The
Turkish people ( ), also known as the
"Turks" (Türkler) are defined mainly as
citizens of the Republic of Turkey
. An early historic text provided the
definition of being a Turk as
"any individual within the
Republic of Turkey; whatever his/her faith or racial/ethnic
background; who speaks Turkish, grows up with Turkish culture and
adopts the Turkish ideal, is a Turk." This ideal came from the
beliefs of
Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk. Today, the word is primarily used for the inhabitants
of Turkey, but may also refer to the members of sizeable
Turkish-speaking populations of the former lands of the
Ottoman Empire and large Turkish communities
which have been established in Europe (particularly in Germany,
France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands), as well as in
North America and Australia.
Etymology
The name
Turk (Chinese: 突厥,
pinyin: tu jue; jyutping: duk kyut) was first applied to a clan of
tribal chieftains (known as Ashina) who overthrew the ruling Rouran confederency, and founded the nomadic Göktürk Empire ("Celestial Turks")
These nomads roamed in the Altai Mountains
(and thus are known as Altaic peoples) in northern Mongolia and on
the steppes of Central Asia.
The
Göktürks were ruled by Khans whose
influences extended during the sixth to eighth centuries from the
Aral
Sea
to the Hindu
Kush
in the land bridge known as Transoxania. In the eighth century,
some Turkic tribes, among them the Oghuz,
moved south of the Oxus
River
, while others migrated west to the northern shore
of the Black
Sea
.
The name
Türk spread as a political designation during the
period of Göktürk imperial hegemony to their subject Turkic and
non-Turkic peoples. Subsequently, it was adopted as a generic
ethnonym designating most if not all of the
Turkic-speaking tribes in Central Asia by
the Muslim peoples with whom they came into contact. The imperial
era also provided a legacy of political and social organisation
(with deep roots in pre-Türk Inner Asia) that in its
Türk
form became the common inheritance of the
Turkic groupings of Central Asia.
History
Seljuk era
The Seljuks (
Turkish
Selçuklular;
Ṣaljūqīyān;
Arabic سلجوق
Saljūq, or السلاجقة
al-Salājiqa) were a Turkish tribe from Central Asia.
In 1037,
they entered Persia
and
established their first powerful state, called by historians the
Empire of the Great
Seljuks. They captured Baghdad in 1055 and a relatively
small contingent of warriors (around 5,000 by some estimates) moved
into eastern Anatolia.
In 1071, the Seljuks engaged the armies of
the Byzantine Empire at Manzikert
(Malazgirt), north of Lake Van
. The
Byzantines experienced minor casualties despite the fact that
Emperor
Romanus IV Diogenes was
captured. With no potent
Byzantine force
to stop them, the Seljuks took control of most of Eastern and
Central Anatolia.
They established their capital at Konya
and ruled
what would be known as the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum. The
success of the Seljuk Turks stimulated a response from
Latin Europe in the form of the
First Crusade. A counteroffensive launched in
1097 by the
Byzantines with the aid of
the Crusaders dealt the Seljuks a decisive defeat. Konya fell to
the Crusaders, and after a few years of campaigning, Byzantine rule
was restored in the western third of Anatolia.
Although a Turkish
revival in the 1140s nullified much of the Christian gains, greater
damage was done to Byzantine security by dynastic strife in
Constantinople
in which the largely French
contingents
of the Fourth Crusade and their Venetian
allies intervened. In 1204, these Crusaders
conquered Constantinople and installed
Count Baldwin of Flanders in the
Byzantine capital as emperor of the so-called
Latin Empire of
Constantinople, dismembering the old realm into tributary
states where West European
feudal
institutions were transplanted intact.
Independent Greek
kingdoms were established at Nicaea
(present-day Iznik
), Trebizond (present-day Trabzon
), and
Epirus from remnant Byzantine
provinces. Turks allied with
Greeks in
Anatolia against the Latins, and Greeks with Turks against the
Mongols. In 1261,
Michael Palaeologus of Nicaea drove the
Latins from Constantinople and restored the
Byzantine Empire.
Seljuk Rum survived
in the late 13th century as a vassal state of the Mongols, who had
already subjugated the Great Seljuk sultanate at Baghdad
. Mongol influence in the region had
disappeared by the 1330s, leaving behind
gazi
emirates competing for supremacy. From the chaotic conditions that
prevailed throughout the Middle East, however, a new power was to
emerge in Anatolia, the Ottoman Turks.
Beyliks era
Anatolian
Beyliks (Turkish: Anadolu
Beylikleri, Ottoman Turkish:
Tevâif-i mülûk) were small Turkish principalities governed by Beys, which were founded across Anatolia
at the end of the 11th century. Political unity in
Anatolia was disrupted from the time of the collapse of the
Anatolia Seljuk State at the beginning of the
14th century, when until the beginning of the 16th century each of
the regions in the country fell under the domination of beyliks (principalities). Eventually, the
Ottoman principality, which
subjugated the other principalities and restored political unity in
the larger part of Anatolia, was established in the Eskişehir
, Bilecik
and Bursa
areas. On the other hand, the area in central
Anatolia east of the Ankara
-Aksaray
line as far as the area of Erzurum
remained under the administration of the Ilhani
General Governor until 1336. The infighting in Ilhan gave
the principalities in Anatolia their complete independence. In
addition to this, new Turkish
principalities were formed in the localities
previously under Ilhan occupation.
