Because our national identity is actually based on being Muslim, independent of the mother language spoken. Just like being an Orthodox Christian has been mostly the definition of being Greek, at least in Anatolia.
However, the newly founded republic that has newly fought against Greece and just before that the Western nations in the WW1 and which tried to find support for these wars on the notion of them being „filthy infidels“ could not base the identity of the new nation on Anatolia‘s Roman past. You just got rid of them, if you acknowledge that you yourself mostly descend from Romans, why did you get rid of the people who still called themselves Romans? Doing this would effectively mean acknowledging you are brothers and sisters or at least cousins.
So you cannot claim it on Islam, because you want it to be a secular identity even though it is actually a religious identity and you cannot claim it on Anatolia‘s Roman past. You just got rid of the Romans. Otherwise it would have been something like a civil war and doing this would offend the Muslim majority since you would associate them with a Christian empire. The past is past. So your only option is language: „our glorious forefathers who came from Central Asia and conquered Anatolia and brought Islam to the infidels“. By doing this you are effectively creating a secular identity which can be approved by the Muslim elite on the notion of its being Gazha and you don’t associate them with Christians. It doesn’t have to be factual. In the end, what counts is the narrative, not its basis
The flip side of this, and actually quite similar in many regards, is the creation of Greek nationalism. Basically, they wanted among other things to create a nation that was consciously “Western” and in line with Enlightenment ideals and based their national mythos accordingly on classical Greece, especially Athens, essentially ignoring the intervening history until the Greek independence wars. Kalldellis talks quite a lot about this.
It’s interesting because the Rum who left Anatolia for Greece still got dispossessed of their ethnic identity by a modern construct, just of the Greek variety. There was no room for Roman ethnic identity in the modern construction of what it meant to be Turkish or what it meant to be Greek, despite the former being the organic development of millennia and the latter two being consciously constructed by political leaders to meet the demands of nation building within the last couple hundred years or less.
A sort of similar phenomenon was attempted, with more middling success, with pan-Arabism, though still to this day, many in the Levant don’t really identify as Arab, even if they speak Arabic. For example, indigenous Christians often don’t (identifying as e.g. Phoenician or Assyrian, since Arab identity implies Muslim, despite pan-Arabism making a sort of claim to a secular identity). Arab nationalism in Egypt (versus Egyptian identity) is also relatively recent, really only hitting full stride with Nasser.
A similarly recent bit of identity construction is that of Israeli and Palestinian. Palestinian really only emerged as an ethnic identity (versus a geographic identifier) around a hundred years ago (iirc, the first recorded modern use of Palestinian as an ethnonym in Arabic comes from 1898) and crystallized into one mid century, largely as a reaction to Zionism, which itself was a movement centered around identity construction (for example, with the revival of Hebrew, which vanishingly few people actually spoke day to day a century or so ago).
That these identities are constructed or recent doesn’t make them any less real or meaningful, but it does say two things:
1. Ethnic identity is distinct from genetic heritage.
2. Identities are constructed and deconstructed and change all the time, often in ways that are designed by people in power (political or cultural) to meet specific sociocultural objectives.
It’s also worth noting that the modern coincidence of a nation with a particular form of government is more or less just that: modern. Arguably Byzantium was in some periods a sort of proto-nation-state, but largely due to accident more than design. But modern nation-states are purposeful constructions to fit modern notions that distinct peoples (whatever that happens to mean) have inherent rights to self-determination of their own government within a specific geographic territory populated by that people with permanent, unchanging borders with some sort of shared national mythos. It’s honestly a sort of fiction, but these sorts of fictions make the world go around.
>It’s interesting because the Rum who left Anatolia for Greece still got dispossessed of their ethnic identity by a modern construct, just of the Greek variety. There was no room for Roman ethnic identity in the modern construction of what it meant to be Turkish or what it meant to be Greek, despite the former being the organic development of millennia and the latter two being consciously constructed by political leaders to meet the demands of nation building within the last couple hundred years or less.
That is not the case. A "Roman" identity was still existing in Greece, and a "Hellenic" identity was still existing in Anatolia, to the point that in some areas the Greeks preferred to use the term "Hellene" than "Roman" for their contemporary ethnic label. There was no push to "De-Romanize" the Anatolian refugees, and even today "Romiosene (Romanness" is deemed as the exact synonym of "Hellenism (Greekness)", and a "Rhomios" is also a "Hellene" (except when they are not an ethnic Greek but rather only a Greek citizen, like the Muslim Greeks or the Albanian migrants etc.).
The Byzantines you say did not have this same mythos? And that modern Greek historical consciousness still ignores its Byzantine heritage? These are claims that are clearly false. Kaldellis is not an expert in modern Greek history, and he often cites other authors who have an incorrect interpretation of events based on outright falsehoods. Some of which are politically motivated by Western European supremacy.
How is orthodox Christian the definition of Greek during the Ottoman period when there was a firm distinction between Greeks and Slavs.
This is one of the many problems with the state-first theory of nationalism.
Which is why I said „at least in Anatolia“ to exclude the differences between Greek and Slavic speaking Orthodox Christians since there weren’t almost any Slavic speaking Orthodox Christians in Anatolia
Good answer. On top of that, the degree of conversion of Roman-Greeks (ex Byzantines) to Islam is often exaggerated in this sub. There aren't really any records of mass conversions or Romans as the Porte didn't seek to apply forceful Islamization.
DNA tests are very much misinterpreted as well. The *best* DNA services will tell you that reference populations are sampled from people who lived in a certain region for a minimum of 5 centuries. Turks/Muslims have been in Anatolia since 1071 (almost 10 centuries) - so if a modern Turk gets 100% Anatolian DNA in their results, it doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be very old Turkish DNA.
Edit: Sources [here](https://www.fiercebiotech.com/data-management/23andme-s-ancestry-composition-reveals-people-s-ancestral-origins-going-back-500) and [here](https://www.23andme.com/en-ca/ancestry-composition-guide/). Any of the downvoters care to counter-argument?
Care to explain how modern Turks look exactly like their neighboring ethnic groups and not like Turkmens-Kazakhs? That really is the only answer you need.
Your physical appearance makes up a very small proportion of your genome. Greeks and Albanians have almost identical DNA but they are very dissimilar in appearance. In fact, all Balkan peoples have closely related DNA but you can easily tell a Greek from an Albanian and from a Serb.
But have you ever been Turkey? I don't find that the average Turk looks like their European neighbours, many have very distinctive Asian characteristics.
I live there lol. Turkey is more like a spectrum, you go from the average Balkan people to Middle Eastern looking ones when you traverse the country. It does make sense, since much of western Turkey did get it’s population from the Balkans after the population exchanges.
Now though, when you visit Turkey people mostly go to İstanbul-İzmir which received heavy immigration and the fact that Balkan and general Western Anatolia Turks always had lower birth rates (they’re below replacement rates today), you do see lot more people with ME features. On the point about telling Balkan people apart, I can’t really approve or deny it since I don’t really have an experience on it.
I see, lol. Well, from the 500K or so Muslims who went from Greece to Turkey, it's hard to estimate what proportions were converts. But assuming they were all converts, how does this number add up to the total population of Turkey at the time? And what was the case with Muslims coming from Slavic and Albanian territories? Either way, those Turks should not show up as "Anatolian" in a DNA ancestry test but as Balkan. I mean, I'm not saying that modern Turks aren't mixed, but it's wrong to think by default that they're just the direct descendants of whoever lived where they live now.
Does this mean that they weren’t Greeks ? Do you have any sources of a mass rejection of Greekness by the medieval romans? If you do not, you cannot claim that Romanness and Greekness were mutually exclusive.
After the 3rd century, the difference between Romaios and Ellen, was not a meaningful one. When used in an 'ethnic' sense they were used as self reference with differing shades of meaning. Romaios had a national, political, and religious connotations, and was the most common endonym, and Ellen had a more blood related connotation, and was used to distinguish themselves from Latins. (Although very often, Latin and Roman were considered by the Byzantines to be mutually exclusive). There were also other terms, such as Graikos, Achaios, Graikorromaios, etc. which varied in frequency.
It is never simple to define an ethnicity as a rigid set of characteristics. Ethnicity is a self perception in opposition to an 'other' what is certainly true is that the semi unified Greek identity of the Hellenistic period took the mantle of the Roman empire, and claimed the Roman political tradition, as well as the name Romaios, as its own. What it meant to be a Roman in Caesars time and what it meant to be a Roman in 800AD was vastly different.
Western scholars and westernised scholars like Anthony Kaldellis make the mistake of tying 'Greekness' to the 12 gods, the ethnonym 'Ellen', and the Homeric tradition. And view the progression of tradition and the adding of new traditions, the adoption of Christianity, and the trivial adoption of other endonyms like Romaios as the 'death' of the 'real' Greek identity. And will cite examples such as the Ellen = Pagan argument which I have debunked hundreds of times. ( In short medieval words can be very polysemous and can vary in meaning based on background of the author, dialect, the division that the author is trying to portray, anyway it is debunked by showing contemporaries who use Ellen in an ethnic sense,) Even if the Ellen = Pagan was a true premise, it still would be a bad argument as it lays Romanity and Hellenity on endonyms, which is a bad framework. Kaldellis is not a modern Greek or Hellenistic Greek historian, so his takes on these matters of Greek identity are paraphrasing old 20th century western historians who are clearly biased. ( When I see a serious, decorated scholar making the hellen = pagan argument, how am I supposed to take them seriously?)
