiter by taking baths. Sometimes people stare at me and end up tripping or bumping into a pole. I have learned to not get angry at people, but when I was at the university, my roommate left our dorm room because she said she was afraid to live with someone that is black,” Sözer says. Sometimes people have a hard time believing that Afro-Turks are Turks. On one occasion, Sözer was shopping in Denizli and the shopkeeper, mistaking her for a tourist speaking in perfect Turkish, tried to complement her by saying she speaks Turkish better than him, a native Turk. Not being considered a “Turk” can at times be problematic. Most Afro-Turks live in the Aegean region, famous for human smuggling. This has cast suspicion on the Afro-Turk community. Locals in the Aegean region also have some superstitious beliefs about “black people.” Some believe that if they see a black person and pinch the person next to them, their wishes will come true. Sözer recalled one case in which two ladies pinched each other upon seeing her. She was understandably upset. “I told the ladies that if they really wanted their wishes to come true, I also had to pinch both of them! They accepted and I pinched them very hard,” she says, laughing. Another superstition some hold is that the kiss of a black person can bring luck. “When I was small, I was asked to kiss many girls because there was this superstition that if a girl does not get kissed by a small African child, she would not find a husband,” Olpak says. Apart from being the focus of some superstitions, most Afro-Turks say they have never been humiliated or discriminated against by the society. However, overcoming prejudice while looking for someone to marry is not as easy as one would hope. Kayacan notes that sometimes the family does not approve of their son or daughter marrying an Afro-Turk. Afro-Turks are often called “Arabs” in Turkey. They also refer to themselves as Arabs, at times. This has led to a situation in which “Arab” means “black.” Ege University Professor Ahmet Yürür explains. “For the Turks, Africa was only the northern part of the continent: from Egypt to Morocco. This part was of course under Arab influence. Turks were never really interested in the south of the continent. This is why this community has come to be called ‘Arab,’” he says. Yürür suggests that Turkey can build bridges between itself and Africa with the help of Afro-Turks. But even establishing an association was difficult, Olpak says. “Our people did not even know of the word ‘association.’ They were suspicious at first, but in Turkey, all ethnic groups have solidarity associations except for us. We had some difficulties at first because we lived in a closed society,” he says. This is not to say that Olpak is pessimistic. The Dana Bayramı is evidence that the Afro-Turk community is being revived. Olpak has authored two books: “Slave Woman Kemale,” which tells the story of his own family, a slave family from Kenya that lived on Crete and had to migrate to Turkey, and “The Shores of Slaves,” in which Olpak presents a collection of stories by other Afro-Turks. “I am a third-generation Afro-Turk. My grandparents were slaves. The first generation lived through the sad events, the second generation tried to forget and deny these events, but the third generation wants to know what happened and how,” Olpak says, adding: “We are black and we are from here. We are a part of this rich Anatolian culture and we are ready to make an effort to be noticed by the society. I believe that in this way we will be able to contribute to the tolerant culture of this beautiful land.” Olpak has a wish for his community: to celebrate Dana Bayramı on the national level one day as a festival of tolerance.
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