Turk, Riad al-
Riad al-Turk (b. April 17,1930, Homs, Syria – d. January1, 2024, Eaubonne [a northern suburb of Paris], France) was a Syrian opposition leader, a political prisoner for about 20 years, and supporter of democracy, who was called "the Old Man of Syrian opposition." He was secretary general of the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau) from its foundation in 1973 until 2005.
Al-Turk joined the Syrian Communist Party while a student. He was imprisoned for the first time in 1952 shortly after finishing law school for opposing the military government that came to power in a coup. He was held for five months and tortured but never tried in court. He later wrote articles for the party newspaper, Al-Nour, and became a leading party ideologue. He was imprisoned again in 1958 under Nasser for opposing the merger of Syria and Egypt into the United Arab Republic and held for sixteen months. Again, he was tortured but not tried for any crime.
Turk had for some time been leading a faction within the Communist Party that demanded a more positive view of Arab nationalism, in opposition to Secretary-General Khalid Bakdash, who ruled the party with an iron fist. In 1972, Bakdash decided to merge the party into the National Progressive Front, a coalition of organizations allied with the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party. Along with supporters on the radical wing of the party, Turk formed the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau), consolidating a split that had been apparent since the late 1960s. The SCP-Political Bureau initially negotiated with the government for terms of legalization and membership in the Front. However, it later took a strong opposition stance, especially from 1976 on after the Syrian intervention in favor of the Maronites right-wing government in the Lebanese Civil War. This led to repression of the party, which was stepped up at the beginning of the 1980s when the Hafez al-Assad government felt itself under increasing pressure from both Islamists and the secular opposition. Al-Turk was arrested and imprisoned on October 28, 1980, and held under very difficult conditions for almost 18 years. He spent most of this period in solitary confinement and suffered regular torture. Al-Turk was locked away in a windowless underground cell, about the length of his body or the size of a small elevator compartment, at an intelligence headquarters. Al-Turk was never allowed out of his cell to exercise. Until the final months, he was not allowed a book, newspaper, mail or anything else to keep his mind occupied. For the first thirteen years of his imprisonment, he was allowed no communication from, or information about, his friends and family, including his two young daughters. His only activity was being allowed three times a day to go to a shared toilet. He was never allowed to use it when other prisoners were there but did scrounge the toilet bin for discarded clothing as his own clothing was worn out. One of his few diversions was collecting grains of dark cereal he found in the thin soup he was served in the evening and using the grains to create pictures in his cell. He suffered considerable ill-health, including diabetes for which he was refused treatment. He was released on May 30, 1998.
After his release in 1998, al-Turk was initially not particularly active politically. In June 2000, however, Syrian president Hafiz al-Asad died and his son Bashar succeeded him. This was followed by an outburst of political debate and demands for democratic changes, known as the Damascus Spring, and al-Turk resumed a prominent role. His statement on al Jazeera television in August 2001 that "the dictator has died" was seen as a direct cause of renewed repression by an angered government, and al-Turk himself was arrested some days later on September 1, 2001, and subjected to a trial widely seen as unfair before a state security court. In June 2002 he was sentenced to three years imprisonment for attempting to change the constitution by illegal means. This led to international protests, especially given his poor health.
Al-Turk was released after serving fifteen months of his sentence. After his release, he resumed his political activities. In spring 2005, the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau) held a secret congress at which it decided to change its name to the Syrian Democratic People's Party. At this congress, Turk stepped down as party secretary, but he remained an influential member of the organization. In the same year, he also emerged as a prominent name in the Damascus Declaration, a pro-democracy coalition of Syrian opposition activists and organizations.
In 2011, he welcomed the onset of the Syrian revolution against Bashar al-Assad's regime. However, the country descended into civil war. Initially supporting an alliance under the National Council of all opposition currents, including Islamists, Riad al-Turk later expressed regret, acknowledging the oversight of ignoring certain violations committed by Islamist groups during the emergency. By 2013, he had been living in seclusion, confined to an apartment in Damascus. Reflecting on his decades-long involvement with the Syrian Communist Party, al-Turk revealed to Le Monde: "Since I joined in the 1950s, clandestine life has been a tradition. My generation understands the importance of secrecy against such a regime. The young revolutionaries were unaware, and they paid a steep price." His wife left the country at the conflict's onset and died in Canada in 2017. Despite initial reluctance, al-Turk eventually yielded to the persuasion of his daughters, who were already refugees abroad. In late July 2018, he went into exile, passing through Turkey, and eventually settling in Paris, France.
Riad al-Turk died on January 1, 2024, in Eaubonne, a northern suburb of Paris, France.
Turkic-speaking peoples
Turkic-speaking peoples. More than 100 million Turkic speaking peoples of Europe and Asia, here called Turks, occupy an almost continuous band of territory extending from the Balkans to northeastern Siberia. While the peripheries of their lands are but sparsely populated by Turks, they comprise the predominant ethnic communities in the Anatolian peninsula and in the Central Asian borderlands of the Soviet Union, Iran, Afghanistan and China.
The primordial homeland of the Turks is generally thought to have been in the eastern portion of the Eurasian plain, approximately in the area now occupied by the Mongolian People’s Republic. Thus, the ancestral Turks would have faced Tungus and Paleo-Siberian tribes on the north and east, Mongols to the south and Tocharian and Iranic-speaking peoples on the west.
The present disposition of the Turks is largely the result of a series of migrations out of the original homeland. One of these movements, that of the Yakut, whose northward exodus to their present habitat in Siberia probably began in the twelfth century, is of little consequence to the historiography of the Muslim world. The other migrations consisted of four overlapping waves of Turks and other Altaic people, whose penetrations into Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe exerted an enormous influence on world history. The four migrations were those of the Huns, the Oguz Turks, the Kipchaks and the Mongols.