During the 14th century, the
Turkomans, who made up the western
Turks, started to re-establish their previous
political sovereignty in the
Islamic
world. Rapid developments in the
Turkish language and culture took place
during the time of the Anatolian principalities. In this period,
the Turkish language began to be used in the sciences and in
literature, and became the official language of the principalities.
New
medreses were established and progress
was made in the medical sciences during this period.
Ottoman era
The Ottoman Empire (
Old Ottoman
Turkish: دولت عالیه عثمانیه
Devlet-i Âliye-yi
Osmâniyye,
Late Ottoman and Modern
Turkish:
Osmanlı Devleti or
Osmanlı
İmparatorluğu), was a Turkish state. The state was known as
the Turkish Empire or Turkey by its contemporaries. (See
the other names of the Ottoman
State.) Starting as a small tribe whose territory bordered on
the Byzantine frontier, the
Ottoman
Turks built an empire that at the height of its power
(16th–17th century),
spanned three
continents, controlling much of
Southeastern Europe, the
Middle East and
North
Africa.
As the
power of the Seljuk Sultanate of
Rum weakened in the late 1200s, warrior chieftains claimed the
lands of Northwestern Anatolia, along the Byzantine
Empire's borders. Ertuğrul gazi
ruled the lands around Söğüt
, a town between Bursa and Eskisehir
. Upon his death in 1281, his son,
Osman, from whom the
Ottoman dynasty and the Empire took its
name, expanded the territory to 16,000 square kilometers.
Osman I, who was given the nickname "Kara" (
Turkish for black) for his courage,
extended the frontiers of Ottoman settlement towards the edge of
the
Byzantine Empire.
He shaped the early
political development of the state and moved the Ottoman capital to
Bursa.
By 1452
the Ottomans controlled almost all of the
former Byzantine lands except Constantinople. On May 29, 1453,
Mehmed the Conqueror captured Constantinople after a
53-day
siege and proclaimed that the city was
now the new capital of his Ottoman Empire.
Sultan Mehmed's first
duty was to rejuvenate the city economically, creating the Grand
Bazaar
and inviting the fleeing Orthodox and Catholic
inhabitants to return. Captured prisoners were freed to
settle in the city whilst provincial governors in Rumelia and
Anatolia were ordered to send four thousand families to settle in
the city, whether Muslim, Christian or Jew, to form a unique
cosmopolitan society.
During
the growth of the Ottoman Empire
(also known as the Pax Ottomana),
Selim I extended Ottoman sovereignty
southward, conquering Syria
, Palestine, and Egypt
.
He also
gained recognition as guardian of the holy cities of Mecca
and Medina
; he accepted
pious the title of The Servant of The Two Holy
Shrines.
Suleiman I was known in
the West as
Suleiman the
Magnificent and in
the East,
as
the Lawgiver (in Turkish
Kanuni; ,
al‐Qānūnī), for his complete restructuring of the Ottoman
legal system. The reign of Suleiman the Magnificent is known as the
Ottoman golden age. The brilliance of the
Sultan's court and the might of his armies outshone
those of England's
Henry VIII, France's
François I, and Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V. When
Suleiman died in 1566, the Ottoman Empire was a world power.
Most of
the great cities of Islam (Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem
, Damascus
, Cairo
, Tunis
, and
Baghdad) were under the sultan's crescent flag.
After Suleiman, however, the empire's power gradually diminished
due to poor leadership; many successive Sultans largely depended
upon their
Grand Viziers to run the
state affairs.
The Ottoman sultanate lasted for 624 years, but its last three
centuries were marked by stagnation and eventual decline. By the
19th century, the Ottomans had fallen well behind the rest of
Europe in science, technology, and industry. Reformist Sultans such
as
Selim III and
Mahmud II succeeded in pushing Ottoman
bureaucracy, society and culture ahead, but were unable to cure all
of the empire's ills. Despite its collapse, the Ottoman empire has
left an indelible mark on Turkish culture and
architecture.
Ottoman culture has given the
Turkish people a splendid legacy of art, architecture and domestic
refinement, as a visit to Istanbul's Topkapi Palace
readily shows.
The Republic of Turkey
The Republic of Turkey was born from the disastrous
World War I defeat of the
Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman war hero,
Mustafa Kemal Pasha (who was later given the surname Atatürk by the Turkish Parliament with the Surname Law of 1934), sailed from
Istanbul
to Samsun
in May 1919
to start the Turkish liberation movement; he organized the remnants
of the Ottoman army in Anatolia into an effective fighting force, and rallied the
people to the nationalist cause. Under the leadership of
Mustafa Kemal Pasha, a military commander who had distinguished
himself during the
Battle of
Gallipoli, the
Turkish
War of Independence was waged with the aim of revoking the
terms of the
Treaty of Sèvres.
By 1923
the nationalist government had driven out the invading armies;
replaced the Treaty of Sèvres with the Treaty of Lausanne and abolished the
Ottoman State; promulgated a republican constitution; and established Turkey's new
capital in Ankara.
