Mixed races and overlapping languages ​​.. What are the origins of Turkish people?

Zaher Bey-Ankara

There has been widespread talk in Turkey about the claim of experts and university professors in the fields of language and history that the origin of the Turks dates back to the Mongols;

The controversy comes as other researchers say the Turks are of Persian origin; their Turkish language is full of Persian words such as "Namaz, Sabzi and Hufta," which means "prayer, vegetables, and a week" respectively, while some argued for their Arabism due to the writing Turkish language in Arabic letters until the first quarter of the twentieth century, and the presence of many Arabic words in their language such as "with regret, an hour, papers." So what is the origin of the Turks?

Origins of Turk
Burhan Kuroglu, head of the department of philosophy and history professor at Istanbul's Ibn Khaldun University, said that there are several opinions on the name of the turk, but the most accepted one is that the word comes from the verb türe, which means reproduction in Turkish.

Koreoglu told Al-Jazeera Net "Although the word 'Turk' was used to denote Turkish nationalism long ago, a Persian text dating back to 420 AD attributes the word to the T-people living north of the Sihon River, and another text referred to the word 'Hun Turk' "The mighty Huns", as well as an old document written in Uyghur stating that the word Turk means "power and dominance".

Turkish people
Turkish historian Koreoglu defined the human being as a person who speaks Turkish, stating that "any other definition remains incomplete. Net "or" exclusive ethnicity. "

He added, "Some scholars erred as Turks ethnicity, and the arguments based on this understanding is weak; after the Turks entered into the Islamic religion, they established large Islamic countries, and the name of the Turks is not mentioned only associated with Islam, and we see this more clearly in the Byzantine texts, and then Western The term "Turks is synonymous with Islam."

He pointed out that the "Turkish people" migrated successively from the Altai region, which extends between the regions of Russian Siberia to Mongolia and China, to Central Asia, Iran, the Caucasus, Central Europe and Anatolia, and Turkish people who speak different Turkish accents took different names; Uyghur Turks, Khazars Turks, Gok Turks, Avars, Kyrgyz and Kazakhs, among others.

Scientists who researched the affairs and culture of Turks had different interpretations of the word Turk; the French orientalist and Turkish scientist Jean-Paul Roux stated that it was wrong to regard Turks as a race, and says in his History of Turks that "the only accepted definition about Turks is the linguistic definition."

Mogul Turks
In a related context, historian Ahmed Nasser told Al-Jazeera Net "Historians often rely in their original research for groups and people on two main sources; the first language family to which the language of the target group belongs to the research, and the second geographical area from which that group was provided."

The historian Nasser said that the first Arab historical sources such as Tabari, Masoudi, Ibn Khaldun and some yearbooks were talking about "Turk" as one of the three "Ajami" groups known to the early Arabs: Persians and Turks in the east, and the Romans in the north and west.

He pointed out that the relationship between the Turks and the Arabs was distinguished from the latter's relationship with the Persians and the Romans, since their first contact, which dates back to the period of the succession of Othman bin Affan, to continue during the conquests of the Umayyads in the countries beyond the river, passing through the Abbasids, who relied on them wholly in their revolt against the Umayyads and their son-in-law. Country.

Turkish people
“The Trans-Turkestan region, which includes today the Islamic republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, is a citizen,” said Nasir, who taught history at the Euphrates University and Turkish imams and preachers' schools. The first Turks from which they went to the Islamic world and the rest of the world. "

"This region extends from the Mongolian plateau and north China in the east, to the Caspian Sea in the west, and this has prompted many historians to place the Turkish element into the Mughal family, linguistic and ethnic, despite the existence of many formal, linguistic and social differences between the two elements."

He explained that the writings of the Orkhun Valley, which was discovered in 1889 in Mongolia, came to support the views of researchers who say that the Mongol origins of the Turks, as these writings belong to one of the Turkish groups, called the "Gok Turk", and was written between 732 and 735 AD.

In the Ottoman period, the Turk was called the Sunni-speaking Ottoman citizens, especially the Anatolian villagers, while the citizens of the Republic of Turkey are now the same. The Turkish language belongs to a linguistic group originating from Central Asia.

Linguistic overlap
Linguists have adopted the theory that the Turkish language joins the Mongol language family, which includes Tatar, Mongolian and contemporary Turkish. The evidence of the history of the Mongol Turk remains linked only to documenting their exodus from the Central Asian Valley towards the West due to the Mongol attacks led by Genghis Khan in the beginning. 13th century AD.

In conclusion, historian Nasser believes that Turks of different clans, tribes and groups, are one family completely independent of the Mongols, Persians, Arabs or others, despite their geographical distribution historically adjacent to the areas of the spread of these people.