Sibel Talking Turkey--But What IS Turkey?

Found some fascinating commentary on the DailyKos discussion about Sibel's latest teaser...  So, is Turkey basically a kind of fake state like Israel?  And by that I mean that there is a manufactured unified identity involved with pretensions to authenticate their "rights" to the land?  Is this interesting in light of the purported descendance of modern day Ashkenazi Jews from the "Turkic" Khazarians?  And is it a coincidence that these kinds of states seem to pop up at strategic crossroads?

 Well one piece of evidence is in the story itself (0+ / 0-)
Turks in Turkey aren't the same as real ethnic Turks, so there is no concept of Pan-Turkism which leads me to believe the story is false.

by mikeatuva on Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 06:55:26 AM PDT

[ Parent ]

 errr (1+ / 0-)
Recommended by:forgore
That's the point! The 'operations' are trying to appeal to ethnic Turks.

Against All Enemies

by lukery on Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 07:07:17 AM PDT

[ Parent ]

 No its not the point. (0+ / 0-)
They would not have used the state of Turkey if they were trying to appeal to ethnic Turks because there are no Turks in Turkey except tourists.

by mikeatuva on Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 07:19:13 AM PDT

[ Parent ]

 You've obviously (0+ / 0-)
never heard of the Gray Wolves and their idea of Greater Turan.  You've never heard of the original Ergenekon legend.

Yeah, Ergenekon goes way beyond the struggle for the Deep State that's going on now in Turkey.  There's a meaning behind Ergenekon and that meaning is why the group is called "Ergenekon".

It all has to do with "pan-Turkism".

by Mizgin on Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 10:53:39 PM PDT

 

 Umm people who live in Turkey aren't Turks (1+ / 0-)

Recommended by:

bobdevo

Thats a fabricated nationalism created by Attaturk (not his real name) to unite the people of Anatolia (the ancient name for basically modern Turkey; aren't name changes fun?) against tyranny by the puppet regime in Greece supported by the British and the French.

The ethnicities of modern day Turkey are primarily Greek, Armenian, and Kurd. The real Turks which invaded that part of the world died out and moved home to like Turkmenistan.

Now if the country in question is Turkmenistan not Turkey this would have greater credence.

by mikeatuva on Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 06:54:16 AM PDT

•  Sorry (7+ / 0-)

  Recommended by:

  Mountain Don, drmonkey, Tirge Caps, Egilsson, Argyrios, codairem, foreign obesver

  Nice try.

  Mustafa Kemal was responsible for a lot of massive social changes, but even he could not have taught the vast majority of the population of Turkey to speak Turkish if they hadn't been speaking it already.

  Of the other ethnicities you mention: the Kurds are still there in the east of Turkey, bordering Iraq; the Armenians were mostly massacred in a genocidal killing during World War I; and the Greeks were expelled from western Turkey during a war between Greece and Turkey shortly afterwards.

  Now it's true that Anatolia has long been a melting pot where hundreds of different nations have blended together.  Even in classical times, when the common language of the region was Greek, people might have traced their ancestry back to Hittites or Mysians or Lycians or Lydians or Phrygians or Trojans or Bithynians or Galatians or Paphlagonians or Cappadocians or any of a vast number of other nationalities since forgotten.  And when the Seljuq Turks entered Anatolia in 1071, they got blended in (purely in genetic terms) with the rest of the population.

  Culturally and linguistically, however, they retained paramountcy, and over hundreds of years they made Turkey (a) Turkish-speaking, (b) Muslim, (c) Perso-Turkic in culture.  The Armenians, Kurds, and Greeks remained distinct nationalities throughout the period of Ottoman rule, though there were doubtless many individual Armenians, Kurds, and Greeks who adopted Islam and the Turkish language and became indistinguishable from the rest of the Turks.

  There is no historical basis for saying that the "real Turks" (presumably the Seljuqs, and additional Turkish tribes who entered Anatolia in their wake, like the Kara Koyunli, the Aq Koyunli, and of course the Osmanli) "died out and moved home to Turkmenistan".  That did not happen.  The Turks who entered Anatolia remained and merged genetically with the rest of the population, who outnumbered them; but that does not make the modern Turkish-speaking population "not Turkish", it just shows that "Turk" is not a genetic classification.

  One might as well say that the Arabic-speaking population of the Levant -- Syria, Lebanon, Palestine -- are "not Arabs" because a major part of their genetic heritage comes from the pre-Arab inhabitants of the area: Assyrians, Aramaeans, Greeks, and Jews.  But that's not how the word is used.  They are Arabs, and call themselves Arabs, because they speak Arabic.  And the people who live in Turkey call themselves "Türk" because they speak Türkçe, Turkish.

  by WIds on Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 07:19:39 AM PDT

  [ Parent ]

•  This is a weird comment. (0+ / 0-)

  A lot like saying that the people who live in the USA are not Americans, and the people who live in Brazil are not Brazilian.