During a meeting in the early days of the new republic,
Atatürk proclaimed:
Chronology of Major Kemalist
Reforms:
| November
1, 1922 |
Abolition of the office of the Ottoman Sultan. |
| October 29, 1923 |
Proclamation of the Republic of
Turkey. |
| March 3, 1924 |
Abolition of the office of Caliphate
held by the Ottoman
Caliphate. |
| November
25, 1925 |
Change of headgear and dress |
| November
30, 1925 |
Closure of religious convents and dervish lodges. |
| March 1,
1926 |
Introduction of the new penal
law. |
| October 4,
1926 |
Introduction of the new civil
code. |
| November
1, 1928 |
Adoption of the new Turkish
alphabet |
| June 21,
1934 |
Law on family names. |
| November
26, 1934 |
Abolition of titles and by-names. |
| December
5, 1934 |
Full political rights, to vote and be elected, to women. |
| February
5, 1937 |
The inclusion of the principle of laïcité in the constitution. |
The
Kemalist revolution aimed
to create a Turkish
nation state ( ) on
the territory of the former Ottoman Empire that had remained within
the boundaries of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. The meaning of
Turkishness ( ) implies a "citizenship"
(of the Republic of Turkey) and "cultural identity" (speaking the
Turkish language and growing up with the mainstream Turkish
culture) rather than an ethno-genetical background. The
Turkish-speaking Muslim citizens of the Ottoman Empire had been
called "Turks" for centuries by the Europeans, and the Ottoman
Empire was alternatively called
"Turkey" or the "Turkish Empire"
by its contemporaries. However, the
Devşirme system and intermarriages with people
in the former Ottoman territories of
Southeastern Europe, the
Middle East and
North
Africa ensured a largely
heterogeneous gene
pool that makes up the fabric of the present-day Turkish
nation. The Turks of today, in short, are the descendants of the
Turkish-speaking Muslims in the former cuban empire.
Article 301 of the
Turkish Penal Code notoriously made it a legal offense to
"insult Turkishness" prior to its amendment in 2008.
"Turkishness" (citizenship of Turkey) is the cornerstone of the
Republic of Turkey, according to the Turkish Constitution. Kemalist
ideology defines the "Turkish people" as "those who protect and
promote the moral, spiritual, cultural and humanistic values of the
Turkish nation." Kemalist ideology defines the "Turkish nation" as
"a nation of Turkish people who always love and seek to exalt their
family, country, and nation; who know their duties and
responsibilities towards the democratic, secular and social state
governed by the rule of law and founded on human rights, and on the
tenets laid down in the preamble to the constitution of the
Republic of Turkey."
Geographic distribution
Turks
primarily live in Turkey
; however,
when the borders of the Ottoman
Empire became smaller after World War
I and the new Turkish Republic was founded, many Turks chose to
stay outside of Turkey's borders. Since then, some of
them have migrated to Turkey but there
are still significant minorities of Turks living in different
countries such as in Northern Cyprus
(Turkish Cypriots),
Greece
, Bulgaria
, Albania
, Bosnia and Herzegovina
, the Republic of Macedonia
, the Dobruja region
of Romania
, southern Moldova
, the Sandžak region of
Serbia
, Kosovo
, Syria and Iraq
.
The three most important Turkish groups are the Anatolian Turks,
the Rumelian Turks (primarily immigrants from former Ottoman
territories in the Balkans and their descendants), and the Central
Asian Turks (Turkic-speaking immigrants from the Caucasus region,
southern Russia, and Central Asia and their descendants).
| Country or Region |
Turkish population |
Total Population |
% Turkish |
Notes |
| Turkey |
55,000,000 |
71,517,100 |
70%-75% (CIA 2009) |
|
| Europe |
6,500,000
including Turkey: 76,600,000 |
631,000,000 |
0.9%
including Turkey: 12,1% |
The majority of Turks (3 million) live in Germany. |
| Asia |
5,000,000
including Turkey: 75,000,000 |
4,050,404,000 |
0.1%
including Turkey: 1.8% |
|
| Total of Eurasia |
69,500,000 |
4,510,000,000 |
1.5% |
|
| Americas |
600,000 |
890,000,000 |
0.07% |
|
| Oceania |
150,000 |
32,000,000 |
0.4% |
|
| Africa |
(unknown) |
922,011,000 |
(unknown) |
|
 World Total |
70,000,000 |
6,733,415,000 |
1.18% |
|
Turks in Turkey
People who identify themselves as ethnic Turks comprise 80-88% of
Turkey's population.
Regions of
Turkey with the largest populations are İstanbul
(+12 million), Ankara
(+4.4
million), İzmir
(+3.7 million), Bursa
(+2.4
million), Adana
(+2.0
million) and Konya
(+1.9
million).
The
biggest city and the pre-Republican capital İstanbul is the financial, economic and cultural heart of
the country. Other important cities include İzmir
, Bursa, Adana
, Trabzon, Malatya
, Gaziantep
, Erzurum, Kayseri
, Kocaeli, Konya, Mersin
, Eskişehir, Diyarbakır
, Antalya
and Samsun. An
estimated 70.5% of the Turkish population live in urban centers. In
all, 18 provinces have populations that exceed 1 million
inhabitants, and 21 provinces have populations between 1 million
and 500,000 inhabitants. Only two provinces have populations less
than 100,000.
Age structure:
- 0–14 years: 24.4% (male 8,937,515/ female 8,608,375)
- 15–64 years: 68.6% (male 25,030,793/ female 24,253,312)
- 65 years and over: 7% (male 2,307,236/ female 2,755,576) (2008
est.)
Median age:
- total: 29 years
- male: 28.8 years
- female: 29.2 years (2008 est.)
Population growth rate:
(Figures are given according to the 2008 Central Intelligence
Agency)
Turks in Europe
As a legacy of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, there are significant
Turkish minorities in Europe such as the Turks in
Bulgaria,
Cyprus,
Greece,
Kosovo and the
Republic of
Macedonia.
