Farinal

Hi! Do we have the numbers of the migrating wave of Turks that entered into Anatolia and the Greek, Armenian and other "native Anatolian if you will" people's numbers living there at the time?

beorna

it is difficult to give the figures for such migrations, especially when there was not a single one, but the migration lasted for a few centuries and several waves. Usually we should not expect many invaders, very certain a number less than 10% of the population, perhaps even 1-5%. That means, that we have to expect a figure above 100,000 up to a few hundreds of thousands. The appearence of recent Turks shows very clearly, that the most recent Turks are descendents of the pre-Turkic periods.

It is as well difficult to estimate the population of Anatolia, but they were probably a few millions, perhaps 2-3 millions.

ancalimon

Which wave of migrations are we talking about here?

The Muslim Turks? the Christian Turks? the Judaist Turks? the Tengrist Turks? The polytheist Turks? Which one?

Turkicness is not a genetic thing. Most of the people in the steppe were bilingual and they did not separate themselves according to how they looked like.

Most probably the word Turk has some kind of meaning like "connected to and living from the earth". It's like not calling your cat by its name but call it by saying "hey animal!"

So Turks in the past probably called foreigners as Turks as well. It's like a lower identity. It's perfectly normal for the new coming Turks to call other simple people as Turks as well.

messigod

Today Turks of Anatolia are culturally Anatolians+Iranians
Genetically speaking studies have shown that Turks of Turkey are a kind of "Turkic speaking Armenians" please see below
Are Turks acculturated Armenians? | Gene Expression | Discover Magazine

The Turkic homeland is not in Central Asia wich is culturally Iranian and also genetcially Iranic (except about from 20 to 50%Turk input wich is highest amongst Kazaks and lowest amongst Turkmens) but the northeastern corner of Asia around the lena river , because of Eskimo-proto Turkic as well as Yenisseian-proto Turkic lexical borrowings

As for the OT question , accoding to firsthand historical documents(given in the book I posted the link below)the Turks that invaded Anatolia were around 30 thousand for a population of Anatolia estimated at sthg between 8 and 12 mlns
kitapyurdu: kitap - Akdeniz'den Hindistan'a Türk-

Those 30 thousand Turks diluted heavily into the 8-12 mlns Anatolians and adopted cultural features of the local Anatolian Armenian and Greek Christians who on the other hand in order to escape looting, raids, women kidnapping, heavy taxation and killings (being considered dhimmi Kafir by the newcomer mongoloid Arab religioned Turks) they did adopt islam and thus beginning a language shift to Turkic

Please see below:

messigod

Here below some useful discussions
Dodecad Ancestry Project: Yunusbayev et al. (2011) data assessed with Dodecad v3
Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog: First look at Turkish and Kyrgyz data from Hodo
Dodecad Ancestry Project: 'eurasia7' calculator
Dodecad Ancestry Project: 600 members
Dodecad Ancestry Project: fastIBD analysis of Italy/Balkans/Anatolia

Farinal

Well I'm talking about the waves started after 1071 and I don't think there are "waves" of Christian or Judaist Turks entering Anatolia in any time in the history...

ancalimon

That is wrong. The Ogurs and much after them the Pechenegs were in Anatolia.

Actually the reason that Eastern Romans lost the war in 1071 was because most of the Byzantine army deserted to join the Turks side.

1071 is the last wave of Turks entering Anatolia. Actually the Turks that migrated to Anatolia after 1071 is really small. Not even making the %4 of the total population of Anatolia. Also keep in mind that Anatolia was not really crowded back then.

And about the people who were living in Anatolia before 1071. There were definitely Turks back to the times of people Ancient-Greeks (who are not related at all with Greeks of today by the way). Most probably speaking Turkic as kitchen-language like those in Ukraine or Russia.

Most important of all, genetics is totally useless when determining who was Turkic in the past.

The first ones "which we know of" were probably the Proto-Tigris people who gave hundreds of words to Sumerian language.

....

The answer to my friend claiming Central Asia as Iranian and Turks in Anatolia as Iranian...

lol No. Are you Kurdish or Armenian? Because your claims are usually made by those few Armenians and Kurds who are chauvinists. If you heard these from them, you should reposition yourself.

Ayazid

Some Turkic speakers did find their way into Anatolia before 1071 but that doesn't mean that they constituted a significant minority there. It was definitely a largely Greek/Armenian speaking land during that time.

Actually, the last "wave" of Turkic speakers into Anatolia would be Crimean Tatars during the 18th-20th centuries.

There is no evidence for this claim.

That's a bold statement. I am afraid that if are modern Anatolian Turks genetically and anthropologically closer to their non-Turkic neighbors than to Central Asians, the theory about their largely Central Asian origin pretty much goes out the window.

No. The word "Turk" appears for the first time in the 6th century AD. The Turkic identity of some earlier peoples (most notably Huns) is possible, but controversial. There is no evidence for the existence of Turkic languages in ancient Middle East.

There is nothing particularly more "chauvinist" about claims that ancient Anatolians were Iranians, than about those that they were Turks.

hazratemahmood

There is an earlier form of the word Turk in Chinese which is 'Tuchi'. But I generally agree with you, as the earliest dating the the Turkic identity goes back probably to 5th century AD, and it is important to know that not everybody who speaks Turkic is a 'Turk'. The speakers of languages such as Chuvash are not Turks, athough their languages are close, and ancient Bulgarians and possibly the Khalaj and the Sakha did not identify themselves are Turks, because they were not members of the political confederation of the Turks. Actually, Avars who spoke a Bulgar language were fiercely routed and defeated by Turks.

Here are these languages and possible dates of separation:




As Peter B. Golden states, Proto-Turks were hunter-gatherers who lived on the southern edges of the Altaic Taiga and later adopted the Pastoral-Nomadic way of life from neighboring tribes and engaged in trade of Iron Ore with the Chinese Empire.

Farinal

I'm going with Ayazid on this one.