The Hunnic Empire, which thrust itself westward until checked in France at the Batal of Catalaunian Fields in 451 C.C., was comprised of numerous ethnic groups, including Turks, who formed the nucleus of the Bulgar and Khazar states in the Russian steppe lands between the fifth and tenth centuries. Meanwhile, a confederation of Turks consolidated power in the area formerly occupied by the Huns, between the Amur and Irtysh rivers. The westward advance of these Turks brought them increasingly into contact with Indo-Europeans under the domination of the Persian Sassanid dynasty. The subsequent history of Central Asia is largely concerned with the defeat and assimilation of the Bactrians, Sogdians and others by the Turks, whose westward progress continued without serious interruption, even though the internal politcal status of the Turks underwent frequent and radical alterations. The Tajiks, the former Sogdians, retained their Persian speech, but most of the outlying Iranic peoples were assimilated to the language of the Turks, while at the same time assimilating many of the Turks to their more sedentary cultures. Even today the extensive intermingling of the western Turks with Persians is reflected in the predominantly Caucasian features of the Turks living west of the Amu Darya, as opposed to the mainly Mongoloid features of the Turks living east of the region. The Persian influence is also manifested in the strong Zoroastrian underlying the Muslim practices of many Turks.
In the area between the basins of the Volga and Don rivers, the Turkic Khazars had established a khanate which, with the assistance of Byzantium, dominated the area until the eleventh century, when the Kipchak Turks defeated and assimilated the Khazars. Meanwhile, west of the Khazars the Turkic Bulgars had advanced to the western shore of the Black Sea, where most were Slavicized by their sedentary subjects within two centuries. Some, however, were able to maintain their Turkic speech, which was subsequently altered and augmented by later influxes of Turks.
A new and important element was injected into the Turkic migrations by the Arabs, whose armies marched into Central Asia in the eighth century, captured Samarkand and Bukhara and imposed Islam on the subject peoples. Their proselytizing was continued under the Islamic Seljuk confederation, composed of Oguz Turks, which dominated most of Turkestan from the eleventh century to the Mongol conquest of the area in the early years of the thirteenth century. The Oguz Turks, constituting the second important wave of Turks, held sway over Persia, Transcaucasus, Mesopotamia, and much of Asia Minor by the end of the eleventh century.
The northern element of the Oguz, the Pechenegs, was soon displaced by the third wave of Turks, that of the Kipchaks, whose position in Central Asia and in the Volga basin was strengthened by their alliance with the Mongols, who advanced their conquests to the gates of Vienna. The establishment of the mainly Turkic Golden Horde at the border of Europe and Asia, the conquests of Tamerlane (Timur Lenk, or Timur the Lame) and his successors and the establishment of the Moghul dynasty in India were fundamentally extensions of the expansionism initiated by Genghiz Khan and those who succeeded him.
The period between the thirteenth century, when the Altaian alliance burst into the heart of Europe, and the fifteenth century, when the empire of Tamerlane was at its height and the Ottomans conquered Byzantium and the Balkans, constitutes the high-water mark in the geo-political fortunes of the Turks. Their subsequent history is largely one of retrenchment from national independence movements and subjugation at the hands of the revivified empires of Russia, China and Persia.
Turkic-speaking peoples. More than 100 million Turkic speaking peoples of Europe and Asia, here called Turks, occupy an almost continuous band of territory extending from the Balkans to northeastern Siberia. While the peripheries of their lands are but sparsely populated by Turks, they comprise the predominant ethnic communities in the Anatolian peninsula and in the Central Asian borderlands of the Soviet Union, Iran, Afghanistan and China.
The primordial homeland of the Turks is generally thought to have been in the eastern portion of the Eurasian plain, approximately in the area now occupied by the Mongolian People’s Republic. Thus, the ancestral Turks would have faced Tungus and Paleo-Siberian tribes on the north and east, Mongols to the south and Tocharian and Iranic-speaking peoples on the west.
The present disposition of the Turks is largely the result of a series of migrations out of the original homeland. One of these movements, that of the Yakut, whose northward exodus to their present habitat in Siberia probably began in the twelfth century, is of little consequence to the historiography of the Muslim world. The other migrations consisted of four overlapping waves of Turks and other Altaic people, whose penetrations into Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe exerted an enormous influence on world history. The four migrations were those of the Huns, the Oguz Turks, the Kipchaks and the Mongols.
The Hunnic Empire, which thrust itself westward until checked in France at the Batal of Catalaunian Fields in 451 C.C., was comprised of numerous ethnic groups, including Turks, who formed the nucleus of the Bulgar and Khazar states in the Russian steppe lands between the fifth and tenth centuries. Meanwhile, a confederation of Turks consolidated power in the area formerly occupied by the Huns, between the Amur and Irtysh rivers. The westward advance of these Turks brought them increasingly into contact with Indo-Europeans under the domination of the Persian Sassanid dynasty. The subsequent history of Central Asia is largely concerned with the defeat and assimilation of the Bactrians, Sogdians and others by the Turks, whose westward progress continued without serious interruption, even though the internal politcal status of the Turks underwent frequent and radical alterations. The Tajiks, the former Sogdians, retained their Persian speech, but most of the outlying Iranic peoples were assimilated to the language of the Turks, while at the same time assimilating many of the Turks to their more sedentary cultures. Even today the extensive intermingling of the western Turks with Persians is reflected in the predominantly Caucasian features of the Turks living west of the Amu Darya, as opposed to the mainly Mongoloid features of the Turks living east of the region. The Persian influence is also manifested in the strong Zoroastrian underlying the Muslim practices of many Turks.
In the area between the basins of the Volga and Don rivers, the Turkic Khazars had established a khanate which, with the assistance of Byzantium, dominated the area until the eleventh century, when the Kipchak Turks defeated and assimilated the Khazars. Meanwhile, west of the Khazars the Turkic Bulgars had advanced to the western shore of the Black Sea, where most were Slavicized by their sedentary subjects within two centuries. Some, however, were able to maintain their Turkic speech, which was subsequently altered and augmented by later influxes of Turks.
