Who are the Turks really. Ethnic history of the Turks Who are the Turks and where do they come from

Introduction

The origin of the Turks, like the origin of almost any people, any ethnic community, is a complex historical process. Ethnic processes, while possessing certain general patterns, at the same time have their own characteristics in each specific case. For example, one of the features of the ethnogenesis of the Turks was the synthesis of two main ethnic components that were extremely different from one another: the Turkic nomadic pastoralists who migrated to the territory of modern Turkey and certain groups of the local settled agricultural population. At the same time, in the formation of the Turkish nationality, one of the patterns of ethnic history was also manifested - the assimilation by the Turks, with their predominant numbers and socio-political hegemony, of part of the peoples they conquered. My work is devoted to the complex problem of ethnogenesis and ethnic history of the Turkish people. On the basis of historical, anthropological, linguistic and ethnographic, the formation of the Turkish feudal people, the features of the formation of the Gurki nation. In this work (an attempt was made to consider all the features of the ethnogenesis of the Turks, the formation of the Turkish people, and then the Turkish nation, highlighting the general and the special. The basis for such an analysis was historical facts - written sources, as well as data from anthropological and ethnographic science.

The history of the Ancient East and the Turks has a large extent of state formations in the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates in the second half of the 4th millennium BC. and finish for the Middle East 30-20s. 4th century BC, when the Greco-Macedonian troops under the leadership of Alexander the Great captured the entire Middle East, the Iranian Highlands, the southern part of Central Asia and the northwestern part of India. As for Central Asia, India and the Far East, the ancient history of these countries is being studied up to the 3rd-5th centuries AD. This border is conditional and is determined by the fact that in Europe at the end of the 5th century. AD the Western Roman Empire fell and the peoples of the European continent entered the Middle Ages. Geographically, the territory called the Ancient East extends from west to east from modern Tunisia, where one of the most ancient states, Carthage, was located, to modern China, Japan and Indonesia, and from south to north - from modern Ethiopia to the Caucasus Mountains and the southern shores of the Aral Sea . In this vast geographical zone, there were numerous states that left a bright mark on history: the great Ancient Egyptian kingdom, the Babylonian state, the Hittite state, the huge Assyrian Empire, the state of Urartu, small state formations on the territory of Phoenicia, Syria and Palestine, the Trojan Phrygian and Lydian kingdoms, states Iranian Highlands, including the world Persian Monarchy, which included the territories of almost the entire Near and partly the Middle East, the state formations of Central Asia, the states on the territory of Hindustan, China, Korea and Southeast Asia.

In this work, I explored various problems of the ethnic history of the Turks - their origin, composition, primary area of ​​​​settlement, culture, religion, etc.

This work is mainly the search and interpretation of historical sources, archaeological discoveries and more. Here we consider the solution to the problem of determining the territory of the settlement of ethnic groups, in particular, Turkic-speaking, in the light of their migrations and ethno-social development, in particular the process of assimilation.

Therefore, this study presents a brief overview of the history of the migration of nomadic Turks, the development of their society and state formations over historical time.

First of all, to determine the habitat of the Turks and the methodology for studying the process of ethnogenesis.

I learned that leaders played a big role in nomadic society, their role was sometimes decisive in the creation of states and the consolidation of tribes. “When in the steppe with? was a talented organizer, he gathered around him a crowd of strong and devoted people in order to subjugate his clan with their help, and, finally, the tribal union. With a successful combination of circumstances, a large state was thus created.

Thus, in Asia in the 6th-7th centuries, the Turks created a state to which they gave their own and? me - Turkic Khaganate. The first Khaganate - 740, the second - 745

In the 7th century, a vast region in Central Asia, called Turkestan, became the main area of ​​the Turks. In the 8th century, most of Turkestan was conquered by the Arabs. And therefore, already in the 9th century, the Turks created their own state, headed by the Oguz Khan. Further, a large and powerful state of the Seljuks developed. The attractiveness of Turkic rule attracted many people to their side. People in whole villages came to the land of Asia Minor, converted to Islam.

By the middle of the 16th century, the Turkish people had developed from two main ethnic components: the Turkic nomadic pastoral tribes, mainly Oghuz and Turkmen, migrating to Asia Minor from the east during the period of the Seljut and Mongol conquerors of the 11th-12th centuries, and the local Asia Minor population: Greeks, Armenians, Laz, Kurds and others. Part of the Turks penetrated into Asia Minor from the Balkans (Uzes, Pechenegs. The formation of the Turkish nation was completed by the beginning of the 20th century, by the time of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the formation of the Turkish Republic.

