Ottomans and Turks
After jumping from various Turkish forums and seeing 20-30 year old grown up people writing childish extremely subjective, xenophobic high school information on facebook groups....I decided to share this with people who actually make sense.
People who are objective with history in Turkey are really few and this makes me mad.
Now these people keep talking about how awesome Turkish Ottomans were to world, how powerfull and just they were........but is that really the case?
How much has the Anatolia has been Turkified? What is Turkish culture, what is Turkisness? Why aren't "Turks" of Anatolia similar the people of Central Asia?
People in Turkey would not consider these questions, but yet they'd go as far as saying Sumerians, Finns and NAtive Americans are actually Turkic. It is really weird actually when people try to take pride in their own nationality and declare the rest of the world from that nationality. Whats so special about that?
Anyways, Anatolia had taken migrations for a long time, long before Seljuks. In fact these early Turkics, having a nomad culture was quickly assimilated into settled Christian Byzantine culture.
After the battle of Manzikert, Seljuks, which had a more proper Turkishness mixed with Persian ancestry brought Turkic groups into Anatolia. Their products were much more Turkic compared to those of Ottomans. ( they were heavily influenced by Persian culture. In fact Turkic culture which entered Anatolia was already under very heavy influence of Persian and Caucasian cultures. Not to mention the Arabicization which entered with conversion to Islam)
These Turkic groups had varying cultures themselves. Those who arrived from Caucus were different from those who came over Iran...and those who went as far as western Anatolia were even more different. Long story short we can say Seljuks has a Turkic legacy along with the Persian culture. But how about Ottomans?
Ottomans started off as one of these Turkic nomadic groups. But the second known ruler, Orhan married a Byzantine Greek. And since that day the ruling Ottoman family have had many different nationalities involved in their family, from Italians to Caucasians. Poles to Romanians.
Ottomans never called themselves Turkish. In fact Turkisness was seen as an insult. A Turk was a nomad. Turkics throughout Anatolia had pretty much suffered during Ottoman rule. The only thing that could get into Ottomans about Turkics was their military side. Any leader that wanted power could easily use Turkics because of their "quick militarization"
*Turks under Ottoman empire were not allowed to do art, trade, artisanry or architecture works(check out the Ottoman architecture, it is much more European than central asian).
Also note that the richer people in Ottoman Empire were generally Jews, Greeks and Armenians. Turkic groups were generally doing stock raising or maybe farming.
Note: Muslim=/=Turkic, a lot of Turkic nomads were actually Alevi...Alevism is seen as heresy by many Sunnis. It includes some pagan practices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alevi
These groups are mainly in eastern Anatolia today, but you can find them in west as well since their ancestors were "forced to migrate" in order to break their power
*During the battle of Ankara, Timur, a real Turkic defeated and destroyed the Ottomans. Note that Timur considered Ottomans neither Turkic or Muslim. Ottomans were all "converts" according to him, as we can see from his letters to Beyazıd.
Timur brutally destroyed the empire and dissolved it. Also note that these real Turkic groups, during the battle defected to Timur's side. What the Ottomans had were only palace troops and allies from Europe.
*After reforming of the empire, Ottomans brutally attacked the Turkic groups in the empire. Especially Karamanids, which were seen as successors of Seljuks(note that Turkish language was the official one in Karamid Beylik whereas Ottomans used Ottomanish, a mixture of Persian-Arabic and Turkish) in central Anatolia. After their defeat, many families from this region were sent to far reaches of the empire to prevent them from rebelling. Mainly to Balkans.
*During the conquests to the east, Alevi Turkic groups were brutally massacared. If any of you have talked to Turkic people of Iran, majority of them do not see Turkey as Turkish. The Turkic culture in Iran is much better preserved compared to that of in Turkey.
Anyways, like I said, tens of thousands of Turkics were massacared in the east. This caused even more number of Turkics to return/flee to Iran.
*Turkics were generally placed to hardly reachedble spots of the empire. They had no public support and they were left to justice of tax collectors. Many were poor and none-educated when 20th century was reached.