A new and important element was injected into the Turkic migrations by the Arabs, whose armies marched into Central Asia in the eighth century, captured Samarkand and Bukhara and imposed Islam on the subject peoples. Their proselytizing was continued under the Islamic Seljuk confederation, composed of Oguz Turks, which dominated most of Turkestan from the eleventh century to the Mongol conquest of the area in the early years of the thirteenth century. The Oguz Turks, constituting the second important wave of Turks, held sway over Persia, Transcaucasus, Mesopotamia, and much of Asia Minor by the end of the eleventh century.
The northern element of the Oguz, the Pechenegs, was soon displaced by the third wave of Turks, that of the Kipchaks, whose position in Central Asia and in the Volga basin was strengthened by their alliance with the Mongols, who advanced their conquests to the gates of Vienna. The establishment of the mainly Turkic Golden Horde at the border of Europe and Asia, the conquests of Tamerlane (Timur Lenk, or Timur the Lame) and his successors and the establishment of the Moghul dynasty in India were fundamentally extensions of the expansionism initiated by Genghiz Khan and those who succeeded him.
The period between the thirteenth century, when the Altaian alliance burst into the heart of Europe, and the fifteenth century, when the empire of Tamerlane was at its height and the Ottomans conquered Byzantium and the Balkans, constitutes the high-water mark in the geo-political fortunes of the Turks. Their subsequent history is largely one of retrenchment from national independence movements and subjugation at the hands of the revivified empires of Russia, China and Persia.
Turkmen
Turkmen (Turcomen) (Turkomen). Turkish term designating Turkish tribes, nomadic or semi-nomadic, and later the dynasties created by some of these tribes. Turkmen are a Turkish people, the majority of whom nowadays live in Turkmenistan, while there are large groups in northern Iran, in northeastern and northwestern Afghanistan, in central Turkey, and small groups in northern Iraq and Syria. From the tenth century onwards, the name is applied to a large section of the Oghuz peoples, more specifically to those who were the descendants of the groups which followed the Saljuqs to the west in eleventh century. They played an important part in the rise of dynasties such as the Rum Saljuqs and the Great Saljuqs, the Artuqids of Diyarbakr, the Salghurids of Fars, the Danishmendids and the Qaramanids of central Anatolia, the Ottomans, the Qara Qoyunlu and the Aq Qoyunlu. There were also many Turkmen tribes in the empire of the Mamelukes from Diyarbakr to Gaza. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Turkmen suffered a great deal from the attacks of the Kalmuks, the founders of the last great nomad empire in central Asia. The nomadic Turkmen did not form a state of their own, but maintained their independence in various kingdoms, such as Persia, Khwarazm, Bukhara, and still in eighteenth century Afghanistan. The treaties following the Russian conquests in central Asia (1869-1885) settled the distribution of the Turkmen in Russia, Persia and Afghanistan. The literature of the Turkmen, previously only oral, consists of lyric poems and epics, poetry of a religious and didactic nature as well as popular romances. Well-known poets like Ahmad Yasawi (d. 1166), Nesimi, Mir ‘Ali Shir Nawa’i, Fuduli and Makhdum Quli “Firaqi” (d. 1782), who wrote in Chagatay Turkish, were of Turkmen origin.
The majority of the Turkmen reside in the area surrounding the Kara Kum (“Black Sand”) desert east of the Caspian Sea, between the Amu Darya River and the mountains bordering the northern edge of the Iranian plateau. The Kara Kum itself is too arid to support a human population of any significant size, the the semi-arid fringes of this low altitude desert can support a population through livestock production and, in some areas, agriculture.
The people’s name for themselves is Turkmen, a word which in Anglicized form can be either Turkmen or Turkman. (The fact that the last syllable of this word, “men” or “man,” appears to be an English word is purely coincidental.) An alternative spelling is Turkoman, Turcoman, derived from the Persian, Turkuman.
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed the demise of Turkmen political independence and military prowess. From the middle of the nineteenth century on, the sort of irregular cavalry the Turkmen could put together was no longer effective against the well organized armies and artillery of czarist Russia. Later, they also proved ineffective against the modernized Iranian army established by Reza Shah. Most of the Turkmen came under Russian control. The Russian conquest of Merv in 1884 marked the end of any internationally recognized Turkmen polity. However, the transition to effective control by sedentary states was gradual and characterized by occasional reversals. The Turkmen of Iran maintained de facto independence until 1925, and some Iranian Turkmen reasserted de facto independence during World War II and again after the Iranian Revolution of 1978. During the Russian Revolution, many Turkmen asserted independence temporarily as part of the so-called Basmachi movement. Despite this, however, the general trend for all Turkmen has been effective control by government dominated by other ethnic groups -- Persians, Pushtun or Russians. These governments are not especially sympathetic with Turkmen traditions and are suspicious of possible desires for an independent Turkmenistan. Sentiment for the preservation of Turkmen identity is not at present translated into an active movement for independence.
Loss of political independence robbed nomadism of its political and military value, and most Turkmen have responded by adopting either a sedentary or a semi-sedentary residence pattern.
Turkmen (Turcomen) (Turkomen). Turkish term designating Turkish tribes, nomadic or semi-nomadic, and later the dynasties created by some of these tribes. Turkmen are a Turkish people, the majority of whom nowadays live in Turkmenistan, while there are large groups in northern Iran, in northeastern and northwestern Afghanistan, in central Turkey, and small groups in northern Iraq and Syria. From the tenth century onwards, the name is applied to a large section of the Oghuz peoples, more specifically to those who were the descendants of the groups which followed the Saljuqs to the west in eleventh century. They played an important part in the rise of dynasties such as the Rum Saljuqs and the Great Saljuqs, the Artuqids of Diyarbakr, the Salghurids of Fars, the Danishmendids and the Qaramanids of central Anatolia, the Ottomans, the Qara Qoyunlu and the Aq Qoyunlu. There were also many Turkmen tribes in the empire of the Mamelukes from Diyarbakr to Gaza. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Turkmen suffered a great deal from the attacks of the Kalmuks, the founders of the last great nomad empire in central Asia. The nomadic Turkmen did not form a state of their own, but maintained their independence in various kingdoms, such as Persia, Khwarazm, Bukhara, and still in eighteenth century Afghanistan. The treaties following the Russian conquests in central Asia (1869-1885) settled the distribution of the Turkmen in Russia, Persia and Afghanistan. The literature of the Turkmen, previously only oral, consists of lyric poems and epics, poetry of a religious and didactic nature as well as popular romances. Well-known poets like Ahmad Yasawi (d. 1166), Nesimi, Mir ‘Ali Shir Nawa’i, Fuduli and Makhdum Quli “Firaqi” (d. 1782), who wrote in Chagatay Turkish, were of Turkmen origin.