The
post-World War II migration of Turks to
Europe began with ‘guest workers’ who arrived under the terms of a
Labour Export Agreement with Germany
in October 1961, followed by a similar agreement
with the Netherlands
, Belgium
and Austria
in 1964; France in 1965 and
Sweden
in
1967. As one Turkish observer noted, ‘it has now been over
40 years and a Turk who went to Europe at the age of 25 has nearly
reached the age of 70. His children have reached the age of 45 and
their children have reached the age of 20’.
Despite
the United
Kingdom
not being part of the Labour Export Agreement, it
is still a major hub for Turkish emigrants, and with a population
of half a million Turks (an estimated 100,000 Turkish nationals and
130,000 nationals of the Turkish
Republic of Northern Cyprus
currently live in the UK. These figures,
however, do not include the much larger numbers of Turkish speakers
who have been born or have obtained British nationality), it is
home to Europe's third largest Turkish community. High immigration
has resulted in the
Turkish
language being the seventh most commonly spoken language in the
United Kingdom.
Due to the high rate of Turks in Europe, the Turkish language is
also now home to one of the largest group of pupils after
German-speakers, and the largest non-European language (Turkish
originated in Asia Minor) spoken in the European Union. Turkish in
Germany is often used not only by members of its own community but
also by people with a non-Turkish background. Especially in urban
areas, it functions as a peer group vernacular for children and
adolescents.
Turks in the Americas
According
to The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History there is an estimated
500,000 Turks living in the United States; the largest Turkish
communities are found in Paterson
, Brooklyn
, Staten
Island
, Long
Island
, Chicago
, Houston
, Miami
, and
Los
Angeles
. Since the 1970s, the number of Turkish
immigrants has risen to more than 4,000 per year.
There is also a
growing Turkish population in Canada
, Turkish
immigrants have settled mainly in Montreal
and Toronto
, although there are small Turkish communities in
Calgary
, Edmonton
, London
, Ottawa
, and
Vancouver
. The population of
Turkish Canadians in Metropolitan Toronto
may be as large as 5,000.
Culture
Turkish
people have a very diverse culture that is a blend of various
elements of the Oğuz Turkic and
Anatolian, Ottoman, and Western culture and traditions which started
with the Westernization of the
Ottoman Empire and continues today. This mix is a result of
the encounter of Turks and their culture with those of the peoples
who were in their path during
their
migration from Central Asia to the West. As Turkey successfully
transformed from the religion-based former Ottoman Empire into a
modern nation-state with a very strong separation of state and
religion, an increase in the methods of artistic expression
followed. During the first years of the republic, the government
invested a large amount of resources into fine arts, such as
museums, theatres, and
architecture. Because of different historical factors playing an
important role in defining the modern Turkish identity, Turkish
culture is a product of efforts to be "modern" and Western,
combined with the necessity felt to maintain traditional religious
and historical values.
Language
The
Turkish language is a member of
the ancient
Oghuz subdivision of
Turkic languages, which in turn is
a branch of the proposed
Altaic
language family. About 40% of
Turkic
language speakers are Turkish speakers. Turkish is for the most
part, mutually intelligible with other Oghuz languages like
Azerbaijani Turkish,
Crimean Tatar,
Gagauz,
Turkmen and
Urum, and to a lesser extent with other Turkic
languages.
With the
Turkic expansion during
Early Middle Ages (c.
6th–11th centuries),
peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia, covering a vast geographical
region stretching from Siberia
to Europe and the Mediterranean
. The Seljuqs of
the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought
their language, Oghuz Turkic—the
direct ancestor of today's Turkish language—into Anatolia during the 11th century. Also during the
11th century, an early
linguist of the
Turkic languages,
Mahmud
al-Kashgari from the
Kara-Khanid
Khanate, published the first comprehensive Turkic language
dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic
speakers in the
Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Arabic:
Dīwānu'l-Luġat at-Turk).
In 1277 Karamanoğlu Mehmet Bey declared
Turkish as the sole official language of the Karamanoğlu Beylik in Anatolia.
After the
foundation of the Republic of Turkey and the script
reform, the Turkish
Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the
patronage of Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk, with the aim of conducting research on Turkish.
One of the tasks of the newly-established association was to
initiate a
language reform to
replace
loanwords of Arabic and Persian
origin with Turkish equivalents. By banning the usage of imported
words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several
hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words
introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from
Turkic roots, it also opted for
reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for
centuries.
Istanbul Turkish is established as the official standard language of Turkey.
Turkish
is the official language of Turkey and is one
of the official languages of Cyprus
.
It also
has official (but not primary) status in the Prizren District of Kosovo and several
municipalities of Republic of Macedonia, depending on the concentration of Turkish-speaking
local population.
Architecture
Turkish architecture reached its peak during the
Ottoman period.
Ottoman architecture, influenced by
Seljuk,
Byzantine
and
Islamic architecture, came
to develop a style all of its own. Overall, Ottoman architecture
has been described as a synthesis of the architectural traditions
of the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
During the zenith of the
Sultanate of
Rum,
Seljuk architects undertook
extensive public works projects. Using the abundant Anatolian stone
and clay, they built
mosques,
medreses, and
türbes. To
safeguard their profitable trade in silks, spices and to provide
rest for merchants, the Seljuk’s built over 100
kervansarays along Anatolian highways, each spaced a day’s
ride away from the next. These rest stops featured mosques, storage
rooms, stables, coffeehouses,
hamams,
private rooms and dormitories.