Chapter I. Ancient Turks

The ancient Turks belonged to the world of nomadic societies, whose role in the ethnic history of the Old World is extremely great. Moving over vast distances, mixing with settled peoples, nomads - nomads - more than once redrawn the ethnic map of entire continents, created gigantic powers, changed the course of social development, passed on the cultural achievements of some settled peoples to others, and finally, they themselves made a significant contribution to the history of world culture. .

The first nomads of Eurasia were Indo-European tribes. It was they who left behind in the steppes from the Dnieper to Altai the first mounds - the burial places of their leaders. Of those Indo-Europeans that remained in the Black Sea steppes, new nomadic alliances later formed - the Iranian-speaking tribes of the Cimmerians, Scythians, Sakas, Savromats. About these nomads, who repeated in the 1st millennium BC. the routes of their predecessors, a lot of information is contained in the written sources of the ancient Greeks, Persians, Assyrians.

East of the Indo-Europeans, in Central Asia, another large linguistic community arose - the Altaic. Most of the tribes here were Turks, Mongols and Tungus-Manchus. The emergence of nomadism is a new milestone in the economic history of antiquity. This was the first major social division of labor - the separation of pastoral tribes from sedentary farmers. The exchange of agricultural products and handicrafts began to develop more rapidly.

The relationship between nomads and settled residents was not always peaceful. Nomadic pastoralism is very productive per unit of labor expended, but not very productive per unit of area used; with expanded reproduction, it requires the development of more and more new territories. Covering vast distances in search of pastures, nomads often entered the lands of settled inhabitants, entering into conflict with them.

But the nomads also made raids, waged wars of conquest against settled peoples. The tribes of nomads, due to internal social dynamics, had their own elite - wealthy leaders, tribal aristocracy. This tribal elite, heading large unions of tribes, turned into a nomadic nobility, became even richer and strengthened its power over ordinary nomads. It was she who directed the tribes to seize and plunder agricultural territories. Invading countries with a settled population, the nomads imposed tribute on it in favor of their nobility, subordinating entire states to the power of their leaders. With these conquests, gigantic powers of nomads arose - the Scythians, Huns, Turks, Tatar-Mongols and others. True, they were not very durable. As Yelü Chutsai, adviser to Genghis Khan, noted, it is possible to conquer the universe while sitting on a horse, but it is impossible to control it while remaining in the saddle.

The striking force of the early nomads of Eurasia, for example, the Aryan tribes, were war chariots. The Indo-Europeans had the priority not only of domesticating the horse, but also of creating a fast and maneuverable war chariot, the main feature of which was light wheels that had a spoked hub. (Formerly, for example, in Sumer in the 4th millennium BC, war carts had heavy wheels - solid wooden disks that rotated together with the axle on which they were mounted, and donkeys or oxen were harnessed to them.) The light horse chariot began its triumphal procession from the 3rd millennium BC In the 2nd millennium, it became widespread among the Hittites, Indo-Aryans, and Greeks; it was brought to Egypt by the Hyksos. A charioteer and an archer were usually placed on the chariot, but there were also very small carts on which the charioteer was also an archer.

From the 1st millennium BC The main and, perhaps, even the only branch of the nomadic troops was the cavalry, which used in battles the horse-shooting tactics of a massive strike: horse lava rushed at the enemy, spewing clouds of arrows and darts. For the first time, it was widely used by the Cimmerians and Scythians, they also created the first cavalry. Since childhood, the nomads were excellent riders, trained for long transitions, well-versed in weapons and techniques] of cavalry combat. The weaker development of class relations among nomadic tribes in comparison with the settled population - both in the era of slavery and in the era of feudalism - led to the long-term preservation of patriarchal and tribal ties. These ties masked social contradictions, especially since the most severe forms of exploitation - robbery, raids, tribute collection - were directed outside the nomadic society, on the settled population. All these factors united the tribe with strong military discipline, which further increased the fighting qualities of the tribal army.