The majority of the Turkmen reside in the area surrounding the Kara Kum (“Black Sand”) desert east of the Caspian Sea, between the Amu Darya River and the mountains bordering the northern edge of the Iranian plateau. The Kara Kum itself is too arid to support a human population of any significant size, the the semi-arid fringes of this low altitude desert can support a population through livestock production and, in some areas, agriculture.
The people’s name for themselves is Turkmen, a word which in Anglicized form can be either Turkmen or Turkman. (The fact that the last syllable of this word, “men” or “man,” appears to be an English word is purely coincidental.) An alternative spelling is Turkoman, Turcoman, derived from the Persian, Turkuman.
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed the demise of Turkmen political independence and military prowess. From the middle of the nineteenth century on, the sort of irregular cavalry the Turkmen could put together was no longer effective against the well organized armies and artillery of czarist Russia. Later, they also proved ineffective against the modernized Iranian army established by Reza Shah. Most of the Turkmen came under Russian control. The Russian conquest of Merv in 1884 marked the end of any internationally recognized Turkmen polity. However, the transition to effective control by sedentary states was gradual and characterized by occasional reversals. The Turkmen of Iran maintained de facto independence until 1925, and some Iranian Turkmen reasserted de facto independence during World War II and again after the Iranian Revolution of 1978. During the Russian Revolution, many Turkmen asserted independence temporarily as part of the so-called Basmachi movement. Despite this, however, the general trend for all Turkmen has been effective control by government dominated by other ethnic groups -- Persians, Pushtun or Russians. These governments are not especially sympathetic with Turkmen traditions and are suspicious of possible desires for an independent Turkmenistan. Sentiment for the preservation of Turkmen identity is not at present translated into an active movement for independence.
Loss of political independence robbed nomadism of its political and military value, and most Turkmen have responded by adopting either a sedentary or a semi-sedentary residence pattern.
Turks
Turks. The word Turk first appears as the name of a nomad people in the sixth century. The two brothers Bu-min and Istemi founded two empires stretching from Mongolia and the northern frontier of China to the Black Sea, distinguished by the Chinese as the Northern and Western Turks. In the seventh century both empires had to submit to the nominal suzerainty of the Chinese T’ang dynasty (r.618-907).
Between 682 and 744, the Northern Turks were again independent, and it is to this empire that belong the so-called “Orkhon inscriptions”, named after the river Orkhon in Mongolia, which are the oldest monument of the Turkish language.
The kingdom of the Western Turks, led by the Turgesh tribe, was ended by the Arabs under Nasr ibn Sayyar in 739. In the Arab, geographical literature of ninth and tenth centuries five Turkish peoples are mentioned who spoke one language and could understand each other: the Toghuzghuz, the Kirgiz, the Kimek, the Oghuz and the Karluk. The lands on the Upper Yenisei marked the limits of the world as known to the Arabs.
Islam was adopted by the Turks in the tenth century of their own free will. The spread of Islam in Central Asia was not checked by the foundation of the non-Muslim Karakhitai around 1130. Turkish culture was brought to Asia Minor and Azerbaijan by the Saljuqs in the eleventh century while Saladin brought bodies of Turkish troops to Egypt whence some of them found their way to North Africa and Spain.
The Mongol Empire, and especially the foundation of the Golden Horde, was of great significance for the Turks. From the latter were formed the “Tatar” kingdoms of Qazan, Astrakhan and of the Crimea. In the first half of the sixteenth century, all the lands from the Balkan Peninsula to the Chinese frontier were under the rule of Muslim Turks, but they could not cope with the rising power of Russia. On the other hand, Islam as a religion and Turkish as a language have made new progress under Russian rule.
Different literary languages began to develop in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the most important being Chagatay and Ottoman Turkish. The former developed in the lands of the Timurids, which consisted of the domain of Chagatay, the second son of Jenghiz Khan, while the latter has been intimately connected with the political and cultural development of the Ottoman Empire.
At present, there are some 70 million speakers of a Turkic language.
Turks are a people who make up around eighty percent of the population of Turkey. However, the term Turks is a description used for several important peoples in Central Asia.
There are around 100 million Turks in the world. The Turks of Turkey are descendants of immigrants from Central Asia in the first centuries of this millennium. They are now ethnically mixed with the indigenous population of Asia Minor as well as peoples that have immigrated to the Ottoman Empire up through history. People from the Balkans, Caucasia, the Levant, North Africa and Mesopotamia. For all these people, Turkish language has been the ticket to full association with their new country.
Turks of Turkey speak the language simply known as Turkish, which after all these centuries still resembles the Turkic languages of Central Asia. Communication is here still possible, even if many words have been taken from Persian and Arabic. Turkish language was originally written with Arabic writing, but a reform of 1928, involved the implementation of Latin writing.
Turks. The word Turk first appears as the name of a nomad people in the sixth century. The two brothers Bu-min and Istemi founded two empires stretching from Mongolia and the northern frontier of China to the Black Sea, distinguished by the Chinese as the Northern and Western Turks. In the seventh century both empires had to submit to the nominal suzerainty of the Chinese T’ang dynasty (r.618-907).
Between 682 and 744, the Northern Turks were again independent, and it is to this empire that belong the so-called “Orkhon inscriptions”, named after the river Orkhon in Mongolia, which are the oldest monument of the Turkish language.
