Deliorman
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2016
- Messages
- 1,864
- Reaction score
- 2
- Country
- Location
Modern day Turkish people have a very diverse origins ranging from Albania (i.e.Mehmet Akif Ersoy), Bosnian, Bulgarian, Greek (Barbaros Hayretting Pasa), Croatian (Kuyucu Murat Pasa), - Pretty much most Eastern European, Tatar Turks, Chechen (Cerkez), Dagistani, Georgian (Gurcu), Pontic Greek (Laz's), Kurdish, Arabic and Azeri Turkish, Afghan (Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi)... Let's not forget the population exchange agreement with Greece and Turkey, allot of ethnic Greek Muslims made Anatolia their home.
Because Ottoman empire was the center point of Islam, carrying the Caliphate flag for 400 years, it has drawn allot of people into Anatolia from different ethnic origins. When Ottoman Empire was dissolved, and the caliphate abolished, allot of Muslim people in Anatolia (modern day Turkey) from varying ethnic origins automatically became Turkish and Turkish nationalism was emphasised on these people.
For example Deliorman, your grandfathers were a staunch Muslim within the Ottoman empire, your ethnic origins might be questioned but you became a Turk with the current Turkish system in place.
The difference is that the Pontic Greeks were all there in the Eastern Black sea region less than a 100 years ago. Some of them (The Muslim ones and those who converted to Islam) are still there nowadays. During the population exchange between Greece and Turkey after the war of 1919-1923 people were resettled based on their religion, not on their etchnicity. That's how many Muslim Greeks together with the Turks and the Pomaks living in today's Greece ended in Turkey and how Many Christian Greeks, Levantines, Georgians and Christian Turks ended in Greece.
Bulgarian Turks on the other hand are descendents of the Turks who settled on the Balkans after the Ottoman Empire conquered it. Many Karaman Turks settled here after the Ottomans conquered their Beylik in the 15th century. After Selim I won against the Safavids many Kizilbash Turks were also resettled on the Balkans. Yoruk Turks and Tatars made the Deliorman and Dobrogea region also their home- especially after the Crimean khanate was conquered by the Russians in the 18th century. Even before that many Turkic tribes have lived in the lands of today's Bulgaria- Oguz Turks, Pechenegs, Cumans all settled here during the First and the Second Bulgarian Kingdom... even the Bulgars who created the first Bulgarian state in 681 AD were a Turkic tribe but eventually mixed with the more numerous Thracian and Slavic tribes.
I am not a Turk because my grandparents were Muslim during the Ottoman times... I am Turk because those are my roots, because my grandparents and their great great grandparents were Turkish and those before them were Turks too. Bulgarian Turks are just Turks and not some Muslim people who became Turkish because their citizenship says so. We are a leftover of the Ottoman Empire, like the Turkmens in Syria and Iraq, like the other Turkish people in Macedonia, Greece, Kosovo, Georgia, Cyprus. But how can you know that when you prefer to listen to historical titans like Kadir Misiroglu, the same guy who said Ataturk was Jewish too and that Shakespeare was actually a muslim named Sheih Pir.