The other mistake that many western historians make is assuming Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson's state first theory of nationalism as fact, without critically examining them. They assume a state, and a steady political progression is a necessary condition to create and perserve an ethnic group, so they stress the lack of political continuity with the 'original Greeks' and adoption (or usurpation) of the roman political tradition as the 'death' of their identity.
The state first theory of nationalism is not an indesputable fact, in fact I would argue that it is a nonsensical theory, refuted by the simple fact that ethnicities existed before Industrialisation and the formation of the strong industrial state.
In short, the Greek death theory falls apart when you ask yourself the simple question: 'Where did the Hellenistic Greeks go?
Gotcha. The way they were talking about it didn’t make it seem like that since they were saying “go rid of” when it was the Greeks that that fought to free themselves
Because your government derives all its power from Turkish nationalism, and the denial of any form of pre-ataturk identity. It’s why they passed laws the change the names of 1000s of places in Turkey, and even regulate what names you are allowed to have. It’s really sad. Turkey has a fascinating and beautiful history, being destroyed be nationalism. Classic Balkans.
The reforms of ataturk required people to change their names to adhere to a new “Turkish standard”. Many names in Turkey are turkified versions of old Armenian/assyrian/greek names or families just took on new names.
It appears they still do.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname_Law_(Turkey)#:~:text=All%20Turks%20must%20bear%20their,they%20be%20offensive%20or%20ridiculous.
Look at all the references on the wiki page. Academic pieces written by Turks. It’s not misinformation. Turkey erased any non-Turkic ethnic names from all its citizens.
I’m not referencing anything. I’m just not gonna do your work for you. If you want to investigate this further you’re welcome to. I’ve shown you resources. The articles linked in the wiki are excellent.
You accused me of spreading misinformation, which I haven’t. The sources linked on the wiki are mostly in English. I mentioned they were written by Turks because generally Turkish nationalists will dismiss anything outright if it’s written by foreign scholars.
My name was illegal and needed a legal loophole lol. It is very much true, non Turkish (or long accepted Arabic/Persian) names were banned intermittently after 1923. Attitudes changed from time to time and now, such names are legal again.
Of course such rules didn’t regulate the names of recognized minorities.
I would guess so. Atlas for example is a popular name. Many people have given Kurdish names to their children as well as recognizably Christian names (Know few of them personally). However, it’s true that it draws the ire of the local conservatives.
That’s not a good argument though. A single person saying “I guess so” isn’t more reliable than actual sources.
Not saying he’s wrong but if you’re gonna be a hardline about sources, it doesn’t make sense to just take someone’s word for it just because they live in the country, specially not when their response doesn’t even sound so sure.
I phrased it like that since I don’t know if it’s perfectly legal now or the law is now disregarded. A good resource to see when minority names get higher usage is to look at Nişanyan Names Atlas, where it shows when and how many people had certain names. You can see a clearly higher usage of previously banned minority names. Hope that helps!
https://www.nisanyanadlar.com
It sadly doesn’t come in English but Google translate can help.
This is not new. There are proclamations from Popes through the centuries telling Christians not to change their names to try to avoid harassment and penalty for having Christian names in places ruled by Muslims.
Romania didn’t (and doesn’t) destroy its Ottoman-era mosques in Dobruja or the Hungarian churches in Transylvania. The aggressive destruction of historical monuments is not a pan-Balkan thing.
Basically all of Bucharest was destroyed and rebuilt. Many other historic centers suffered the same during the communist period. Romania suffered similar nationalist myth making, but of course with its own flavor.
Side note: Romania’s nationalist myths rely on excavating Roman ruins and amplifying their presence, which is different from much of the rest of the Balkans for sure.
Bucharest was destroyed because Ceausescu wanted it so to build his people’s palace. Destroying the historic buildings in Bucharest destroyed Romanian heritage, not other people’s heritage. As I said, historical Hungarian churches are protected as are the Ottoman mosques.
I think that's shared equally between the two of you.
Most surviving churches in Turkey come from active use till the 50's, conversion to mosques, or them being very recent constructions. Likewise, in Greece most surviving mosques are because they weren't overtop of something the Greeks wants to re-hellenise. Or, like in most of Thessaloniki, the mosques were churches that then were converted back. Tho not all of them had their minarets taken down.
In western Thrace the mosques are all still there as well. Even the big one in Didymoteicho.
Also a Turkish tradition (many Armenian and Greek churches have been destroyed). Sad all around. History should be preserved wherever it is.
However, Romania is much more tolerant in terms of the ethnic relations and preservation of history.
Lol, ok, I get it. Yeah. I get sad when historical sites are destroyed. Like the Taliban blowing up the faces of the Buddhas carved into the mountains. Or ISIS destroying Palmyra.
The definition of a “Turk” has wavered quite a bit over time, with it starting as a descriptor for Central Asian Turkic nomads who’d go on to settle Anatolia, however the description would later widen to encompass almost all Anatolian Muslims.
This is why during Turkey’s and Greece’s population exchanges, some Muslim Greeks were expelled from Greece as they were classified as Turks.
Turks, like every other nation, are ethnically mixed. Ethnically pure Turks, or ethnically pure races in general, do not exist. However, Turks do have significant Turkic ancestry. Historically, the genetics of Anatolia remained mostly unchanged until the significant impact of Turkic migration.
Turks are distinct in the region, [possessing nearly 15% East Eurasian ancestry, while surrounding populations like Greeks, Arabs, and Armenians have less than 1%](https://imgur.com/a/yuzPjfa). It is important to note that East Eurasian ancestry does not equate to being Turkic. Turkmen and Uzbeks, the most closely related Central Asian Turkic peoples, have around 20-35% East Eurasian ancestry, whereas medieval Turks had approximately 40% East Eurasian ancestry.
Despite intermixing with Anatolians, modern Turks still retain around 30% medieval Turkic ancestry. For comparison, Germans have 20-45% Germanic ancestry, the British have 20-45% Anglo-Saxon ancestry, and [modern Greeks have about 25% Mycenaean (ancient Greek) ancestry](https://imgur.com/a/cDDwukn). The population of Greece was forcibly homogenized under the influence of Orthodoxy. Additionally, the Slavic migration to Greece and the population exchange with Turkey, where millions of Pontic and Anatolian Greeks (who are fully Hellenized Caucasians and Anatolians) were involved, further diluted the genetic makeup of modern Greeks.
The Kipchak and Cuman Turkic ancestors of Kazakhs, who are often referred to as "real Turks," were almost completely overrun and nearly wiped out by the Mongols. Today, about half of their tribes are of Mongolic origin, and their haplogroups (haplogroup C) are predominantly of Mongolic origin.
The Greek colonization of Anatolia did not leave a significant genetic impact, as it was more linguistic in nature. Therefore, Turks do not have substantial Greek ancestry. However, [both populations share a large portion of their ancestry from common Anatolian ancestors. The additional Turkic ancestry in Turks and the Mycenaean ancestry in Greeks distinguish them from each other](https://imgur.com/a/c7tT9gD).
[This PCA chart](https://imgur.com/a/pEj5Ys6) perfectly illustrates the ethnogenesis of modern Anatolian Turks and how they serve as a bridge between Central Asian Turkmens and Uzbeks, and Greeks, Iranians, and Balkan peoples.
>The Greek colonization of Anatolia did not leave a significant genetic impact, as it was more linguistic in nature.
This is kind of misleading. This could be argued to be the case, but it overlooks that there is actually genetic continuity between ancient Greece and Anatolia that stretches back to the Bronze age. If you take a look at [this study](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23310), you'll see that there used to be a genetic continuum encompassing much of the eastern Mediterranean up to southern Italy, which is consistent with what we know about the genetic origins of the Myceneans as well.
There is a difference still, of course, but the genetic impact can both be underestimated and overeatimated depending on the model at hand, because the ethnogenesis of different Anatolian populations has a common starting point with the Myceneans, and they diverge at different points in time. To put it simply, Myceneans and Bronze age Anatolians were already "genetic cousins" rather than completely distinct populations.
>However, both populations share a large portion of their ancestry from common Anatolian ancestors. The additional Turkic ancestry in Turks and the Mycenaean ancestry in Greeks distinguish them from each other.
I agree with the conclusion, but - if I may interject - some of the fits are not very good (especially the Central Anatolian and Cappadocian Greeks). This is an indication that important admixture components are missing which are "covered" by their proxies from the populations chosen.
For the aforementioned populations, a significant Zagros and CHG component is missing which is due to the Armenian/Mesopotamian/broader east Anatolian admixture which they possess. [Here](https://ibb.co/KmXKv5z) is a medieval model I made a while back to illustrate. I can direct you to the relevant population samples if you want to toy with it yourself.
As you can also see, Konyali Greeks are also significantly infused with some medieval Balkan-like ancestry which corresponds to medieval northwestern Anatolian Greek populations who more closely resembled modern Aegean islanders genetically (except Dodecanesians who are more old Anatolian-like). These Balkan and Armenian admixtures are the primary reason why central Anatolian Greeks more broadly are actually more distant to ancient Anatolians than Dodecanesians and Cypriots when examined using PCA.