The kingdom of the Western Turks, led by the Turgesh tribe, was ended by the Arabs under Nasr ibn Sayyar in 739. In the Arab, geographical literature of ninth and tenth centuries five Turkish peoples are mentioned who spoke one language and could understand each other: the Toghuzghuz, the Kirgiz, the Kimek, the Oghuz and the Karluk. The lands on the Upper Yenisei marked the limits of the world as known to the Arabs.
Islam was adopted by the Turks in the tenth century of their own free will. The spread of Islam in Central Asia was not checked by the foundation of the non-Muslim Karakhitai around 1130. Turkish culture was brought to Asia Minor and Azerbaijan by the Saljuqs in the eleventh century while Saladin brought bodies of Turkish troops to Egypt whence some of them found their way to North Africa and Spain.
The Mongol Empire, and especially the foundation of the Golden Horde, was of great significance for the Turks. From the latter were formed the “Tatar” kingdoms of Qazan, Astrakhan and of the Crimea. In the first half of the sixteenth century, all the lands from the Balkan Peninsula to the Chinese frontier were under the rule of Muslim Turks, but they could not cope with the rising power of Russia. On the other hand, Islam as a religion and Turkish as a language have made new progress under Russian rule.
Different literary languages began to develop in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the most important being Chagatay and Ottoman Turkish. The former developed in the lands of the Timurids, which consisted of the domain of Chagatay, the second son of Jenghiz Khan, while the latter has been intimately connected with the political and cultural development of the Ottoman Empire.
At present, there are some 70 million speakers of a Turkic language.
Turks are a people who make up around eighty percent of the population of Turkey. However, the term Turks is a description used for several important peoples in Central Asia.
There are around 100 million Turks in the world. The Turks of Turkey are descendants of immigrants from Central Asia in the first centuries of this millennium. They are now ethnically mixed with the indigenous population of Asia Minor as well as peoples that have immigrated to the Ottoman Empire up through history. People from the Balkans, Caucasia, the Levant, North Africa and Mesopotamia. For all these people, Turkish language has been the ticket to full association with their new country.
Turks of Turkey speak the language simply known as Turkish, which after all these centuries still resembles the Turkic languages of Central Asia. Communication is here still possible, even if many words have been taken from Persian and Arabic. Turkish language was originally written with Arabic writing, but a reform of 1928, involved the implementation of Latin writing.
Turks, Anatolian
Turks, Anatolian. To most of the world, Turks are citizens of the Republic of Turkey, occupying that historic bridge of land called Anatolia (and part of Thrace) which links Europe to Asia and where many civilizations have flourished and waned.
Kemal Ataturk, born Mustafa in 1881 and given a second name of Kemal by a schoolteacher, came onto the national scene at the end of World War I. No single leader in modern times has so influenced his people. Nearly 45 years after his death in 1938, the edicts he handed down relating to Turkish culture are still in force and constantly working towards bringing a twentieth-century life style to the village and town Turk.
Ataturk helped bring an end to the control of rural landlords in Anatolia. These were men who evolved by the end of the nineteenth century from tribal leadership, a process that began in the eleventh century when the Seljuk Turks migrated out of the east and conquered most of the Christian Byzantine Empire. The Seljuks, with their capital in Konya, ruled for nearly two centuries and firmly implanted Islam and Turkish culture into the existing population. More migrating Turks entered Anatolia, among them a tribal leader, Ertoghrul, whose tribesmen grew stronger as the Seljuks grew weaker and eventually disappeared from the scene. Ertoghrul’s son, Osman, became tribal emir in 1299, fought the Greeks of western Anatolia, acquired territory and a following and finally in 1326 established the seat of his domain in Bursa, then the largest Christian city in Asia. So began the Ottoman (Osmanli) Empire, which expanded to rule over the entire Middle East and Eastern Europe until the twentieth century.
The 600 year history of the Ottoman Empire left a heritage to modern day Turks which gives them a militant pride in being Turkish. Under great leaders, such as Muhammad II (The Conqueror), who captured Constantinople in 1453 and Suleiman I (The Magnificent) who captured Belgrade in 1521, Turkish soldiers and sailors, the youth of Anatolia, carried war and diplomacy into the eastern Arabian lands, across North Africa, through Greece and the Balkans to the gates of Vienna. They fought against Napoleon, the Italians, the British and the Russians, who persistently tried to acquire land to give them a port on the Mediterranean Sea (Turks feel that the Russians still want that land.)
Early Ottoman sultans, ruling from Constantinople, established competent and effective administrative control over the vast territories under their suzerainty, combining the assumed religious role of caliph with their temporal power. Minorities within the empire were left free to govern themselves, provided they paid their taxes and kept the peace. Christians and other non-Turks, including slaves, rose to high administrative positions in the Ottoman military monarchy.
By the end of the sixteenth century and with the rise of industrialization in Europe, the seams in the Ottoman ship began to crack. Corruption in the capital and military losses overseas weakened the authority and prestige of the government. One subjugated country after another rose in successful revolt -- Serbia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and, finally, Greece. Successively more despotic sultans imposed such harsh rule on Turkish society that the Turks themselves began to seek reform.
Just before and during World War I, which Turkey joined on the side of Germany, Turkish intellectuals wanted for Turks what Europeans had -- a national, political state with a constitution guaranteeing basic political rights. These intellectuals, called Young Turks, succeeded in setting the stage for Turkey’s true revolution. This began with Turkey’s military defeat abroad and the Turkish army’s success in Anatolia in driving out the invading Greeks and Italians. The army’s leader was Mustafa Kemal, who had earlier led the Turks in defeating the British at Gallipoli.
Kemal was a dictator or, more precisely, a social revolutionist, determined to rid by force if necessary the power of non-Turks in the Turkish “homeland” of Anatolia, whether British, Greek, Armenian or Kurd. He voiced a revulsion common to Turks by then of overseas adventures. He wanted a modern, democratic Turkey, based on current American and European nationalist, secular and republican principles.