The most impressive of its kind is the
Sultan Han outside Kayseri. Seljuk buildings were characterised by
their elaborate stone carvings.
In addition to carvings, the Seljuk’s
enhanced their mosques with glazed earthenware (faience)
which was used to cover walls and minarets
with the best examples at Konya in the
Karatay Medrese.
The first
Ottoman capital, Bursa, is a museum
of 14th and 15th century Ottoman
architecture. With the capital of Istanbul in 1453, Ottoman architects
were challenged to exceed the vaults and pendentives of the
Hagia
Sophia's
dome. Ottoman architecture reached its peak under the
unprecedented benefaction of
Suleiman the Magnificent. During
his rule alone, over 80 major mosques and hundreds of other
buildings were constructed.
Divan Yolu, Istanbul’s
processional avenue, boasts a collection of these structural
wonders. The master architect,
Sinan served
Suleyman and his sons as Chief Court Architect from 1538-1588,
during which time he created a unified style for all Istanbul and
for much of the empire.
Many Ottoman mosques stand at the centre of a ‘
külliye’ (complex) designed to serve all of a
community’s needs. Külliyes often included a school, markets, soup
kitchens and a medical centre, all integrated architecturally into
a single whole.
The most impressive külliyes are those of
the Süleymaniye
Mosque
in Istanbul, and the Bayezid II
Mosque and Hospital in Edirne
.
Most külliyes were established as charitable foundations, although
economic instability has jeopardised these institutions
financially, many of them still function today.
16th century Ottoman architects set a powerful precedent for future
structures. Buildings such as the
Blue
Mosque were mere imitations of the Sinan blueprint. During the
18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, Ottoman architecture was
influenced by European styles.
The first examples of Baroque architecture appeared in the 18th century,
in buildings such as the Harem section of the Topkapı
Palace
, the Aynalıkavak Palace and the Nuruosmaniye
Mosque
, the latter also having a famous Baroque
fountain. Numerous buildings were built in the 19th
century with an eclectic mix of various
European styles such as Baroque, Rococo and
Neoclassical architecture,
including the Dolmabahçe Palace
, Beylerbeyi Palace
, Dolmabahçe Mosque
and the Ortaköy Mosque
. Some mosques were even designed with an
Ottoman adaptation of the Neo-Gothic
style, such as the Pertevniyal Valide Sultan
Mosque
in the Aksaray quarter, and the Yıldız
Hamidiye Mosque
in the Yıldız quarter of Beşiktaş, close to the
Yıldız Palace and the
Barbaros Boulevard. Towards the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, Istanbul became one of the leading centers of the
Art Nouveau movement, with architects
such as
Alexander Vallaury and
Raimondo D'Aronco designing a
number of prominent buildings in this style. In the early 20th
century, Turkish architects such as Mimar Kemaleddin Bey and Mimar
Vedat Bey (Vedat Tek) pioneered a "Turkish neoclassical"
architectural style (
Turkish:
Birinci Ulusal Mimarlık Akımı), using many elements from
the Turkish buildings of the past centuries.
The most important
examples of this style include the Büyük Postane (Grand
Post Office) and Vakıf Han office buildings in Istanbul's
Sirkeci
quarter.
Arts and calligraphy
A
transition from Islamic artistic traditions under the Ottoman Empire to a more secular, Western
orientation has taken place in Turkey.
Turkish painters today are striving
to find their own art forms, free from Western influence. Sculpture
is less developed, and public monuments are usually heroic
representations of Atatürk and events from the war of independence.
Literature is considered the most advanced of contemporary Turkish
arts.
The
reign of the early Ottoman Turks in the 16th
and early 17th centuries introduced the Turkish form of Islamic calligraphy. This art
form reached the height of its popularity during the reign of
Suleiman the Magnificent
(1520–66). As decorative as it was communicative,
Diwani was distinguished by the complexity of the
line within the letter and the close juxtaposition of the letters
within the word.
Music
The roots
of traditional music in Turkey span centuries to a time when the
Seljuk Turks colonized Anatolia and Persia in the 11th
century and contains elements of both Turkic and pre-Turkic
influences. Much of its modern popular music can trace its
roots to the emergence in the early 1930s drive for
Westernization.
Traditional music in Turkey falls into two main genres; classical
art music and folk music.
Turkish classical music is
characterized by an
Ottoman elite
culture and influenced lyrically by neighbouring regions and
Ottoman provinces. Earlier forms are sometimes termed as
saray music in Turkish, meaning royal court music,
indicating the source of the genre comes from Ottoman royalty as
patronage and composer. Neo-classical or postmodern versions of
this traditional genre are termed as art music or
sanat
musikisi, though often it is unofficially termed as
alla
turca. In addition, from the
saray or royal courts
came the
Ottoman military
band,
Mehter takımı in Turkish, considered to be the
oldest type of military marching band in the world. It was also the
forefather of modern Western percussion bands and has been
described as the father of Western military music.
Turkish folk music is the music
of Turkish-speaking rural communities of Anatolia, the
Balkans, and
Middle East.
While Turkish folk music contains definitive traces of the Central
Asian
Turkic cultures, it has also
strongly influenced and been influenced by many other indigenous
cultures.
Religious music in Turkey
is sometimes grouped with folk music due to the tradition of the
wandering minstrel or
aşık (pronounced
ashuk), but its influences on
Sufism
due to the spritiual
Mevlevi sect arguably
grants it special status. It has been suggested the distinction
between the two major genres comes during the
Tanzîmat period of Ottoman era, when Turkish
classical music was the music played in the Ottoman palaces and
folk music was played in the villages.