  Maybe you believe in pure races?  The notion has been discredited for oh, I dunno, over 60 years now?

  Silvio Levy

  by codairem on Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 10:26:12 AM PDT

 On Turkey and Central Asia (0+ / 0-)

"Turkey, a NATO ally, has a lot more credibility in the region than the US and, with the history of the Ottoman Empire, could appeal to pan-Turkic dreams of a wider sphere of influence. The majority of the Central Asian population shares the same heritage, language and religion as the Turks."

Religion yes, heritage and language? absolutely not.

Look at these people! They suck each other! They eat each other's saliva and dirt! -- Tsonga people of southern Africa on Europeans kissing.

by upstate NY on Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 07:17:27 AM PDT

•  Thank you (0+ / 0-)

  The story itself has too many blatant falsehoods. Modern day residents of Turkey are only Turks because of fabricated nationalism. They are Greek.

  by mikeatuva on Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 07:20:59 AM PDT

  [ Parent ]

  •  I wouldn't say they are Greek either (2+ / 0-)

    Recommended by:

    Cassiodorus, Jampacked

    They are certainly a mix of Central Asians (but only 25,000 of them traveled to Asia Minor a millennium ago, and you can't get from 25,000 to 75 million in 1,000 years without some form of assimilation). Assyrians, Kurds, Greeks, Armenians, Central Asians, Slavs, Egyptians, Levantines, and good gosh, what ever happened to the Hittites? These are all apart of the Turkish heritage that is vastly different from what exists in Asia. The language for certain is different.

    That being said, this particular quote seems to come from the diarist and not Sibel Edmonds since she was indeed an expert in this area and knows it well.

    Look at these people! They suck each other! They eat each other's saliva and dirt! -- Tsonga people of southern Africa on Europeans kissing.

    by upstate NY on Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 07:28:15 AM PDT

    [ Parent ]

    •  There's a reason (0+ / 0-)

      why Cengiz remains a popular name in Turkey.  Can you figure it out?  Hint:  It has to do with heritage.

      As for language, if there's "absolutely" no shared language then why is it that those of us who speak the "fake" Turkish spoken in Turkey can understand 50% of what Rebiya Kadeer says?  Or 80% of what an Azerbaijani or Turkmen says?

      And why are there still Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and Jews in Turkey?  Because the Treaty of Lausanne gave them rights as religious minorities and that's why they didn't assimilate.

      As for other ethnicities, they're assimilated and, according to the Principles of Turkism  by Ziya Gokalp, they're Turks.  They identify themselves as Turks, period.

      Then there are at least 20 million Kurds who have not assimilated and we're just the flies in the ointment, aren't we?

      by Mizgin on Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 11:31:26 PM PDT

      [ Parent ]

•  A little too dismissive (1+ / 0-)

  Recommended by:

  codairem

  The Kazakhs, Kirgiz, Uzbeks, Turkmen, and Uigurs of Central Asia, as well as the Azeris of the Caucasus, do speak languages that are obviously related to "Ottoman" Turkish (the Turkish language spoken in Turkey, formerly the Ottoman Empire).  So that much is true.

  But they are not the same language.  Ottoman Turkish is related to them in the same way as English is related to Dutch and German.

  There is a shared heritage, but the Turks of Turkey are culturally considerably different from the Turkic peoples of Central Asia -- more urban, more Europeanized, with different historical experiences.

  There are real connections that can't be dismissed.  On the other hand, take a Turk out of Istanbul and transplant him to Samarkand, and he or she will be almost as much at sea as any American tourist.

  by WIds on Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 07:27:52 AM PDT

  [ Parent ]

  •  I didn't say there is no cultural connection (0+ / 0-)

    but I would disagree with you when you say there is a shared heritage. To me, the word "is" there implies that they share the same heritage.

    I would agree that they share some aspects of heritage, as I wrote in an earlier post.

    as for the language, the Turkic roots are there, but one could say that of any number of Turkic languages further afield. When one says, they share a language, then I presume them to mean they share the same language, not commonalities in language.

    For instance, I would say "false" if someone asked, "Is it true that Americans share the same language as Germans?"

    Look at these people! They suck each other! They eat each other's saliva and dirt! -- Tsonga people of southern Africa on Europeans kissing.

    by upstate NY on Fri Jul 31, 2009 at 08:22:38 AM PDT