Mughals were still Mongolians and not Turks. Heavily mixed with Persians and Indians and some Arabs too. They were also Persianized. Claiming them as Turks is pathetic. They belonged to the Barlas Mongolian tribe. Nothing to do with Turks of Turkey.
Özay Mehmet (sounds Turkish to me) in his book
Islamic Identity and Development: Studies of the Islamic Periphery mentions:
[29]
“The ordinary Turks (
Turkmen) did not have a sense of belonging to a ruling ethnic group. In particular, they had a confused sense of self-image. Who were they: Turks, Muslims or Ottomans? Their literature was sometimes
Persian, sometimes
Arabic, but always courtly and elitist. There was always a huge social and cultural distance between the Imperial centre and the Anatolian periphery. As
Bernard Lewis expressed it: "
in the Imperial society of the Ottomans the ethnic term Turk was little used, and then chiefly in a rather derogatory sense, to designate the Turcoman nomads or, later, the ignorant and uncouth Turkish-speaking peasants of the Anatolian villages." (Lewis 1968: 1)
In the words of a British observer of the Ottoman values and institutions at the start of the twentieth century:
"The surest way to insult an Ottoman gentleman is to call him a 'Turk'. His face will straightway wear the expression a Londoner's assumes, when he hears himself frankly styled a Cockney. He is no Turk, no savage, he will assure you, but an Ottoman subject of the Sultan, by no means to be confounded with certain barbarians styled Turcomans, and from whom indeed, on the male side, he may possibly be descended."(Davey 1907: 209)
In Iran Turk is apparently associated with donkeys and being dumb according to the Iranian members.