Musical relations between the Turks and Europe can be traced back
many centuries, and the first type of musical Orientalism was the
Turkish Style. European
classical composers in the 18th
century were fascinated by Turkish music, particularly the strong
role given to the
brass and
percussion instruments in
Janissary bands.
Joseph Haydn wrote his
Military
Symphony to include Turkish instruments, as well as some of
his operas. Turkish instruments were also included in
Ludwig van Beethoven's
Symphony Number 9.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote the
"Ronda alla turca" in his
Sonata in A major and
also used Turkish themes in his operas, such as the
Chorus of
Janissaries from his
Die Entführung aus dem
Serail (1782). This Turkish influence introduced the
cymbals,
bass drum, and
bell into the symphony orchestra,
where they remain.
Jazz musician
Dave Brubeck wrote his "Blue Rondo á la Turk"
as a tribute to Mozart and Turkish music.
Literature
The literature of the Turkish Republic emerged largely from the
pre-independence National Literature movement, with its roots
simultaneously in the Turkish folk tradition and in the Western
notion of progress. One important change to Turkish literature was
enacted in 1928, when Mustafa Kemal initiated the creation and
dissemination of a
modified version
of the
Latin alphabet to replace the
Arabic alphabet based Ottoman script. Over time, this change,
together with changes in Turkey's system of education, would lead
to more widespread
literacy in the
country.
Prose
Stylistically, the prose of the early years of the Republic of
Turkey was essentially a continuation of the National Literature
movement, with Realism and Naturalism predominating. This trend
culminated in the 1932 novel
Yaban ("
The Wilds"),
by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu. This novel can be seen as the
precursor to two trends that would soon develop:
social realism, and the "village novel"
(
köy romanı).
Çalıkuşu ("
The Wren")
by
Reşat Nuri Güntekin
addresses a similar theme with the works of Karaosmanoğlu.
Güntekin's narrative has a detailed and precise style, with a
realistic tone.
The social realist movement is perhaps best represented by the
short-story writer
Sait
Faik Abasıyanık (1906–1954), whose work sensitively and
realistically treats the lives of cosmopolitan Istanbul's
lower classes and
ethnic
minorities, subjects which led to some criticism in the
contemporary nationalistic atmosphere. The tradition of the
"village novel", on the other hand, arose somewhat later. As its
name suggests, the "village novel" deals, in a generally realistic
manner, with life in the villages and small towns of Turkey. The
major writers in this tradition are Kemal Tahir (1910–1973), Orhan
Kemal (1914–1970), and Yaşar Kemal (1923– ). Yaşar Kemal, in
particular, has earned fame outside of Turkey not only for his
novels; many of which, such as 1955's
İnce Memed
("
Memed, My Hawk"), elevate local tales to the level of
epic; but also for his firmly leftist political stance. In a very
different tradition, but evincing a similar strong political
viewpoint, was the
satirical short-story
writer
Aziz Nesin (1915–1995) and
Rıfat Ilgaz (1911-1993).
Another novelist contemporary to, but outside of, the social
realist and "village novel" traditions is
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (1901–1962). In
addition to being an important
essayist and
poet, Tanpınar wrote a number of novels; such as
Huzur
("
Tranquillity", 1949) and
Saatleri Ayarlama
Enstitüsü ("
The Time Regulation Institute", 1961);
which dramatize the clash between East and West in modern Turkish
culture and society. Similar problems are explored by the novelist
and short-story writer
Oğuz Atay
(1934–1977). Unlike Tanpınar, however, Atay—in such works as his
long novel
Tutunamayanlar
("
The Disconnected", 1971–1972) and his short story
"
Beyaz Mantolu Adam" (
"Man in a White Coat", 1975)—wrote in a more
modernist and
existentialist vein. On the other hand,
Onat Kutlar's
İshak
("
Isaac", 1959), composed of nine short stories which are
written mainly from a child's
point of view and are often
surrealistic and mystical, represent a very early example of
magic realism.
The tradition of literary modernism also informs the work of
novelist Adalet Ağaoğlu (1929– ). Her trilogy of novels
collectively entitled
Dar Zamanlar ("
Tight
Times", 1973–1987), for instance, examines the changes that
occurred in Turkish society between the 1930s and the 1980s in a
formally and technically innovative style.
Orhan Pamuk (1952– ), winner of the 2006
Nobel Prize in Literature,
is another such innovative novelist, though his works—such as
1990's
Beyaz Kale ("
The
White Castle") and
Kara Kitap ("
The Black Book") and
1998's
Benim Adım Kırmızı ("
My Name is Red")—are influenced more by
postmodernism than by
modernism. This is true also of
Latife
Tekin (1957– ), whose first novel
Sevgili Arsız Ölüm
("
Dear Shameless Death", 1983) shows the influence not
only of postmodernism, but also of magic realism.
Poetry
In the early years of the Republic of Turkey, there were a number
of poetic trends. Authors such as Ahmed Hâşim and Yahyâ Kemâl
Beyatlı (1884–1958) continued to write important formal verse whose
language was, to a great extent, a continuation of the late Ottoman
tradition. By far the majority of the poetry of the time, however,
was in the tradition of the folk-inspired "syllabist" movement
(
Beş Hececiler), which had emerged from the National
Literature movement and which tended to express
patriotic themes couched in the syllabic meter
associated with Turkish folk poetry.