With the movements of nomads in Asia, the spread of many languages ​​\u200b\u200bis connected - Indo-European (mainly Iranian), Arabic, Turkic and Mongolian. When settling on the ground and mixing with the local population, the nomads, as a rule, assimilated it in terms of language, but borrowed the main features of the economy and material culture. This historical pattern was observed not only in Asia, but also in Africa (Arabization of North Africa - Maghreb), and in Europe (Magyarization of the Middle Danube - Pannonia). A similar process took place in Anatolia, and also partly in the Balkans, after the resettlement of Turkic tribes here during the era of domination of the Seljukids and Osmanids in the areas that later formed the territory of the modern Turkish state - the Republic of Turkey.

And in Asia in the VI-VII centuries. the Turks created a state, which they gave their name to - the Turkic Khaganate. Kagan, khakan, or khan - this is how the Turks (and then the Mongols) called the supreme ruler, "king". Like the power of the Asian Huns, the Khaganate spread over a vast territory - from the Huang He to the Caspian Sea, from Tibet to the Urals ... The Turks made an important improvement in the technique of riding: they invented a hard saddle and stirrups. The outfit of the horse "under the top", as we know it now, was completed. It was a new stage in the development of transport and military affairs. Weapons were also modernized: the Turks widely used the complex-composite bow, invented back in the Hun times, the curved saber-saber replaced the straight heavy sword.

Another important achievement of the ancient Turks contributed to the increase in the mobility of the nomads: in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. they created a collapsible (lattice) yurt. The Chinese poet Bo Juyi described the lattice yurt as follows:

Round frame of coastal willows

Durable, fresh, comfortable and beautiful.

A whirlwind cannot shake a yurt.

The rain hardens her chest.

There are no dungeons or corners in it.

But it's cozy and warm inside...

Felt against frost - wall.

The veil of snow is not terrible either.

The Turkic tribes carried on extensive barter trade with China, which is also reported in the Chinese chronicles.

Despite the strong property and social differentiation, the society of the ancient Turks had a tribal structure characteristic of nomads: families united into clans and tribes (ok, ogush), and those - into a tribal union (el). At the head of the ale was the khan (kagan).

The historical fate of the Turkic Khaganate is similar to the power of the Huns: at the beginning of the 7th century. it was divided into western, or Central Asian, and eastern, Central Asian. The first existed until 740, the second - until 745.

In general, in the early Middle Ages, after the Great Migration of Peoples, many former tribal associations disintegrate, and the embryos of future nationalities are formed from their former constituent elements. At this time, not only great ethnic changes take place, but also revolutionary social shifts. Feudalism, a new socio-economic formation, pushes back the old tribal relations among the "barbarian" peoples and deals a crushing blow to the slave-owning society in the states of ancient civilization. Rome, the stronghold of slavery, falls under a double onslaught - "barbarians" and rebellious slaves. In the West, only Byzantium, and in the East - China, were able to resist the influx of new peoples. But they also become feudal empires.

In the 7th century The main habitat of the Asian Turks was a vast region in Central Asia, which in the Iranian languages ​​\u200b\u200bwas called "Turkestan" (Turkic camp, the Country of the Turks). However, already in the VIII century. most of Turkestan was conquered by the Arabs, who created a new gigantic power of the Middle Ages - the Arab Caliphate. The Central Asian Turks recognized the power of the caliph, became his allies, and the religion of the conquerors, Islam, began to spread among them.

The Central Asian Turks did not long endure the domination of the Arabs. Already in the IX century. they create their own state, headed by Khan Oguz, the leader of the Oguz tribes. The Oguzes are pushing out their rivals from Central Asia - the Pechenegs, another Turkic tribe. The Pechenegs leave for the Russian steppes, but there they meet the rebuff of Kievan Rus, migrate to the Balkans and fall under the rule of Byzantium. Having adopted Christianity, they settle on the ground, serve in the troops of the Byzantines.

The borders of the Oguz state reach the Volga steppes. Here it collides with the rivalry of the Khazar Khaganate and the Volga Bulgaria. In the fight against them, the Oguzes find a powerful ally - Kievan Rus, which is in the prime of its life. In 965, Prince Svyatoslav concluded a military treaty with the Oghuz-Torks. Under the blows of the Rus and the Torks, the Khaganate of the "unreasonable Khazars" falls. In 985, Prince Vladimir, in alliance with the Torks, set off on a campaign along the Volga against the Bulgars. The princely squad sailed in the boats, and the torcs-riders rode along the shore. Volga Bulgaria was defeated.