Ataturk's revolutionary program abolished the caliphate and closed religious schools and Shariah courts, declaring Turkey a secular state. He made the town of Ankara to the Anatolian heartland, rather than the imperial city of Constantinople, the new republic’s capital. He outlawed the Sufi orders, the turuq so famous in Turkey because of the singular role of Jalaladin Rumi of Konya (during Seljuk times) in developing the mystic philosophy of the brotherhoods. Drawing on Swiss, German and Italian commercial, penal and civil codes, he declared polygyny illegal and introduced civil marriage. Sunday, instead of Friday, became the legal holiday.
Kemal decreed that no longer would names follow the traditional pattern of “son of father,” but that each person would adopt a family name, to continue through the generations. Mustafa Kemal himself became Kemal Ataturk, “Father of Turks.”
His banishments touched all Turks personally, but some with more effect than others. Forbidden was the conical red fez, worn by Turkish Muslims as a symbol of their loyalty to the caliph. European clothing in general was recommended and brimmed felt hats for men were mandatory (in 1972 a Turk in Bursa was arrested for wearing a brimless hat). The fezzes rapidly disappeared, but Ataturk’s attempt to emancipate women met stiffer resistance. City women discarded their veils soon enough, took to European dress and in many other ways enjoyed new found freedom. Village women were not veiled, but they continued to clutch their head coverings over their faces in the presence of strangers, and their traditional place in society remained subservient. The degree of change in towns depended on the character of the town -- whether it was a small city or a large village -- and the amount of urban contact.
Another drastic and dramatic change ordered by Ataturk involved the Turkish language. Osmanli, or Anatolian Turkish, had been written in Arabic script. Ataturk introduced Roman script with a modified Latin alphabet, more suited to Turkish language sounds. Ataturk personally went on tour to demonstrate the intricacies of the new alphabet, sometimes standing in the village square before a blackboard and a cluster of curious onlookers. Along with this change, Ataturk attempted to “Turkify” the language by purging words derived from Arabic or Persian and supplanting them with “pure”. Turkish ones (today English and French words with Turkish spelling have crept in especially into city usage).
Three sentiments guided Ataturk’s course of government until he died in 1938, and these continue today in varying degrees: nationalism, industrialization and secularization.
The first of these is the strongest. Turks are loyal and devoted to their country. Following World War I, attempts were made to wrap all Turkic speaking peoples in the same blanket and create a political unity among the Uzbek, Kirghiz, Turkmen, Kazakhs, Azeri and all those groups speaking Turkic languages, particularly in the new Communist dominated areas of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Pan-Turanism was a dream that never came to reality, not only because the Soviet Union would have no part of it but also because the Anatolian Turks came to identify themselves exclusively with their new Republic of Turkey.
Industrialization did not overtake the whole of the country in the same manner as nationalism, but impressive gains were made. Education reached the rural areas in varying degrees, modern technical schools produced thousands of engineers and businessmen and cities grew with new industry. The urban Turks of Istanbul, Izmir, Adana, Zonguldak, Samsun, Trabson, Exkisehir and Ankara differ not too much from French, German, British and American urbanites. While maintaining strong family ties, they nevertheless generally marry partners of their own choosing (usually in their own social stratum), observe office hours, commute from their homes to their jobs along clogged avenues and go out to restaurants, movies, beaches and parks for recreation. They maintain their health and seek their security through public institutions, they join labor unions and the Kiwanis and participate with intensity in party politics.
Secularization is the least successful part of Ataturk’s revolution. About 85 percent of Turks are Sunni of the Hanafi rite; 15 percent are Alawi or Shia. Traditionally, the hoca was an inspirational figure in Turkish communities, leading services in the mosques, reading the Qur’an, teaching the young and presiding over life-cycle ceremonies. When their sultan was also the caliph, hocas spoke with great authority.
Bit by bit, Ataturk’s revolutionaries clipped away at the religious fabric, abolishing the caliphate and the sharia courts. Many, if not most, of the hocas were made government servants. Religious instruction, government controlled, was offered in the primary schools, not private madrasas. As recently as 1982, the military government banned head scarves on female teachers and students, despite strong protests.
Anatolian Turks see Turks, Anatolian.
Turks, Anatolian. To most of the world, Turks are citizens of the Republic of Turkey, occupying that historic bridge of land called Anatolia (and part of Thrace) which links Europe to Asia and where many civilizations have flourished and waned.
Kemal Ataturk, born Mustafa in 1881 and given a second name of Kemal by a schoolteacher, came onto the national scene at the end of World War I. No single leader in modern times has so influenced his people. Nearly 45 years after his death in 1938, the edicts he handed down relating to Turkish culture are still in force and constantly working towards bringing a twentieth-century life style to the village and town Turk.
Ataturk helped bring an end to the control of rural landlords in Anatolia. These were men who evolved by the end of the nineteenth century from tribal leadership, a process that began in the eleventh century when the Seljuk Turks migrated out of the east and conquered most of the Christian Byzantine Empire. The Seljuks, with their capital in Konya, ruled for nearly two centuries and firmly implanted Islam and Turkish culture into the existing population. More migrating Turks entered Anatolia, among them a tribal leader, Ertoghrul, whose tribesmen grew stronger as the Seljuks grew weaker and eventually disappeared from the scene. Ertoghrul’s son, Osman, became tribal emir in 1299, fought the Greeks of western Anatolia, acquired territory and a following and finally in 1326 established the seat of his domain in Bursa, then the largest Christian city in Asia. So began the Ottoman (Osmanli) Empire, which expanded to rule over the entire Middle East and Eastern Europe until the twentieth century.
The 600 year history of the Ottoman Empire left a heritage to modern day Turks which gives them a militant pride in being Turkish. Under great leaders, such as Muhammad II (The Conqueror), who captured Constantinople in 1453 and Suleiman I (The Magnificent) who captured Belgrade in 1521, Turkish soldiers and sailors, the youth of Anatolia, carried war and diplomacy into the eastern Arabian lands, across North Africa, through Greece and the Balkans to the gates of Vienna. They fought against Napoleon, the Italians, the British and the Russians, who persistently tried to acquire land to give them a port on the Mediterranean Sea (Turks feel that the Russians still want that land.)