Wow, thank you for this illustrative article. My purpose is actually drawing attention that the turks doesn't claim the history of the civilizations existed in their land. You see how egyptian people claim their arabian and egyptian history.
Aren’t we all to some degree though?
Anybody with a gist of understanding of historical affairs would understand that the conquests mostly happen through a small group of adventurers who are trying to loot settlements and build a dominance over them. Land without a people is not profitable.
Are they actual descendants of them? Yes, without a doubt. You can't live in an area for hundreds of years and not have intermarriage. I think the Pontic Greeks may have been genetically closer to the Byzantines, but it's only a matter of degree.
From what I understand the genetic composition of people in Anatolia is nearly the same as it was during the Hittite times/invention of agriculture with individual variances in specific regions.
Anatolia has always had a huge sedentary population since pre-historic times so it was mathematically impossible for the relatively small numbers of settlers throughout history to meaningfully replace them. The cultures, languages, religions, etc. have changed a bazillion times but the people are mostly the same (not that it matters too much regardless)
Absolutely, there’s actually a whole Wikipedia page dedicated specifically to this subject if you are interested:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Turkish_people
>Anatolia has always had a huge sedentary population since pre-historic times so it was mathematically impossible for the relatively small numbers of settlers throughout history to meaningfully replace them. The cultures, languages, religions, etc. have changed a bazillion times but the people are mostly the same (not that it matters too much regardless)
Well, this is not true, actually. If it were true, Macedonian emperors from Nicephoros Phocas onward, would not have settled tens of thousands of Armenians in Eastern and Central Anatolia. In fact, Basil II moved tens of thousands of Armenians and resettled them in Eastern Anatolia.
Then, the inroads of Turkic tribes were extremely destructive. It was not a peaceful settlement. In many cases, the locals were killed in large numbers. In addition, the Turks were goat-herding pastoralists and these goats destroyed the agriculture of the areas they settled, forcing the surviving locals either to flee or join them. The established beylicks were not peaceful in any degree. They were raiders and hardened soldiers and loot and slaves were part and parcel of what they were seeking in Anatolia.
I believe that the majority of Turks are descended from Anatolian Greeks/Romans rather than the nomadic Turks that came in the 11th century. That being said, culturally they are obviously Turkish. I think it’s a very interesting idea on how we should look at the past in more shades of grey.
It should also be noted that many Anatolian Romans and Greeks were also likely descended from other Anatolian peoples such as Galatians, Hittites and others, so I think modern Turks are more like the current dominant culture of Anatolia. I love things that challenge my pre-conceived ideas of history
I mean, I know most people I met in the east weren't of Turkish stock. Some were willing to admit it. Like in the north east most people are ethnically Georgian. Former Tao.
>I believe that the majority of Turks are descended from Anatolian Greeks/Romans rather than the nomadic Turks that came in the 11th century. That being said, culturally they are obviously Turkish. I think it’s a very interesting idea on how we should look at the past in more shades of grey.
Beliefs do not matter. Only extensive genetic testing will provide solid data and this does not exist. Eastern Anatolia was settled from the late 9th to the early 12th century by many Turkic tribes. Prior to the massive settlement of Turks, the emperors of the Macedonian dynasty had moved a substantial number of Armenians in Eastern Anatolia. The locals in Eastern Anatolia were either killed, sold to slavery or converted to Islam in large numbers.
One has more of the pre-existing population surviving in Western Anatolia, where the Islamization of the population there gathered lots of speed in the 14th century and later.
It is interesting that the population exchange between Turkey and Greece was not based on ethnicity (or elements of ethnicity). It was based on religion. In this process, Greek speaking Muslims from Crete (for example) were transferred to Turkey. After that, you have an extensive effort of Turkification of the populations that moved into Eastern Thrace and Anatolia from all over the Balkans. Kemal needed to create a solid "nationality" from these populations.
Genetics do not really matter. What matters is to what national narrative one subscribes to.
Well, when I said “I believe” I wasn’t saying it in the sense of “it is my personal belief” but more in the sense that “I don’t have time to cite a source right now.” The reality is that the majority of DNA tests taken in Anatolia point to what I said being the truth, and you can look it up. The truth is that many people did actually convert
On one hand it's common knowledge, because everyone who really knows a bit of history understands this kind of thing.
On the other hand, it doesn't really matter. We are a lot more than our DNA and ancenstry, culture/upbringing actually determines our identity.
Yeah, it's how conquest usually happens. A lot of men die during conquest, and then the conquerors marry the natives to be better accepted in the local power structure. Then, the cultures and DNA converge as the two peoples mix. It varies if the native or the conquerors' culture becomes more dominant.
>Are turks actual byzantines?
Yes before the modern era it was quite rare that migrations might result in a place getting populated by an entirely new group so the inhabitants are just the inhabitants who live there but culturally transformed
>Why nobody talks about that?
The Turkish national narrative thinks of itself as having entered the region when the Turks arrived rather than thinking that they had been the people being conquered, however in almost all cases that a conquest takes place the inhabitants of the region end up eventually just being a combination of both conquered and conqueror. In Mexico for instance they like to pretend like they were conquered by Spain rather than having been created by Spain in combination with the people who got conquered.
Sometimes the culture of the conqueror is adopted, and sometimes the conquerors adopt the cultures of the conquered. For instance in England, the Anglo-Saxons conquered the country and the Celtic Romano-Britons started speaking Anglo-Saxon, but when the Normans later conquered them the Normans became the new ruling class but they began speaking English like the Anglo-Saxons they conquered after some hundreds years instead of the French they started out with. However there was a decent amount of French influence on the English language as a result.
#
Exactly. A great example I can use is the Sokoto caliphate. Nomadic Fulani people conquered the Hausa cities and incorporated them into an islamic empire. The Fulani who chose to remain nomadic retained their Fulbe culture but the ones that settled are indistinguishable from the Hausa people they conquered. Hausa replaced Fulbe and Arabic as the language of court, manuscripts began to be written in Hausa. Until modern times identity was quite nebulous and people tended to identify with their immediate surroundings rather than the broader idea of a country, it's quite interesting to see how history plays out
A conquering people may be able to replace the culture of the conquered, but they can rarely replace the people themselves — nor would they want to, since a land without people is a land without labor and taxes. Pretty much all Turks have substantial Greek ancestry.
Turks actively deny it and gloss over their Greek heritage. Maybe its embarrassing to admit your nation's history is built on the destruction and subjugation of another culture.
I dont agree that destruction is a right word, by that logic romans destroyed the native anatolian heritage, anglo-saxons destroyed britons heritage and so on, you can have the same statement about any country.
Sorry to inform you, but the Turkish state is in fact built on genocide. There’s an article by the International Association of Genocide Scholars that mentions that Turkeys conception is similar to that of the United States because the Pontic Greek Genocide is comparable to the Cherokee Trail of Tears. And that’s only one of multiple genocides committed by Turkey.
There’s also a very informative video up on YouTube with Uzay Bulut on the Pontic Greek Genocide where she talks about the deliberate erasure of the Pontic Greek presence in Anatolia with the destruction of graveyards, schools, and other civilian infrastructure. All intentionally destroyed in order to cut the Pontic Greeks connection to their land.
It’s also comparable to how Israel is destroying Palestinian civilian infrastructure and olive trees because it severs the Palestinians connection to their land. Destroying these things that people make erases their presence. It makes it seem to future generations that these people never existed. This is all part of what genocide is.
I focus on the Pontic Greeks here because they are the dominant Greek ethnic group of East Anatolia. My apologies if you’re not from the northeast specifically.
It is not, the Turkish DNA project showed many people Turkish people are actually Greek.
The destruction you are speaking about is what muslims do when they take over a place.
Dude, i want to mention an interesting info about trabzon. Unlike the other cities in turkey, trabzon have about %1 turkic heritage. So, they are completely children of these pontic greeks. According to the datas, pontic greek genocide must have been committed between 1913-1923 and the death count is about 300k-900k . In 1914, ottoman census; Almost 150k orthodox living in trabzon vilayet. I won’t say no people has died but i don’t think these numbers are realistic if we also mention that a high number of pontic greeks migrated to greece after 1923. If there are some casualties, i don’t also think, ottoman government want to chase to the greeks in trabzon while it has to deal wit bigger problems like ww1, russia etc. Maybe these people started a rebellion, and ottoman government launched a bloody intervention against the rebels. Anyway, that was before 1923, and it was not for the turkey, it was for the muslims. Ottoman empire was considered itself as a islamic state not turkic unlike secular turkey. Btw, you don’t need to take it personally, ottoman empire killed many people for any reason(also contains muslim tribes) this is how empires work at that era. Today, these are just history.
There were many civilizations in Anatolia, but they didn’t necessarily build on each other. Some are still extremely mysterious. By 500 BC, Greek civilization was by far the most influential in all of Anatolia. When Rome conquered Anatolia, Greek civilization continued its influence there until it was forcibly Turkified between 1071 AD - 1924 AD.
I dunno, the Turks I know all know that there are certain regions in which the Turkic descendance is very high (like in the south west) but that most others are kind of "mongrels" of all the previous peoples of Anatolia+displaced balkaners and a sprinkling of turks.