They were forced to migrate all over the empire. Their systems were destroyed, their villages in poor conditions. And converted people from the rest of empire(Mainly Balkans) were brought to their places. Whereas the Empire tried to grasp more of Byzantine legacy.
* If you are looking for more depth, Jelali revolts in as excellent example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelali_revolts
Jelali revolts (Turkish: Celalî ayaklanmaları), were a series of rebellions in Anatolia against the authority of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries. The first revolt termed as such occurred in 1519, during sultan Selim I's reign, near Tokat under the leadership of Celâl, an Alevi preacher, and the name of the chief rebel was later used by Ottoman histories to define other uprisings of similar nature. Major Celali revolts occurred in 1526-28, 1595-1610, 1654-55, and 1658-59. Although the ethnic factor in these rebellions comply with the general Ottoman pattern of intermixtures, they can be safely described as having a largely Turkic base, especially in relation to the semi-nomadic or nomadic Turkmen clans that had taken part in the building of the empire with their Ottoman kinsmen, and saw themselves increasingly distanced from the power base, the central authority relying more on the devşirme system and corps. They were brought to an end during the reign of Murad IV. These rebellions are the largest and longest lasting in the history of the Ottoman Empire, and taken a heavy toll both for the Empire and its Turkish inhabitants.
Most Important fact:
Oh and well most important part. Ottoman empire was not based on a nationality. It was not a nation state. And it's imperial understanding was not similar to that of Rome. At least we can characterize Rome with Latins although in the late period the term became much more general. This was not the case in the Ottoman empire. Anatolia has always been a very mixed place. A person living in Pontus has no cultural relation with a person in south east or to a person in the Aegea. It was very diverse.
Ottoman empire was semi-shariatic, with the understanding of Ummah. What does this mean?
Society was divied into Muslims and non-Muslims. Nationalities were not mentioned. Although Orthodox were divided(Armenian, Greek...etc) Note that a lot of Turkics were going into non-Muslim category, the Alevis.(Alevism is also common among Kurds)
The whole society belonged to the ROYAL FAMILY. In fact only to Sultan untill Ahmet if I am not mistaken. There wasn't a case of "national understanding". Although of course this applies to many states of that day, until the French revolution. But still Turkishness were not the dominant thing in the Ottoman empire at all. The ruling family was a complete mixture, like New York. And the rest of the government AND the core of the army, the palace corps were converts of "devşirme" system. Mainly from Balkans, Croats, Albanians, Serbs, Bosnians....and the palace had people from all over Europe.
(Romanian Dimitrie Cantermir is a significant one, as well as Jan Sobieski of Poland. )
Not to mention Ottomans claiming themselves Romans and protectors of Orthodox Christeandom since Fatih, 2. Mehmed's time. (he even tried to restore Rome by conquering Italy with the invasion of Otranto)
General view of people in the major succesor country, Turkey:
Anatolia, like I said is very diverse in terms of culture. And the previous local cultures are MUCH MORE significant than nomadic Turkic culture. Same applies to genetic pool. It is so diverse that saying this is just "one group of people" would be ridicolous. And there are still Yörüks, nomadic families, but they are very very few in numbers. There are also some Turkmen villages that are in very poor conditions scattered all over Anatolia with their low populations.
Long story short, Turkic culture in Turkey is not the first thing you will see when you come to Turkey. As the original ones are still in depths of Anatolia.
What you are going to see is the artificial nation created since the day of constituational monarchy. The ideas that came with the spreading of nationalism. The things which lead to harsh events on non-Muslim Anatolians.(note the way I use the words, I did not say minority ethnic groups, I said non-Muslim Anatolians)
In the end
Would you say "Ottomans are Turks" after this? My take on the issue is this, Ottomans are not Turks, but the people of Turkey are the continuation of Ottomans. Which means, they are not us but we are them.
(I'm not saying this in a proud nationalist way btw)
PS:I am sorry if I made mistakes, I'm looking forward to fixes to information here.
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ing nationalistic, and always having wet dreams about past conquer and "muslim" splendour. 
Originally Posted by pspguy123