Early Ottoman sultans, ruling from Constantinople, established competent and effective administrative control over the vast territories under their suzerainty, combining the assumed religious role of caliph with their temporal power. Minorities within the empire were left free to govern themselves, provided they paid their taxes and kept the peace. Christians and other non-Turks, including slaves, rose to high administrative positions in the Ottoman military monarchy.
By the end of the sixteenth century and with the rise of industrialization in Europe, the seams in the Ottoman ship began to crack. Corruption in the capital and military losses overseas weakened the authority and prestige of the government. One subjugated country after another rose in successful revolt -- Serbia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and, finally, Greece. Successively more despotic sultans imposed such harsh rule on Turkish society that the Turks themselves began to seek reform.
Just before and during World War I, which Turkey joined on the side of Germany, Turkish intellectuals wanted for Turks what Europeans had -- a national, political state with a constitution guaranteeing basic political rights. These intellectuals, called Young Turks, succeeded in setting the stage for Turkey’s true revolution. This began with Turkey’s military defeat abroad and the Turkish army’s success in Anatolia in driving out the invading Greeks and Italians. The army’s leader was Mustafa Kemal, who had earlier led the Turks in defeating the British at Gallipoli.
Kemal was a dictator or, more precisely, a social revolutionist, determined to rid by force if necessary the power of non-Turks in the Turkish “homeland” of Anatolia, whether British, Greek, Armenian or Kurd. He voiced a revulsion common to Turks by then of overseas adventures. He wanted a modern, democratic Turkey, based on current American and European nationalist, secular and republican principles.
Ataturk's revolutionary program abolished the caliphate and closed religious schools and Shariah courts, declaring Turkey a secular state. He made the town of Ankara to the Anatolian heartland, rather than the imperial city of Constantinople, the new republic’s capital. He outlawed the Sufi orders, the turuq so famous in Turkey because of the singular role of Jalaladin Rumi of Konya (during Seljuk times) in developing the mystic philosophy of the brotherhoods. Drawing on Swiss, German and Italian commercial, penal and civil codes, he declared polygyny illegal and introduced civil marriage. Sunday, instead of Friday, became the legal holiday.
Kemal decreed that no longer would names follow the traditional pattern of “son of father,” but that each person would adopt a family name, to continue through the generations. Mustafa Kemal himself became Kemal Ataturk, “Father of Turks.”
His banishments touched all Turks personally, but some with more effect than others. Forbidden was the conical red fez, worn by Turkish Muslims as a symbol of their loyalty to the caliph. European clothing in general was recommended and brimmed felt hats for men were mandatory (in 1972 a Turk in Bursa was arrested for wearing a brimless hat). The fezzes rapidly disappeared, but Ataturk’s attempt to emancipate women met stiffer resistance. City women discarded their veils soon enough, took to European dress and in many other ways enjoyed new found freedom. Village women were not veiled, but they continued to clutch their head coverings over their faces in the presence of strangers, and their traditional place in society remained subservient. The degree of change in towns depended on the character of the town -- whether it was a small city or a large village -- and the amount of urban contact.
Another drastic and dramatic change ordered by Ataturk involved the Turkish language. Osmanli, or Anatolian Turkish, had been written in Arabic script. Ataturk introduced Roman script with a modified Latin alphabet, more suited to Turkish language sounds. Ataturk personally went on tour to demonstrate the intricacies of the new alphabet, sometimes standing in the village square before a blackboard and a cluster of curious onlookers. Along with this change, Ataturk attempted to “Turkify” the language by purging words derived from Arabic or Persian and supplanting them with “pure”. Turkish ones (today English and French words with Turkish spelling have crept in especially into city usage).
Three sentiments guided Ataturk’s course of government until he died in 1938, and these continue today in varying degrees: nationalism, industrialization and secularization.
The first of these is the strongest. Turks are loyal and devoted to their country. Following World War I, attempts were made to wrap all Turkic speaking peoples in the same blanket and create a political unity among the Uzbek, Kirghiz, Turkmen, Kazakhs, Azeri and all those groups speaking Turkic languages, particularly in the new Communist dominated areas of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Pan-Turanism was a dream that never came to reality, not only because the Soviet Union would have no part of it but also because the Anatolian Turks came to identify themselves exclusively with their new Republic of Turkey.
Industrialization did not overtake the whole of the country in the same manner as nationalism, but impressive gains were made. Education reached the rural areas in varying degrees, modern technical schools produced thousands of engineers and businessmen and cities grew with new industry. The urban Turks of Istanbul, Izmir, Adana, Zonguldak, Samsun, Trabson, Exkisehir and Ankara differ not too much from French, German, British and American urbanites. While maintaining strong family ties, they nevertheless generally marry partners of their own choosing (usually in their own social stratum), observe office hours, commute from their homes to their jobs along clogged avenues and go out to restaurants, movies, beaches and parks for recreation. They maintain their health and seek their security through public institutions, they join labor unions and the Kiwanis and participate with intensity in party politics.
Secularization is the least successful part of Ataturk’s revolution. About 85 percent of Turks are Sunni of the Hanafi rite; 15 percent are Alawi or Shia. Traditionally, the hoca was an inspirational figure in Turkish communities, leading services in the mosques, reading the Qur’an, teaching the young and presiding over life-cycle ceremonies. When their sultan was also the caliph, hocas spoke with great authority.
Bit by bit, Ataturk’s revolutionaries clipped away at the religious fabric, abolishing the caliphate and the sharia courts. Many, if not most, of the hocas were made government servants. Religious instruction, government controlled, was offered in the primary schools, not private madrasas. As recently as 1982, the military government banned head scarves on female teachers and students, despite strong protests.