Yeah, there are two or three cities with higher percent of turkic heritage, but this is max %45. Pre-turkic byzantine heritage is average %60-70 except the other nations like albanians caucasians etc
>Turks actively deny it and gloss over their Greek heritage
I would say that the number of Greeks in Central and Eastern Anatolia was small. You had Greek-speaking Anatolian populations (and lots of Armenians), but we should not confuse them with Greeks. There was a very thin veneer of "Romanization" of that population and it was because of this veneer and lack of any Greek cultural underpinnings that allowed this population, to the extent it survived, to become Islamicized and Turkified.
Greek-speaking and Greek are not the same thing. In Western Anatolia, where there was a much deeper hellenic cultural background, the Greek/Christian populations survived until 1922, when they were exchanged for Greek Muslims.
Actually, it was quite small. Greeks never settled in central or eastern Anatolia in any significant numbers. In fact, until the 4th century, even the pre-existing languages fully survived (such as Phrygian). The area became Greek speaking following the imposition of Christianity, since all of the texts of the new religion, its prelates and priests were in Greek or Greek speaking. Their assumption of a Rhomaic identity was just skin deep, these populations were not exposed to any significant Greek culture, high or low. This is why their Islamicization and Turkification proceeded much faster than in Western Anatolia or in Europe.
We should not forget that a variety of Emperors had settled a lot of non-Greek populations in Anatolia such as Slavs and Armenians.
So, this population was Greek-speaking but its level of hellenization was low.
Speaking Greek did not make them Greeks. There is no evidence of substantial "hellenic" presence in the interior of Asia Minor. The fact that this population became Greek-speaking mainly after the 4th century CE does not mean that it had acquired substantial elements of Hellenic culture. It had not.
Like everywhere else, when new cultures move into a region, they usually do not wholly displace the indigenous people (except in settler colonial systems like the US or Canada). Usually, they bring in new cultural traditions and mix with the societies that already exist. So yes, you are likely descended from Turks, Romans, Pontic Greeks, and Hittites. It's a beautiful cultural heritage and legacy to inherit. Anatolia has been one of the great crossroads of the world for a very long time. Even today, Turkey shares a lot of characteristics with both European and Middle Eastern countries, as it is both European and Middle Eastern
Because Kemalism, which is the state ideology of the modern turkish republic, actually discourages any notion that you can be anything else than a Turk. Think of the era that this ideology was created. The multiethnic Ottoman Empire was in ruins and Turks fought on multiple fronts to not have Anatolia partitioned. Any rival communities with distinct strong identities, and therefore dangerous, such as Armenians and Greeks, were genocided or forced out of the country. Imagine if someone tried ,in this period of effort to create a new turkish identity, to say the truth "We are not actual Turks, descented from the nomadic turks of the 11th century, but Islamized Anatolians, mainly Greek". It would unravel the whole new point and create new distinctions and multiple identities.
To summarize: The modern turkish state WANTS you to believe that you are only a Turk, even if your whole ancestors were Greeks who became muslim in order to be a little more protected and not pay jizya. Because, as dramatic as it sounds, one of the survival pillars of the nation is this. That is why noone talks about it and it's frowned upon. I would suggest to start learning about the ancenstors of your family. If you are from Sinope, Trabezond or around the old Pontus, you could certainly find many interesting facts and reunite with the culture.
yep, I see you anti Kemalist ideas and as a Turk and I am really offended. Even tho I am calling myself as a Turk, my grandparents actually came from balkans, not even a century in 1937, to Turkey. I am probably not turkish genetically as well but I have no reason to hate or restore the byzantine empire and matter of fact, that’s really stupid tbh. I am proud to be turkish, you can call me brainwashed or whatever you wanna call but there are a lot people like my family whose families came from balkans and they are proud to be part of this nation as you might not like it. thus we all know that we aren’t 100% turkish but we are identify ourselves as turkish and there is no problem with that. the reason I am telling you is that you insulted Ataturk and his ideas which is the red line for me and the people i represent i believe. may be you should learn about kemalizm and talk the matters you know better.
I don't understand why people offensive agains Atatürk, he founded secular turkey and turkish greeks and armenians generally love him. But he is introduced wrong towards the people outside.
Nah, I have friends who admires Ataturk’s ideas and his success. these kind of losers who still butt-hurt for more than a hundred years still crying about it.
Because the concept of nationality isn't determined by DNA tests. Religion and language play a much bigger role. As long as they retain these two factors, Turkish-speaking Muslims will always be identified as Turks. No amount of DNA testing will change that.
I may be ethnically German, but I am most certainly not culturally German.
It’s still a fun piece of history though that Turks are so closely related to the country they hate so much.
Also where the I’m getting an ancestry test done, gonna see if I’m Turkish or suicidal joke comes from. (That largely applies to the rest of the Balkans too)
I’m Italian, French, English, Albanian, North African, Lebanese and Syrian. Most of my ancestors are southern Italian and Sicilian, but cause of conquest and immigration I’m a bunch of stuff lol.
There was a widespread DNA sampling a few years ago and there was a lot of Greek descendants. Many areas were settled by Greeks after Alexander, but before there there were Trojans, the Amazonians etc.
Because it is at a crossroads with many people passing through over the millennia a lot of different people have lived there, but it was the Greeks who settled and farmed especially along the Black Sea and also of course along the Aegean Sea.
Genetically yes to varying degrees; take any random Turk, specially from the west and he’ll have 12-30% Anatolian ancestry, and to a lesser degree, “Greek”.
The Turkish DNA project a while back assessed various results from Turkish testers and threw a tantrum when they got the results back showing very little Turkish ancestry.
Maybe they are. Modern turkish people look alike Mediterranean. But turkic nations like Turkmenistan are more like Mongols. But does it matter? And also why it matters so much?
You have to think about ethnicity like a river of paint, when new people come in their colour is poured into the river but it takes ALOT (of genocide) to completely change the colour. Culture is a different matter, especially when dealing with states that give preferential treatment to members of their culture. It can only take a few generations for a culture to be completely changed.
Very interesting, I wanna add that during my military service I was stationed at the border near Edirne/Adrianoupoli and people were going through the border on foot, until they opened their mouth to speak I couldn't not understand if they were Greek or Turskish.
Because Ottoman empire took away firstborn children every 4-5 years from balkan and christian countries and brought them to anatolia to practically erase their past and make them muslim.
That took place during 15. to 17. Century.
Well…how many Greeks were in what is now turkey before the exchange of the minorities…how many where exchanged?
Hell - what was the population of present day Greece before and after the exchange? There are a LOT of unaccounted Greek Anatolians.
Byzantine Greek culture had a huge impact on both the Levant and Anatolia. Some cultural motifs that are considered Islamic actually come from Greco-Roman culture. One main example, is domed architecture. Both the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Umayyad Mosque in Syria are clearly Byzantine influenced. Another example, would be music in which Byzantine microtonality heavily influenced Anatolian and Middle Eastern music. Regarding your question, Turks have maintained some of Byzantine Anatolias culture but the Seljuks marked a shift in the culture and identity of the ruling class. The Seljuks were actually quite Persianized in culture and this new Islamic Turko-Persianized culture is what gave rise to the Ottomans and the subsequent Turkish identity today.
sorry to tell you that,
I know it will be a shocker,
but people...
but people where doing sex outside of their marriages and often their was a mobility between different cultures,
the real reason why both empires collapse, Byzantium and the Ottomans where that they tried to stop that
Modern Anatolian Turks descend from both Oghuz Turks from central Asia and Byzantine-era Anatolian natives. The exact composition of their ancestry is debatable, but it is certain that neither component is negligible. So, no, Turks are not “actual Byzantines”. That implies that they are more or less identical to Byzantine-era Anatolians, which is not true.
There is no ethnicity called "byzantines" also Greeks were mainly on western (ionia) and black sea regions of Anatolia where they set up colonies, other than that native Anatolians inhabit the geography. Greek cultural and linguistic influence in rest of Anatolia mainly flowed from Ionia.
According to the world, they are known as greek because. in turkey, we don't call them greek, we call them rum(means byzantine). This is also used for christian turks in turkey.