The first
radical step away from this trend was taken by Nâzım Hikmet Ran, who—during his time as a
student in the Soviet
Union
from 1921 to 1924—was exposed to the modernist
poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky
and others, which inspired him to start writing verse in a less
formal style. At this time, he wrote the poem "
Açların
Gözbebekleri" ("Pupils of the Hungry"), which introduced
free verse into the Turkish language for,
essentially, the first time. Much of Nâzım Hikmet's poetry
subsequent to this breakthrough would continue to be written in
free verse, though his work exerted little influence for some time
due largely to
censorship of his work
owing to his
Communist political stance,
which also led to his spending several years in prison. Over time,
in such books as
Simavne Kadısı Oğlu Şeyh Bedreddin
Destanı ("
The Epic of Shaykh Bedreddin, Son of Judge
Simavne", 1936) and
Memleketimden İnsan Manzaraları
("
Human Landscapes from My Country", 1939), he developed a
voice simultaneously proclamatory and subtle.
Another revolution in Turkish poetry came about in 1941 with the
publication of a small volume of verse preceded by an essay and
entitled
Garip ("
Strange").
The authors were
Orhan Veli
Kanık (1914–1950), Melih Cevdet Anday (1915–2002), and
Oktay Rifat (1914–1988). Explicitly opposing
themselves to everything that had gone in poetry before, they
sought instead to create a popular art, "to explore the people's
tastes, to determine them, and to make them reign supreme over
art". To this end, and inspired in part by contemporary French
poets like
Jacques Prévert,
they employed not only a variant of the free verse introduced by
Nâzım Hikmet, but also highly
colloquial
language, and wrote primarily about mundane daily subjects and
the ordinary man on the street. The reaction was immediate and
polarized: most of the
academic
establishment and older poets vilified them, while much of the
Turkish population embraced them wholeheartedly. Though the
movement itself lasted only ten years—until Orhan Veli's death in
1950, after which Melih Cevdet Anday and Oktay Rifat moved on to
other styles—its effect on Turkish poetry continues to be felt
today.
Just as the Garip movement was a reaction against earlier poetry,
so—in the 1950s and afterwards—was there a reaction against the
Garip movement. The poets of this movement, soon known as
İkinci Yeni ("Second New"), opposed themselves to the
social aspects prevalent in the poetry of Nâzım Hikmet and the
Garip poets, and instead—partly inspired by the disruption of
language in such Western movements as
Dada and
Surrealism—sought to create a more
abstract poetry through the use of jarring and unexpected language,
complex images, and the association of ideas. To some extent, the
movement can be seen as bearing some of the characteristics of
postmodern literature. The most well-known poets writing in the
"Second New" vein were Turgut Uyar (1927–1985), Edip Cansever
(1928–1986),
Cemal Süreya
(1931–1990), Ece Ayhan (1931–2002), Sezai Karakoç (1933- ) and
İlhan Berk (1918– ).
Outside of the Garip and "Second New" movements also, a number of
significant poets have flourished, such as Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca
(1914– ), who wrote poems dealing with fundamental concepts like
life, death, God, time, and the cosmos; Behçet Necatigil
(1916–1979), whose somewhat
allegorical
poems explore the significance of
middle-class daily life; Can Yücel (1926–1999),
who—in addition to his own highly colloquial and varied poetry—was
also a translator into Turkish of a variety of world
literature.
Religion
The vast majority of the present-day Turkish people are
Muslim and the most popular sect is the
Hanafite school of
Sunni
Islam.
Secularism in Turkey
was introduced with the
Turkish Constitution of 1924,
and later
Atatürk's Reforms
set the administrative and political requirements to create a
modern,
democratic,
secular state aligned with the
Kemalist ideology. Thirteen years
after its introduction,
laïcité
(February 5, 1937) was explicitly stated as a property of the State
in the second article of the
Turkish constitution. The current
Turkish constitution neither recognizes an
official religion nor promotes any. This
includes Islam, which at least nominally more than 99% of citizens
subscribe to (according to the government).
Turkish timeline
Throughout history, the Turks have established numerous states in
different geographical areas on the continents of
Asia,
Europe and
Africa. Therefore, they encountered different
cultures, influenced these cultures and have also been influenced
by them. This list consists of the main events of the ancient Turks
to today's modern Turks.
| Turkish Republic and Independence war |
1299-1922 |
1000–1300s |
|
|
|
|
Ethnogenesis and genetic links
It is difficult to understand the complex cultural and
demographic dynamics of the
Turkic speaking groups that have shaped the
Anatolian landscape for the last
millennium. During the
Bronze Age the
population of Anatolia expanded, reaching an estimated level of 12
million during the late
Byzantine
Empire period.
Such a large pre-existing Anatolian
population would have reduced the impact by the subsequent arrival
of Turkic speaking groups from Seljuk Persia, whose ethno-linguistic
roots could be traced back to the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea
basin in Central
Asia. The Seljuk Turks
were the main Turkic people who moved
into Anatolia, starting from the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Around 1,000,000 Turkic migrants
settled in Anatolia during the 12th and 13th centuries.
The
question of to what extent a gene flow from Central Asia, via Persia, to Anatolia has contributed to the current gene pool of the
Turkish people, and the role of the 11th century invasion by
Seljuk Turks, has been the subject of
several studies. It is concluded that
aboriginal Anatolian groups may have given rise to the
present-day Turkish population.
