Brent Kennedy, the honorary leader of Meljon, died after a long illness, and members of the group consider themselves to be descendants of Ottoman soldiers in the United States.
Kennedy was the principal of the Wise School of Higher Education, in Virginia, and in an interview with Anatolia, Brent's wife, Robin, said that he was suffering from hemiplegia, and he was sick with Mediterranean fever.
Brent's friend, Ali Han Karra Kartal, said he had known him after the latter revealed on a TV program, nearly two decades ago, that his DNA results show that he is of Turkish origin.
Kennedy had announced that doctors diagnosed him with Mediterranean fever, which could not affect anyone in the Americas under normal circumstances, prompting him to conduct DNA tests, and the results showed that his ancestors were Turkish.
Who are the Meljon group?
According to Professor Turker Uzdogan, the roots of the Meljon group go back to about 10 thousand Ottoman soldiers who were captured in the sea battle of Lepant, in 1571, and the number of the group's members is about two million.
And forced the Spanish and British, the captured Ottoman soldiers at that time, to rowing in their ships for many years, before leaving them to their fate later in the American continent.
Ottoman soldiers settled in the Appalachian Mountains, and converged with the Indian tribes there. According to Kennedy, the DNA of the Meljon group is very similar to the DNA of the Turks of Anatolia, central Turkey.