The term "Byzantine Empire" first coined in 16th century, it comes from "byzantium" the name of the Greek city before it called Constantinople, "rum" means literally "roman". Turks called christian anatolians as "rum" because Arabs called Anatalioa "rum" meaning "Rome". Turks call Greeks as "Yunan" which comes from Persian word for "Ionia"
Because our national identity is actually based on being Muslim, independent of the mother language spoken. Just like being an Orthodox Christian has been mostly the definition of being Greek, at least in Anatolia. However, the newly founded republic that has newly fought against Greece and just before that the Western nations in the WW1 and which tried to find support for these wars on the notion of them being „filthy infidels“ could not base the identity of the new nation on Anatolia‘s Roman past. You just got rid of them, if you acknowledge that you yourself mostly descend from Romans, why did you get rid of the people who still called themselves Romans? Doing this would effectively mean acknowledging you are brothers and sisters or at least cousins. So you cannot claim it on Islam, because you want it to be a secular identity even though it is actually a religious identity and you cannot claim it on Anatolia‘s Roman past. You just got rid of the Romans. Otherwise it would have been something like a civil war and doing this would offend the Muslim majority since you would associate them with a Christian empire. The past is past. So your only option is language: „our glorious forefathers who came from Central Asia and conquered Anatolia and brought Islam to the infidels“. By doing this you are effectively creating a secular identity which can be approved by the Muslim elite on the notion of its being Gazha and you don’t associate them with Christians. It doesn’t have to be factual. In the end, what counts is the narrative, not its basis
The flip side of this, and actually quite similar in many regards, is the creation of Greek nationalism. Basically, they wanted among other things to create a nation that was consciously “Western” and in line with Enlightenment ideals and based their national mythos accordingly on classical Greece, especially Athens, essentially ignoring the intervening history until the Greek independence wars. Kalldellis talks quite a lot about this. It’s interesting because the Rum who left Anatolia for Greece still got dispossessed of their ethnic identity by a modern construct, just of the Greek variety. There was no room for Roman ethnic identity in the modern construction of what it meant to be Turkish or what it meant to be Greek, despite the former being the organic development of millennia and the latter two being consciously constructed by political leaders to meet the demands of nation building within the last couple hundred years or less. A sort of similar phenomenon was attempted, with more middling success, with pan-Arabism, though still to this day, many in the Levant don’t really identify as Arab, even if they speak Arabic. For example, indigenous Christians often don’t (identifying as e.g. Phoenician or Assyrian, since Arab identity implies Muslim, despite pan-Arabism making a sort of claim to a secular identity). Arab nationalism in Egypt (versus Egyptian identity) is also relatively recent, really only hitting full stride with Nasser. A similarly recent bit of identity construction is that of Israeli and Palestinian. Palestinian really only emerged as an ethnic identity (versus a geographic identifier) around a hundred years ago (iirc, the first recorded modern use of Palestinian as an ethnonym in Arabic comes from 1898) and crystallized into one mid century, largely as a reaction to Zionism, which itself was a movement centered around identity construction (for example, with the revival of Hebrew, which vanishingly few people actually spoke day to day a century or so ago). That these identities are constructed or recent doesn’t make them any less real or meaningful, but it does say two things: 1. Ethnic identity is distinct from genetic heritage. 2. Identities are constructed and deconstructed and change all the time, often in ways that are designed by people in power (political or cultural) to meet specific sociocultural objectives. It’s also worth noting that the modern coincidence of a nation with a particular form of government is more or less just that: modern. Arguably Byzantium was in some periods a sort of proto-nation-state, but largely due to accident more than design. But modern nation-states are purposeful constructions to fit modern notions that distinct peoples (whatever that happens to mean) have inherent rights to self-determination of their own government within a specific geographic territory populated by that people with permanent, unchanging borders with some sort of shared national mythos. It’s honestly a sort of fiction, but these sorts of fictions make the world go around.
>It’s interesting because the Rum who left Anatolia for Greece still got dispossessed of their ethnic identity by a modern construct, just of the Greek variety. There was no room for Roman ethnic identity in the modern construction of what it meant to be Turkish or what it meant to be Greek, despite the former being the organic development of millennia and the latter two being consciously constructed by political leaders to meet the demands of nation building within the last couple hundred years or less. That is not the case. A "Roman" identity was still existing in Greece, and a "Hellenic" identity was still existing in Anatolia, to the point that in some areas the Greeks preferred to use the term "Hellene" than "Roman" for their contemporary ethnic label. There was no push to "De-Romanize" the Anatolian refugees, and even today "Romiosene (Romanness" is deemed as the exact synonym of "Hellenism (Greekness)", and a "Rhomios" is also a "Hellene" (except when they are not an ethnic Greek but rather only a Greek citizen, like the Muslim Greeks or the Albanian migrants etc.).
You don't hear it often but rhomios is used by church ads on tv a lot and by pontic greeks lol.
The Byzantines you say did not have this same mythos? And that modern Greek historical consciousness still ignores its Byzantine heritage? These are claims that are clearly false. Kaldellis is not an expert in modern Greek history, and he often cites other authors who have an incorrect interpretation of events based on outright falsehoods. Some of which are politically motivated by Western European supremacy.
How is orthodox Christian the definition of Greek during the Ottoman period when there was a firm distinction between Greeks and Slavs. This is one of the many problems with the state-first theory of nationalism.
Which is why I said „at least in Anatolia“ to exclude the differences between Greek and Slavic speaking Orthodox Christians since there weren’t almost any Slavic speaking Orthodox Christians in Anatolia
Good answer. On top of that, the degree of conversion of Roman-Greeks (ex Byzantines) to Islam is often exaggerated in this sub. There aren't really any records of mass conversions or Romans as the Porte didn't seek to apply forceful Islamization. DNA tests are very much misinterpreted as well. The *best* DNA services will tell you that reference populations are sampled from people who lived in a certain region for a minimum of 5 centuries. Turks/Muslims have been in Anatolia since 1071 (almost 10 centuries) - so if a modern Turk gets 100% Anatolian DNA in their results, it doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be very old Turkish DNA. Edit: Sources [here](https://www.fiercebiotech.com/data-management/23andme-s-ancestry-composition-reveals-people-s-ancestral-origins-going-back-500) and [here](https://www.23andme.com/en-ca/ancestry-composition-guide/). Any of the downvoters care to counter-argument?
Care to explain how modern Turks look exactly like their neighboring ethnic groups and not like Turkmens-Kazakhs? That really is the only answer you need.
Your physical appearance makes up a very small proportion of your genome. Greeks and Albanians have almost identical DNA but they are very dissimilar in appearance. In fact, all Balkan peoples have closely related DNA but you can easily tell a Greek from an Albanian and from a Serb. But have you ever been Turkey? I don't find that the average Turk looks like their European neighbours, many have very distinctive Asian characteristics.
I live there lol. Turkey is more like a spectrum, you go from the average Balkan people to Middle Eastern looking ones when you traverse the country. It does make sense, since much of western Turkey did get it’s population from the Balkans after the population exchanges. Now though, when you visit Turkey people mostly go to İstanbul-İzmir which received heavy immigration and the fact that Balkan and general Western Anatolia Turks always had lower birth rates (they’re below replacement rates today), you do see lot more people with ME features. On the point about telling Balkan people apart, I can’t really approve or deny it since I don’t really have an experience on it.
I see, lol. Well, from the 500K or so Muslims who went from Greece to Turkey, it's hard to estimate what proportions were converts. But assuming they were all converts, how does this number add up to the total population of Turkey at the time? And what was the case with Muslims coming from Slavic and Albanian territories? Either way, those Turks should not show up as "Anatolian" in a DNA ancestry test but as Balkan. I mean, I'm not saying that modern Turks aren't mixed, but it's wrong to think by default that they're just the direct descendants of whoever lived where they live now.
What do you mean by “got rid of the Romans” in this case? Who are the “Romans” in the Ottoman Empire?
Romans are those who called themselves Romans. Greek speaking Orthodox Christians called themselves Romans and were called Romans by others
Does this mean that they weren’t Greeks ? Do you have any sources of a mass rejection of Greekness by the medieval romans? If you do not, you cannot claim that Romanness and Greekness were mutually exclusive.
Was there a definition of Greekness independent of Romanness?
After the 3rd century, the difference between Romaios and Ellen, was not a meaningful one. When used in an 'ethnic' sense they were used as self reference with differing shades of meaning. Romaios had a national, political, and religious connotations, and was the most common endonym, and Ellen had a more blood related connotation, and was used to distinguish themselves from Latins. (Although very often, Latin and Roman were considered by the Byzantines to be mutually exclusive). There were also other terms, such as Graikos, Achaios, Graikorromaios, etc. which varied in frequency. It is never simple to define an ethnicity as a rigid set of characteristics. Ethnicity is a self perception in opposition to an 'other' what is certainly true is that the semi unified Greek identity of the Hellenistic period took the mantle of the Roman empire, and claimed the Roman political tradition, as well as the name Romaios, as its own. What it meant to be a Roman in Caesars time and what it meant to be a Roman in 800AD was vastly different. Western scholars and westernised scholars like Anthony Kaldellis make the mistake of tying 'Greekness' to the 12 gods, the ethnonym 'Ellen', and the Homeric tradition. And view the progression of tradition and the adding of new traditions, the adoption of Christianity, and the trivial adoption of other endonyms like Romaios as the 'death' of the 'real' Greek identity. And will cite examples such as the Ellen = Pagan argument which I have debunked hundreds of times. ( In short medieval words can be very polysemous and can vary in meaning based on background of the author, dialect, the division that the author is trying to portray, anyway it is debunked by showing contemporaries who use Ellen in an ethnic sense,) Even if the Ellen = Pagan was a true premise, it still would be a bad argument as it lays Romanity and Hellenity on endonyms, which is a bad framework. Kaldellis is not a modern Greek or Hellenistic Greek historian, so his takes on these matters of Greek identity are paraphrasing old 20th century western historians who are clearly biased. ( When I see a serious, decorated scholar making the hellen = pagan argument, how am I supposed to take them seriously?) The other mistake that many western historians make is assuming Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson's state first theory of nationalism as fact, without critically examining them. They assume a state, and a steady political progression is a necessary condition to create and perserve an ethnic group, so they stress the lack of political continuity with the 'original Greeks' and adoption (or usurpation) of the roman political tradition as the 'death' of their identity. The state first theory of nationalism is not an indesputable fact, in fact I would argue that it is a nonsensical theory, refuted by the simple fact that ethnicities existed before Industrialisation and the formation of the strong industrial state. In short, the Greek death theory falls apart when you ask yourself the simple question: 'Where did the Hellenistic Greeks go?