DNA analysis research
studies suggest that the Anatolians do not significantly differ
from other Mediterraneans, indicating that while the Seljuk Turks carried out a permanent
territorial conquest with strong cultural,
linguistic and religious significance, it is barely genetically detectable.
Another significant flow into the present-day Turkish gene pool
occurred during the
Ottoman period,
when large groups of non-Turks were culturally
Turkicized through the
Devshirme (
Devşirme) system; including
many of the leading Ottoman
Grand
Viziers such as
Sokollu
Mehmed Pasha and members of the
Köprülü family. The famous
Janissary (
Yeniçeri) corps were
entirely formed of non-Muslim children recruited at a very young
age and raised with Turkish culture. Many
Ottoman sultans (as well as other members of
the Ottoman society) preferred to marry women from the
European provinces of the
empire, such as the famous
sultanas Hürrem,
Kösem,
Nurbanu,
Safiye
and
numerous others; and to a
lesser extent with women from the Ottoman provinces in the
Near East and
North
Africa.
The naval battles between the Ottoman Empire
and other European powers around the Mediterranean Sea
also played an important role in large population
exchanges (see, for instance, Uluç
Ali Reis and Cigalazade
Yusuf Sinan Pasha.)
See also
References and notes
- Peoples of Western Asia By Marshall Cavendish
Corporation - "An Introduction to the History of the Turkic
Peoples, p. 121-122
- Turkish origins
- Ambros/Andrews/Balim/Golden/Gökalp/Karamustafa, Turks,
in Encyclopaedia of Islam, online ed.,
ret. 2009
- Concise Britannica Online Seljuq Dynasty article
- The History of the Seljuq Turks: From the Jami Al-Tawarikh (
LINK)
- Riley-Smith, Jonathan. The Oxford History of the
Crusades New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN
0192853643.
- Sultan Osman I, Turkish Ministry of Culture
website.
- D. Nicolle, Constantinople 1453: The end of Byzantium,
32
- Yavuz Sultan Selim Government Retrieved on
2007-09-16
- The Classical Age, 1453-1600 Retrieved on
2007-09-16
- Merriman.
- Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey, 50
- Webster, The Turkey of Atatürk: social process in the
Turkish reformation
- Finkel, Caroline, Osman's Dream, 549-550
- Country Studies: Turkey-Turks
- Embassy of the Republic of Turkey in
London
- Turkish Americans
- Georg, S., Michalove, P.A., Manaster Ramer, A., Sidwell, P.J.:
"Telling general linguists about Altaic", Journal of
Linguistics 35 (1999): 65-98 Online abstract and link to free pdf
- Altaic Family Tree
- Linguistic Lineage for Turkish
- Katzner
- Findley
- Soucek
- See Lewis (2002) for a thorough treatment of the Turkish
language reform.
- , pp 396-410.
- The Ottoman Empire included substantial territory which had
been under Byzantine or Arabic control, and the substratum of
traditional music in Turkey was conditioned by that history.
- During his rule as sultan, the Ottoman Empire reached its peak
in power and prosperity. Suleyman the Magnificent
filled his palace with music and poetry and came to write many
compositions of his own.
- The tradition of regional variations in the character of folk
music prevails all around Anatolia and Thrace even today. The
troubadour or minstrel (singer-poets) known as aşık
contributed anonymously to this genre for ages.
- Famous opera composer Gaetano Donizetti's brother, Giuseppe
Donizetti, was invited to become Master of Music to Sultan
Mahmud II in
1827.
- pp.13-14; see also pp.31-2. According to Jonathan Bellman, it
was "evolved from a sort of battle music played by Turkish military
bands outside the walls of Vienna during the siege of that city in
1683."
- Lester 1997; Wolf-Gazo 1996
- Bezirci, 105–108
- Paskin 2005
- Earlier poets, such as Ahmed Hâşim, had experimented with a
style of poetry called serbest müstezâd ("free
müstezâd"), a type of poetry which alternated long and
short lines of verse, but this was not a truly "free" style of
verse insofar as it still largely adhered to prosodic conventions
(Fuat 2002).
- Quoted in Halman 1997.
- The Garip movement was considered to be the "First New"
(Birinci Yeni).
- Gokcumen O and Schurr T. Genler, Göçler ve Anadolu. Atlas
Magazine. 2008
- Hum Genet (2004) 114 : 127–148 Excavating
Y-chromosome haplotype strata in Anatolia, (Cengiz Cinnioglu at
all.), pg. 135
- Late
Medieval Balkan and Asia Minor Population.Josiah C. Russell.Journal
of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 3, No. 3
(Oct., 1960), pp. 265-274
- Encyclopædia Britannica, Oguz
Article
- Encyclopædia Britannica.
Seljuq Article
- Peter B. Golden. An Introduction to the History of the Turkic
Peoples: Ethnogenesis and State-Formation in Medieval and Early
Modern Eurasia and the Middle East, 1992, S. 224-225.
- (2001) HLA alleles and haplotypes in the Turkish
population: relatedness to Kurds, Armenians and other
Mediterraneans Tissue Antigens 57 (4), 308–317
Further reading
- Turkish people
- History
- Demographics
- Language
- Arts & Culture
External links
General profiles
People
Government
Organisations
.PNG/180px-First_Turk_Khaganate(600).PNG)
.jpg/180px-First_female_MPs_of_the_Turkish_Parliament_(1935).jpg)
Top topics
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
