Türkana Destanlar

B. BACKGROUND

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Different groups of Turks--or peoples closely related by culture, history, and/or language to peoples calling themselves "Turk"-- consider various lands in Anatolia, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Central & Eastern Europe, China, the Middle East, Siberia, the Volga region, and elsewhere as their traditional home, depending on which group they belong to. By the end of the twentieth century there are also significant emigre communities living permanently in Europe, North America, and elsewhere.

Peoples who call themselves "Turk"--or who are closely related by culture, history, and/or language to peoples calling themselves "Turk"--have a state tradition known from history going back to the middle of the first millenium C.E. The first state associated with the name "Turk" was established along the Orxon River in present-day Mongolia in 552 C.E. The earliest indigenous historical source concerning the Turks (the "Bugut" inscription in Soghdian from the second half of the 6th century) is connected with this state, which is known as the "First Turk Empire". Many consider the people of this state as the origin of all the Turks. The earliest indigenous sources written in the language of the Turks (the so-called "Orxon inscriptions" written in a runic alphabet, probably dating from the end 7th-early 8th centuries) are connected with its successor, the "Second Turk Empire". It is likely, however, that there were other groups speaking closely-related languages or dialects at the same time living in other parts of Eurasia. Accordingly, some people feel that the origin of the Turks is to be sought among even earlier peoples and states of Eurasia, though this subject remains controversial because of the difficulty in proving any single theory or hypothesis.

Over the next fourteen and a half centuries (from the mid-6th century to the end of the 20th century), the Turks and their linguistic kin participated in extensive migrations and numerous state formations too numerous to list in detail here. Suffice it to say that various groups of Turks participated in major states stretching west from Mongolia, the Tarim basin, and Central Asia as far west as the Balkans, the Black Sea, Anatolia, and the Middle East. Briefly, this included states such as the Khazars and Volga Bulgaria, the Uyghurs, the so-called "Qaraxanids" and the Xwarezmshahs, and the Pechenegs and the Kipchaks. Some groups participated in major world religions such as Manichaeism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, while others remained shamanistic. Some maintained a nomadic lifestyle, while others sedentarized and participated in urban high cultures and canonical and secular literary traditions. In short, there was already tremendous variety in their daily life, culture, and even language. Indeed, on the eve of the Mongol invasions we can already discern the broad brushstrokes of the same linguistic-cultural distribution that is valid in our own day.

The Mongol World Empire established by Chingis Xan in the early 13th century united the Eurasian steppe and its affiliated sedentary centers much in the same way as earlier steppe empires such as the Scythians, the Huns, and the Turk Empire. For the Turks of Eurasia it meant a new ruling dynasty and system of tribal organization, as well as the Turkification of many new ethnic groups. The states of the Mongol World Empire such as the so-called Golden Orda (Horde) and the Chaghatay Xanate, whose dominant languages and cultures were mostly Turkicized and Islamized by the 14th century, gave rise to numerous smaller states after the 14th century and the formation of new confederations such as the Uzbeks and the Kazaks. The xanates of Kazan, Astraxan, and Siberia, and only much later the Crimea and the Kazaks were conquered by an expanding Russian Empire. Only in the 19th century were Xiva, Buxara, and Qoqand and later the Turkmen subjugated during the period of colonial expansion by Russia (not to mention England and China). Although the one can discern the preponderant influence of the Turks in the population of the Mongol World Empire, the cultural differences between the Turks of the Ottoman Empire and the Turks of the Russian Empire became greater as a result of the Turko-Mongol cultural synthesis and later the influence of Russian culture.

One of the significant contributions of the 19th century was the strong influence upon various groups of Turks of the idea of the nation state. In the Middle Volga Shihabaddin Marjani/Mercani forcefully argued for a Kazan Tatar territorial nation, while in the Crimea the educational reformer and publicist Ismail Bey Gaspirali (Gasprinksiy) argued for a broader shared identity for all Turks (outside of the Russian Empire he also argued for a shared identity for all Muslims). Both ideas had a lasting influence, but in our own day we see that in the Russian Empire the rise of smaller territorial nations (such as movements among the Crimean Tatars) is really the legacy of Marjani/Mercani, who completely undermined Gaspirali's idea by the time of the latter's death. As is well known, following World War I and the establishment of the USSR, Turkey set upon its own course to invent a territorial nation whose identity was to be known as "Turk", based firmly upon the notion of a territorial nation in Anatolia. As though in a different universe, in the USSR following the national delimitation of 1924 (and subsequent changes in status) many groups of Turks (including the Uzbeks, Kazaks, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, and others) were given the status of territorial nation based upon names that were known in the past, but which now had new and distinctive meanings representing discontinuity with the past. The most profound result of these policies is that over the course of the 20th century the Turks of the Republic of Turkey have viewed themselves in isolation from the Turks in the USSR, while each of the over 100 new territorial nations in the USSR created new national histories in which each had a separate and distinct past going back to the most remote era based upon its new territorial delimitation.

posted by Altas @ 7:10 ÖS