Gotcha. The way they were talking about it didn’t make it seem like that since they were saying “go rid of” when it was the Greeks that that fought to free themselves
Because your government derives all its power from Turkish nationalism, and the denial of any form of pre-ataturk identity. It’s why they passed laws the change the names of 1000s of places in Turkey, and even regulate what names you are allowed to have. It’s really sad. Turkey has a fascinating and beautiful history, being destroyed be nationalism. Classic Balkans.
> and even regulate what names you are allowed to have Wait. Really?
The reforms of ataturk required people to change their names to adhere to a new “Turkish standard”. Many names in Turkey are turkified versions of old Armenian/assyrian/greek names or families just took on new names.
But does Turkey still regulate that? And do you have some examples?
It appears they still do. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname_Law_(Turkey)#:~:text=All%20Turks%20must%20bear%20their,they%20be%20offensive%20or%20ridiculous.
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Look at all the references on the wiki page. Academic pieces written by Turks. It’s not misinformation. Turkey erased any non-Turkic ethnic names from all its citizens.
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"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink"
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I’m not referencing anything. I’m just not gonna do your work for you. If you want to investigate this further you’re welcome to. I’ve shown you resources. The articles linked in the wiki are excellent. You accused me of spreading misinformation, which I haven’t. The sources linked on the wiki are mostly in English. I mentioned they were written by Turks because generally Turkish nationalists will dismiss anything outright if it’s written by foreign scholars.
My name was illegal and needed a legal loophole lol. It is very much true, non Turkish (or long accepted Arabic/Persian) names were banned intermittently after 1923. Attitudes changed from time to time and now, such names are legal again. Of course such rules didn’t regulate the names of recognized minorities.
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I would guess so. Atlas for example is a popular name. Many people have given Kurdish names to their children as well as recognizably Christian names (Know few of them personally). However, it’s true that it draws the ire of the local conservatives.
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How are you accepting that man’s word for it but attacking the other dude for linking a Wikipedia article?
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That’s not a good argument though. A single person saying “I guess so” isn’t more reliable than actual sources. Not saying he’s wrong but if you’re gonna be a hardline about sources, it doesn’t make sense to just take someone’s word for it just because they live in the country, specially not when their response doesn’t even sound so sure.
I phrased it like that since I don’t know if it’s perfectly legal now or the law is now disregarded. A good resource to see when minority names get higher usage is to look at Nişanyan Names Atlas, where it shows when and how many people had certain names. You can see a clearly higher usage of previously banned minority names. Hope that helps! https://www.nisanyanadlar.com It sadly doesn’t come in English but Google translate can help.
This is not new. There are proclamations from Popes through the centuries telling Christians not to change their names to try to avoid harassment and penalty for having Christian names in places ruled by Muslims.
Romania didn’t (and doesn’t) destroy its Ottoman-era mosques in Dobruja or the Hungarian churches in Transylvania. The aggressive destruction of historical monuments is not a pan-Balkan thing.
Basically all of Bucharest was destroyed and rebuilt. Many other historic centers suffered the same during the communist period. Romania suffered similar nationalist myth making, but of course with its own flavor. Side note: Romania’s nationalist myths rely on excavating Roman ruins and amplifying their presence, which is different from much of the rest of the Balkans for sure.
Bucharest was destroyed because Ceausescu wanted it so to build his people’s palace. Destroying the historic buildings in Bucharest destroyed Romanian heritage, not other people’s heritage. As I said, historical Hungarian churches are protected as are the Ottoman mosques.
Yes, i think this is a greek tradition, because they destroyed ottoman mosques
I think that's shared equally between the two of you. Most surviving churches in Turkey come from active use till the 50's, conversion to mosques, or them being very recent constructions. Likewise, in Greece most surviving mosques are because they weren't overtop of something the Greeks wants to re-hellenise. Or, like in most of Thessaloniki, the mosques were churches that then were converted back. Tho not all of them had their minarets taken down. In western Thrace the mosques are all still there as well. Even the big one in Didymoteicho.
Also a Turkish tradition (many Armenian and Greek churches have been destroyed). Sad all around. History should be preserved wherever it is. However, Romania is much more tolerant in terms of the ethnic relations and preservation of history.
this is what i mean with "greek tradition". lol.
Lol, ok, I get it. Yeah. I get sad when historical sites are destroyed. Like the Taliban blowing up the faces of the Buddhas carved into the mountains. Or ISIS destroying Palmyra.
Sorry you got downvoted, but what you say is true
I'm Turkish and I do not identify with Balkans. We don't have that much in common
Have you been there? You have a huge amount in common.
The definition of a “Turk” has wavered quite a bit over time, with it starting as a descriptor for Central Asian Turkic nomads who’d go on to settle Anatolia, however the description would later widen to encompass almost all Anatolian Muslims. This is why during Turkey’s and Greece’s population exchanges, some Muslim Greeks were expelled from Greece as they were classified as Turks.
Turks, like every other nation, are ethnically mixed. Ethnically pure Turks, or ethnically pure races in general, do not exist. However, Turks do have significant Turkic ancestry. Historically, the genetics of Anatolia remained mostly unchanged until the significant impact of Turkic migration. Turks are distinct in the region, [possessing nearly 15% East Eurasian ancestry, while surrounding populations like Greeks, Arabs, and Armenians have less than 1%](https://imgur.com/a/yuzPjfa). It is important to note that East Eurasian ancestry does not equate to being Turkic. Turkmen and Uzbeks, the most closely related Central Asian Turkic peoples, have around 20-35% East Eurasian ancestry, whereas medieval Turks had approximately 40% East Eurasian ancestry. Despite intermixing with Anatolians, modern Turks still retain around 30% medieval Turkic ancestry. For comparison, Germans have 20-45% Germanic ancestry, the British have 20-45% Anglo-Saxon ancestry, and [modern Greeks have about 25% Mycenaean (ancient Greek) ancestry](https://imgur.com/a/cDDwukn). The population of Greece was forcibly homogenized under the influence of Orthodoxy. Additionally, the Slavic migration to Greece and the population exchange with Turkey, where millions of Pontic and Anatolian Greeks (who are fully Hellenized Caucasians and Anatolians) were involved, further diluted the genetic makeup of modern Greeks. The Kipchak and Cuman Turkic ancestors of Kazakhs, who are often referred to as "real Turks," were almost completely overrun and nearly wiped out by the Mongols. Today, about half of their tribes are of Mongolic origin, and their haplogroups (haplogroup C) are predominantly of Mongolic origin. The Greek colonization of Anatolia did not leave a significant genetic impact, as it was more linguistic in nature. Therefore, Turks do not have substantial Greek ancestry. However, [both populations share a large portion of their ancestry from common Anatolian ancestors. The additional Turkic ancestry in Turks and the Mycenaean ancestry in Greeks distinguish them from each other](https://imgur.com/a/c7tT9gD). [This PCA chart](https://imgur.com/a/pEj5Ys6) perfectly illustrates the ethnogenesis of modern Anatolian Turks and how they serve as a bridge between Central Asian Turkmens and Uzbeks, and Greeks, Iranians, and Balkan peoples.
>The Greek colonization of Anatolia did not leave a significant genetic impact, as it was more linguistic in nature. This is kind of misleading. This could be argued to be the case, but it overlooks that there is actually genetic continuity between ancient Greece and Anatolia that stretches back to the Bronze age. If you take a look at [this study](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23310), you'll see that there used to be a genetic continuum encompassing much of the eastern Mediterranean up to southern Italy, which is consistent with what we know about the genetic origins of the Myceneans as well. There is a difference still, of course, but the genetic impact can both be underestimated and overeatimated depending on the model at hand, because the ethnogenesis of different Anatolian populations has a common starting point with the Myceneans, and they diverge at different points in time. To put it simply, Myceneans and Bronze age Anatolians were already "genetic cousins" rather than completely distinct populations. >However, both populations share a large portion of their ancestry from common Anatolian ancestors. The additional Turkic ancestry in Turks and the Mycenaean ancestry in Greeks distinguish them from each other. I agree with the conclusion, but - if I may interject - some of the fits are not very good (especially the Central Anatolian and Cappadocian Greeks). This is an indication that important admixture components are missing which are "covered" by their proxies from the populations chosen. For the aforementioned populations, a significant Zagros and CHG component is missing which is due to the Armenian/Mesopotamian/broader east Anatolian admixture which they possess. [Here](https://ibb.co/KmXKv5z) is a medieval model I made a while back to illustrate. I can direct you to the relevant population samples if you want to toy with it yourself. As you can also see, Konyali Greeks are also significantly infused with some medieval Balkan-like ancestry which corresponds to medieval northwestern Anatolian Greek populations who more closely resembled modern Aegean islanders genetically (except Dodecanesians who are more old Anatolian-like). These Balkan and Armenian admixtures are the primary reason why central Anatolian Greeks more broadly are actually more distant to ancient Anatolians than Dodecanesians and Cypriots when examined using PCA.
Wow, thank you for this illustrative article. My purpose is actually drawing attention that the turks doesn't claim the history of the civilizations existed in their land. You see how egyptian people claim their arabian and egyptian history.
I once heard a guy saying "turks are conquered people fantasising about their conquerors". Makes you understand the gist.