Anatolian Turks see Turks, Anatolian.
Turks, Rumelian
Turks, Rumelian. Rumelian Turks are literally the Turks of Roman lands. The term “Rumeli” in Turkish refers to the Balkans, which were, before their occupation by the Ottomans, in the hands of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire. The Balkan peninsula includes the moder states of Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia. Historically, the lands of Rumeli also encompassed Hungary, Cyprus, Rhodes and Crete, as well as the smaller Greek islands. The term “Rumelian Turk,” then, refers to those Turks who came to Eastern Europe from Anatolia, along with Turkmen and others from Central Asia and the Crimea. It also has come to apply to Circassians from the Caucasus who settled in the Balkans.
The earliest recorded settlement of Muslim Turks in Rumelian lands occurred in 1249. Sultan Izzeddin Kayka’us , ruler of the Seljuks of Anatolia, having lost his crown to his brothers, took refuge in Byzantium and was given land by the Byzantines in Dobruja. He was followed by about 30 to 40 obas, or small groups of closely related families, of nomadic Turkmen from Anatolia, who settled there. When Dobruja and Bessarabia fell to the Mongols of the Golden Horde who mingled with the Turkmen and became Muslim. Under the pressure of the Christian Bulgars, the majority of these early Turkish Mongol settlers returned to Anatolia in the fourteenth century. Those who stayed became converts to the Greek Orthodox religion.
The more permanent and large scale settlement of Turks in the Balkans took place during the long period of Ottoman domination of the peninsula, beginning in 1350. The lands gained in Europe by Ottomans were united until the mid-sixteenth century under one administrative system, and the Rumeli territory was headed by a beylerbeyi or “lord of the lords.” He retained a status equivalent to that of a vizier and attended cabinet meetings at the Ottoman court in Constantinople. After 1550, the Balkans were divided into smaller administrative territories, following more or less ethnic divisions of the area, such as Bosnia, Macedonia or Morea.
Although Ottomans were the rulers in Rumeli until about the mid-nineteenth century, or until various Balkan nations gained their independence, Turks have always been in the minority except in Turkish Thrace. Because of religious, linguistic, and social differences, Turkish settlers in the Balkans did not intermarry in large numbers or mix with the indigenous Christian and Albanian or Bosnian populations. Probably such intermarriage as occurred involved men marrying non-Turkish women. The Turks were mostly settled in towns in the Balkans and served as military personnel and administrators, and as artisans. Land was granted to individuals, usually of the military class, as fiefs in the Balkans from the Ottoman crown holdings. Since ownership of such land was not inherited, it eventually reverted back to the state. Therefore, no Turkish landed noble class developed, and Turkish peasants in the Balkans were rare, with the exception of Dobruja. After annexation of the Crimean khanate to czarist Russia in the late eighteenth century, many Tatars from the Crimea and Circassians from the Caucasus migrated to Dobruja andwere given land by the Ottoman government, where they formed villages and became farmers. The Dobruja Turks remain a distinctive cultural entity to this day.
Rumelian Turks see Turks, Rumelian.
Turks, Rumelian. Rumelian Turks are literally the Turks of Roman lands. The term “Rumeli” in Turkish refers to the Balkans, which were, before their occupation by the Ottomans, in the hands of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire. The Balkan peninsula includes the moder states of Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia. Historically, the lands of Rumeli also encompassed Hungary, Cyprus, Rhodes and Crete, as well as the smaller Greek islands. The term “Rumelian Turk,” then, refers to those Turks who came to Eastern Europe from Anatolia, along with Turkmen and others from Central Asia and the Crimea. It also has come to apply to Circassians from the Caucasus who settled in the Balkans.
The earliest recorded settlement of Muslim Turks in Rumelian lands occurred in 1249. Sultan Izzeddin Kayka’us , ruler of the Seljuks of Anatolia, having lost his crown to his brothers, took refuge in Byzantium and was given land by the Byzantines in Dobruja. He was followed by about 30 to 40 obas, or small groups of closely related families, of nomadic Turkmen from Anatolia, who settled there. When Dobruja and Bessarabia fell to the Mongols of the Golden Horde who mingled with the Turkmen and became Muslim. Under the pressure of the Christian Bulgars, the majority of these early Turkish Mongol settlers returned to Anatolia in the fourteenth century. Those who stayed became converts to the Greek Orthodox religion.
The more permanent and large scale settlement of Turks in the Balkans took place during the long period of Ottoman domination of the peninsula, beginning in 1350. The lands gained in Europe by Ottomans were united until the mid-sixteenth century under one administrative system, and the Rumeli territory was headed by a beylerbeyi or “lord of the lords.” He retained a status equivalent to that of a vizier and attended cabinet meetings at the Ottoman court in Constantinople. After 1550, the Balkans were divided into smaller administrative territories, following more or less ethnic divisions of the area, such as Bosnia, Macedonia or Morea.
Although Ottomans were the rulers in Rumeli until about the mid-nineteenth century, or until various Balkan nations gained their independence, Turks have always been in the minority except in Turkish Thrace. Because of religious, linguistic, and social differences, Turkish settlers in the Balkans did not intermarry in large numbers or mix with the indigenous Christian and Albanian or Bosnian populations. Probably such intermarriage as occurred involved men marrying non-Turkish women. The Turks were mostly settled in towns in the Balkans and served as military personnel and administrators, and as artisans. Land was granted to individuals, usually of the military class, as fiefs in the Balkans from the Ottoman crown holdings. Since ownership of such land was not inherited, it eventually reverted back to the state. Therefore, no Turkish landed noble class developed, and Turkish peasants in the Balkans were rare, with the exception of Dobruja. After annexation of the Crimean khanate to czarist Russia in the late eighteenth century, many Tatars from the Crimea and Circassians from the Caucasus migrated to Dobruja andwere given land by the Ottoman government, where they formed villages and became farmers. The Dobruja Turks remain a distinctive cultural entity to this day.
Rumelian Turks see Turks, Rumelian.
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