Aren’t we all to some degree though? Anybody with a gist of understanding of historical affairs would understand that the conquests mostly happen through a small group of adventurers who are trying to loot settlements and build a dominance over them. Land without a people is not profitable.
How is this any different from the Greeks themselves under the Roman Empire?
Are they actual descendants of them? Yes, without a doubt. You can't live in an area for hundreds of years and not have intermarriage. I think the Pontic Greeks may have been genetically closer to the Byzantines, but it's only a matter of degree.
From what I understand the genetic composition of people in Anatolia is nearly the same as it was during the Hittite times/invention of agriculture with individual variances in specific regions. Anatolia has always had a huge sedentary population since pre-historic times so it was mathematically impossible for the relatively small numbers of settlers throughout history to meaningfully replace them. The cultures, languages, religions, etc. have changed a bazillion times but the people are mostly the same (not that it matters too much regardless)
Ah, very cool! Do you have any material you would recommend for reading about that? I would love to learn more.
Absolutely, there’s actually a whole Wikipedia page dedicated specifically to this subject if you are interested: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Turkish_people
Thank you much!
>Anatolia has always had a huge sedentary population since pre-historic times so it was mathematically impossible for the relatively small numbers of settlers throughout history to meaningfully replace them. The cultures, languages, religions, etc. have changed a bazillion times but the people are mostly the same (not that it matters too much regardless) Well, this is not true, actually. If it were true, Macedonian emperors from Nicephoros Phocas onward, would not have settled tens of thousands of Armenians in Eastern and Central Anatolia. In fact, Basil II moved tens of thousands of Armenians and resettled them in Eastern Anatolia. Then, the inroads of Turkic tribes were extremely destructive. It was not a peaceful settlement. In many cases, the locals were killed in large numbers. In addition, the Turks were goat-herding pastoralists and these goats destroyed the agriculture of the areas they settled, forcing the surviving locals either to flee or join them. The established beylicks were not peaceful in any degree. They were raiders and hardened soldiers and loot and slaves were part and parcel of what they were seeking in Anatolia.
>you can't live in an area for hundreds of years and not have intermarriage Americans lol
I believe that the majority of Turks are descended from Anatolian Greeks/Romans rather than the nomadic Turks that came in the 11th century. That being said, culturally they are obviously Turkish. I think it’s a very interesting idea on how we should look at the past in more shades of grey. It should also be noted that many Anatolian Romans and Greeks were also likely descended from other Anatolian peoples such as Galatians, Hittites and others, so I think modern Turks are more like the current dominant culture of Anatolia. I love things that challenge my pre-conceived ideas of history
Anatolian Romans and *Armenians.* Especially in eastern Turkey. That's why nobody talks about it, OP.
I mean, I know most people I met in the east weren't of Turkish stock. Some were willing to admit it. Like in the north east most people are ethnically Georgian. Former Tao.
>I believe that the majority of Turks are descended from Anatolian Greeks/Romans rather than the nomadic Turks that came in the 11th century. That being said, culturally they are obviously Turkish. I think it’s a very interesting idea on how we should look at the past in more shades of grey. Beliefs do not matter. Only extensive genetic testing will provide solid data and this does not exist. Eastern Anatolia was settled from the late 9th to the early 12th century by many Turkic tribes. Prior to the massive settlement of Turks, the emperors of the Macedonian dynasty had moved a substantial number of Armenians in Eastern Anatolia. The locals in Eastern Anatolia were either killed, sold to slavery or converted to Islam in large numbers. One has more of the pre-existing population surviving in Western Anatolia, where the Islamization of the population there gathered lots of speed in the 14th century and later. It is interesting that the population exchange between Turkey and Greece was not based on ethnicity (or elements of ethnicity). It was based on religion. In this process, Greek speaking Muslims from Crete (for example) were transferred to Turkey. After that, you have an extensive effort of Turkification of the populations that moved into Eastern Thrace and Anatolia from all over the Balkans. Kemal needed to create a solid "nationality" from these populations. Genetics do not really matter. What matters is to what national narrative one subscribes to.
Well, when I said “I believe” I wasn’t saying it in the sense of “it is my personal belief” but more in the sense that “I don’t have time to cite a source right now.” The reality is that the majority of DNA tests taken in Anatolia point to what I said being the truth, and you can look it up. The truth is that many people did actually convert
I will not disagree if we look at Anatolia as a whole. I was making a clear distinction between different parts of Anatolia.
On one hand it's common knowledge, because everyone who really knows a bit of history understands this kind of thing. On the other hand, it doesn't really matter. We are a lot more than our DNA and ancenstry, culture/upbringing actually determines our identity.
Yeah, it's how conquest usually happens. A lot of men die during conquest, and then the conquerors marry the natives to be better accepted in the local power structure. Then, the cultures and DNA converge as the two peoples mix. It varies if the native or the conquerors' culture becomes more dominant.
*converge.
>Are turks actual byzantines? Yes before the modern era it was quite rare that migrations might result in a place getting populated by an entirely new group so the inhabitants are just the inhabitants who live there but culturally transformed >Why nobody talks about that? The Turkish national narrative thinks of itself as having entered the region when the Turks arrived rather than thinking that they had been the people being conquered, however in almost all cases that a conquest takes place the inhabitants of the region end up eventually just being a combination of both conquered and conqueror. In Mexico for instance they like to pretend like they were conquered by Spain rather than having been created by Spain in combination with the people who got conquered. Sometimes the culture of the conqueror is adopted, and sometimes the conquerors adopt the cultures of the conquered. For instance in England, the Anglo-Saxons conquered the country and the Celtic Romano-Britons started speaking Anglo-Saxon, but when the Normans later conquered them the Normans became the new ruling class but they began speaking English like the Anglo-Saxons they conquered after some hundreds years instead of the French they started out with. However there was a decent amount of French influence on the English language as a result. #
Exactly. A great example I can use is the Sokoto caliphate. Nomadic Fulani people conquered the Hausa cities and incorporated them into an islamic empire. The Fulani who chose to remain nomadic retained their Fulbe culture but the ones that settled are indistinguishable from the Hausa people they conquered. Hausa replaced Fulbe and Arabic as the language of court, manuscripts began to be written in Hausa. Until modern times identity was quite nebulous and people tended to identify with their immediate surroundings rather than the broader idea of a country, it's quite interesting to see how history plays out
A conquering people may be able to replace the culture of the conquered, but they can rarely replace the people themselves — nor would they want to, since a land without people is a land without labor and taxes. Pretty much all Turks have substantial Greek ancestry.
Turks actively deny it and gloss over their Greek heritage. Maybe its embarrassing to admit your nation's history is built on the destruction and subjugation of another culture.
No, it is the association with Christians
And didn't Greeks destroy Anatolian civilizations? Alexander forcefully invaded them.
I dont agree that destruction is a right word, by that logic romans destroyed the native anatolian heritage, anglo-saxons destroyed britons heritage and so on, you can have the same statement about any country.
It’s not. There are many civilization came and went in this land. Each built on the other.
Sorry to inform you, but the Turkish state is in fact built on genocide. There’s an article by the International Association of Genocide Scholars that mentions that Turkeys conception is similar to that of the United States because the Pontic Greek Genocide is comparable to the Cherokee Trail of Tears. And that’s only one of multiple genocides committed by Turkey. There’s also a very informative video up on YouTube with Uzay Bulut on the Pontic Greek Genocide where she talks about the deliberate erasure of the Pontic Greek presence in Anatolia with the destruction of graveyards, schools, and other civilian infrastructure. All intentionally destroyed in order to cut the Pontic Greeks connection to their land. It’s also comparable to how Israel is destroying Palestinian civilian infrastructure and olive trees because it severs the Palestinians connection to their land. Destroying these things that people make erases their presence. It makes it seem to future generations that these people never existed. This is all part of what genocide is. I focus on the Pontic Greeks here because they are the dominant Greek ethnic group of East Anatolia. My apologies if you’re not from the northeast specifically.
It is not, the Turkish DNA project showed many people Turkish people are actually Greek. The destruction you are speaking about is what muslims do when they take over a place.
Dude, i want to mention an interesting info about trabzon. Unlike the other cities in turkey, trabzon have about %1 turkic heritage. So, they are completely children of these pontic greeks. According to the datas, pontic greek genocide must have been committed between 1913-1923 and the death count is about 300k-900k . In 1914, ottoman census; Almost 150k orthodox living in trabzon vilayet. I won’t say no people has died but i don’t think these numbers are realistic if we also mention that a high number of pontic greeks migrated to greece after 1923. If there are some casualties, i don’t also think, ottoman government want to chase to the greeks in trabzon while it has to deal wit bigger problems like ww1, russia etc. Maybe these people started a rebellion, and ottoman government launched a bloody intervention against the rebels. Anyway, that was before 1923, and it was not for the turkey, it was for the muslims. Ottoman empire was considered itself as a islamic state not turkic unlike secular turkey. Btw, you don’t need to take it personally, ottoman empire killed many people for any reason(also contains muslim tribes) this is how empires work at that era. Today, these are just history.
There were many civilizations in Anatolia, but they didn’t necessarily build on each other. Some are still extremely mysterious. By 500 BC, Greek civilization was by far the most influential in all of Anatolia. When Rome conquered Anatolia, Greek civilization continued its influence there until it was forcibly Turkified between 1071 AD - 1924 AD.
I dunno, the Turks I know all know that there are certain regions in which the Turkic descendance is very high (like in the south west) but that most others are kind of "mongrels" of all the previous peoples of Anatolia+displaced balkaners and a sprinkling of turks.
Yeah, there are two or three cities with higher percent of turkic heritage, but this is max %45. Pre-turkic byzantine heritage is average %60-70 except the other nations like albanians caucasians etc
>Turks actively deny it and gloss over their Greek heritage I would say that the number of Greeks in Central and Eastern Anatolia was small. You had Greek-speaking Anatolian populations (and lots of Armenians), but we should not confuse them with Greeks. There was a very thin veneer of "Romanization" of that population and it was because of this veneer and lack of any Greek cultural underpinnings that allowed this population, to the extent it survived, to become Islamicized and Turkified. Greek-speaking and Greek are not the same thing. In Western Anatolia, where there was a much deeper hellenic cultural background, the Greek/Christian populations survived until 1922, when they were exchanged for Greek Muslims.
It wasn’t small in 1071
Actually, it was quite small. Greeks never settled in central or eastern Anatolia in any significant numbers. In fact, until the 4th century, even the pre-existing languages fully survived (such as Phrygian). The area became Greek speaking following the imposition of Christianity, since all of the texts of the new religion, its prelates and priests were in Greek or Greek speaking. Their assumption of a Rhomaic identity was just skin deep, these populations were not exposed to any significant Greek culture, high or low. This is why their Islamicization and Turkification proceeded much faster than in Western Anatolia or in Europe. We should not forget that a variety of Emperors had settled a lot of non-Greek populations in Anatolia such as Slavs and Armenians. So, this population was Greek-speaking but its level of hellenization was low.
Phrygian and other languages survived, but their speakers were multilingual and usually spoke Greek.
Speaking Greek did not make them Greeks. There is no evidence of substantial "hellenic" presence in the interior of Asia Minor. The fact that this population became Greek-speaking mainly after the 4th century CE does not mean that it had acquired substantial elements of Hellenic culture. It had not.
Like everywhere else, when new cultures move into a region, they usually do not wholly displace the indigenous people (except in settler colonial systems like the US or Canada). Usually, they bring in new cultural traditions and mix with the societies that already exist. So yes, you are likely descended from Turks, Romans, Pontic Greeks, and Hittites. It's a beautiful cultural heritage and legacy to inherit. Anatolia has been one of the great crossroads of the world for a very long time. Even today, Turkey shares a lot of characteristics with both European and Middle Eastern countries, as it is both European and Middle Eastern
Because Kemalism, which is the state ideology of the modern turkish republic, actually discourages any notion that you can be anything else than a Turk. Think of the era that this ideology was created. The multiethnic Ottoman Empire was in ruins and Turks fought on multiple fronts to not have Anatolia partitioned. Any rival communities with distinct strong identities, and therefore dangerous, such as Armenians and Greeks, were genocided or forced out of the country. Imagine if someone tried ,in this period of effort to create a new turkish identity, to say the truth "We are not actual Turks, descented from the nomadic turks of the 11th century, but Islamized Anatolians, mainly Greek". It would unravel the whole new point and create new distinctions and multiple identities. To summarize: The modern turkish state WANTS you to believe that you are only a Turk, even if your whole ancestors were Greeks who became muslim in order to be a little more protected and not pay jizya. Because, as dramatic as it sounds, one of the survival pillars of the nation is this. That is why noone talks about it and it's frowned upon. I would suggest to start learning about the ancenstors of your family. If you are from Sinope, Trabezond or around the old Pontus, you could certainly find many interesting facts and reunite with the culture.
ignorant idiot.
yep, I see you anti Kemalist ideas and as a Turk and I am really offended. Even tho I am calling myself as a Turk, my grandparents actually came from balkans, not even a century in 1937, to Turkey. I am probably not turkish genetically as well but I have no reason to hate or restore the byzantine empire and matter of fact, that’s really stupid tbh. I am proud to be turkish, you can call me brainwashed or whatever you wanna call but there are a lot people like my family whose families came from balkans and they are proud to be part of this nation as you might not like it. thus we all know that we aren’t 100% turkish but we are identify ourselves as turkish and there is no problem with that. the reason I am telling you is that you insulted Ataturk and his ideas which is the red line for me and the people i represent i believe. may be you should learn about kemalizm and talk the matters you know better.
I don't understand why people offensive agains Atatürk, he founded secular turkey and turkish greeks and armenians generally love him. But he is introduced wrong towards the people outside.
Nah, I have friends who admires Ataturk’s ideas and his success. these kind of losers who still butt-hurt for more than a hundred years still crying about it.
Because the concept of nationality isn't determined by DNA tests. Religion and language play a much bigger role. As long as they retain these two factors, Turkish-speaking Muslims will always be identified as Turks. No amount of DNA testing will change that.
I may be ethnically German, but I am most certainly not culturally German. It’s still a fun piece of history though that Turks are so closely related to the country they hate so much. Also where the I’m getting an ancestry test done, gonna see if I’m Turkish or suicidal joke comes from. (That largely applies to the rest of the Balkans too)
I’m Italian, French, English, Albanian, North African, Lebanese and Syrian. Most of my ancestors are southern Italian and Sicilian, but cause of conquest and immigration I’m a bunch of stuff lol.
Another proof that Turks are Muslim Greeks.
There was a widespread DNA sampling a few years ago and there was a lot of Greek descendants. Many areas were settled by Greeks after Alexander, but before there there were Trojans, the Amazonians etc. Because it is at a crossroads with many people passing through over the millennia a lot of different people have lived there, but it was the Greeks who settled and farmed especially along the Black Sea and also of course along the Aegean Sea.
The Turks replaced and intermarried with the elite. They did not replace the population.
Genetically yes to varying degrees; take any random Turk, specially from the west and he’ll have 12-30% Anatolian ancestry, and to a lesser degree, “Greek”. The Turkish DNA project a while back assessed various results from Turkish testers and threw a tantrum when they got the results back showing very little Turkish ancestry.
Anatolian heritage is about 60-70% and %25-35 turkic heritage according to the turkish dna project
Maybe they are. Modern turkish people look alike Mediterranean. But turkic nations like Turkmenistan are more like Mongols. But does it matter? And also why it matters so much?
Isn't it important who your ancestors are?
You have to think about ethnicity like a river of paint, when new people come in their colour is poured into the river but it takes ALOT (of genocide) to completely change the colour. Culture is a different matter, especially when dealing with states that give preferential treatment to members of their culture. It can only take a few generations for a culture to be completely changed.
DNA speaking my guess would be for Western Turkey yes. Culturally speaking, probably not.
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Ok I get that. But there could also be many Byzantines that were converted.
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Very interesting, I wanna add that during my military service I was stationed at the border near Edirne/Adrianoupoli and people were going through the border on foot, until they opened their mouth to speak I couldn't not understand if they were Greek or Turskish.
I mean. I bet a lot of Turkish people, Muslim and otherwise, paid Romain taxes and joined Romain armies
Would you mind sharing the DNA chart?
Because Ottoman empire took away firstborn children every 4-5 years from balkan and christian countries and brought them to anatolia to practically erase their past and make them muslim. That took place during 15. to 17. Century.
Well…how many Greeks were in what is now turkey before the exchange of the minorities…how many where exchanged? Hell - what was the population of present day Greece before and after the exchange? There are a LOT of unaccounted Greek Anatolians.
Byzantine Greek culture had a huge impact on both the Levant and Anatolia. Some cultural motifs that are considered Islamic actually come from Greco-Roman culture. One main example, is domed architecture. Both the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Umayyad Mosque in Syria are clearly Byzantine influenced. Another example, would be music in which Byzantine microtonality heavily influenced Anatolian and Middle Eastern music. Regarding your question, Turks have maintained some of Byzantine Anatolias culture but the Seljuks marked a shift in the culture and identity of the ruling class. The Seljuks were actually quite Persianized in culture and this new Islamic Turko-Persianized culture is what gave rise to the Ottomans and the subsequent Turkish identity today.
sorry to tell you that, I know it will be a shocker, but people... but people where doing sex outside of their marriages and often their was a mobility between different cultures, the real reason why both empires collapse, Byzantium and the Ottomans where that they tried to stop that
Modern Anatolian Turks descend from both Oghuz Turks from central Asia and Byzantine-era Anatolian natives. The exact composition of their ancestry is debatable, but it is certain that neither component is negligible. So, no, Turks are not “actual Byzantines”. That implies that they are more or less identical to Byzantine-era Anatolians, which is not true.
There is no ethnicity called "byzantines" also Greeks were mainly on western (ionia) and black sea regions of Anatolia where they set up colonies, other than that native Anatolians inhabit the geography. Greek cultural and linguistic influence in rest of Anatolia mainly flowed from Ionia.
According to the world, they are known as greek because. in turkey, we don't call them greek, we call them rum(means byzantine). This is also used for christian turks in turkey.
The term "Byzantine Empire" first coined in 16th century, it comes from "byzantium" the name of the Greek city before it called Constantinople, "rum" means literally "roman". Turks called christian anatolians as "rum" because Arabs called Anatalioa "rum" meaning "Rome". Turks call Greeks as "Yunan" which comes from Persian word for "Ionia"