But the crisis of the Oghuz state is already beginning. In the south of her possessions, the Seljuk clan, a numerous clan of the Oghuz tribe, is growing stronger. He gathers around him tribes dissatisfied with the power of the khan. And in the middle of the XI century. New Turkic aliens from Central Asia, the Kypchaks, break into Turkestan. Part of the Oguzes, under their onslaught, goes to the borders of Kievan Rus and further, to the Balkans, to Byzantium. Russian princes settle their former allies in the border fortifications. The Torches Oghuz founded their city here on the banks of the Stugna - Torchesk and gradually merge with the Rus. The Byzantines also settled the fleeing Oguzes in their possessions. Another part of the Oguzes escaped from the Kipchaks, leaving for the very south of Central Asia and further to Khorasan, the northeastern region of Iran. Here they accepted the patronage of the intensified Seljuk clan. And soon a new ethnic formation enters the arena of history - the Turkmens, or, more precisely, the Turkmens. And the south of Central Asia gets the name "Turkmenistan" - Turkmenistan.

It is necessary to tell more about the Turkmens. After all, many Turkmen tribes (and part of the Oguzes that had not yet merged with them) later moved to Transcaucasia and Asia Minor, initiating the formation of the Azerbaijani and Turkish peoples. Turkmens of the 11th century differed from other Turks of Central Asia in that they mixed more with the local Iranian-speaking population - nomadic and settled. They swallowed up the remnants of the Sakas and Alans, absorbed some of the Sogdians and Khorezmians. This pre-Turkic layer, or, according to ethnographic terminology, the substratum (underlayer) had a strong impact on the Turkmens. In their appearance, the Mongoloid features inherent in the ancient Turks have almost disappeared. In other words, anthropologically, that is, by race, Turkmens have become Caucasians. The culture of the Turkmens was enriched by the achievements of the local sedentary peoples: agriculture, the construction of permanent dwellings were a new business for nomadic pastoralists. A number of Turkmen tribes switched to full or partial settlement (semi-settledness).

By the end of the XI century. Turkmen and Oguz tribes came close to Asia Minor. They seemed to have taken their starting positions, so that, under the leadership of the leaders from the Seljuk family, they set off on a further journey to the west, to the country that would later be called Turkey.

Chapter II. Turks

The main part of the population of modern Turkey are ethnic Turks belonging to the Turkic ethnic group of peoples. The Turkish nation began to take shape in the 11th-13th centuries, when the Turkic pastoral tribes living in Central Asia and Iran (mainly Turkmens and Oguzes), under the onslaught of the Seljuks and Mongols, were forced to move to Asia Minor. Some of the Turks (Pechenegs, Uzes) came to Anatolia from the Balkans. As a result of the mixing of Turkic tribes with a heterogeneous local population (Greeks, Armenians, Georgians, Kurds, Arabs), the ethnic basis of the modern Turkish nation was formed. In the process of Turkish expansion into Europe and the Balkans, the Turks experienced some influence from the Albanian, Romanian and numerous South Slavic peoples. The period of the final formation of the Turkish nation is usually attributed to the 15th century.

The Turks are an ethno-linguistic community that took shape on the territory of the steppes of Northern China, in the 1st millennium BC. e. The Turks were engaged in nomadic pastoralism, and in the territories where it was impossible to engage in it - agriculture. Modern Turkic-speaking peoples should not be understood as direct ethnic relatives of the ancient Turks. Many Turkic-speaking ethnic groups, today called Turks, were formed as a result of the centuries-old influence of Turkic culture and the Turkic language on other peoples and ethnic groups of Eurasia.

Turkic-speaking peoples are among the most numerous peoples of the globe. Most of them have long lived in Asia and Europe. They also live on the American and Australian continents. The Turks make up 90% of the inhabitants of modern Turkey, and on the territory of the former USSR there are about 50 million of them, that is, they constitute the second largest group of the population after the Slavic peoples.

In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, there were many Turkic state formations: Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnic, Bulgar, Alanian, Khazar, Western and Eastern Turkic, Avar and Uyghur Khaganates, etc. "Of these, only Turkey has retained its statehood to date. In 1991-1992 on the territory of the former USSR, the Turkic union republics became independent states and members of the UN. These are Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan. As part of the Russian Federation, Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Sakha (Yakutia) gained statehood. In the form of autonomous republics in As part of the Russian Federation, Tuvans, Khakasses, Altaians, Chuvashs have their own statehood.

The sovereign republics include Karachays (Karachay-Cherkessia), Balkars (Kabardino-Balkaria), Kumyks (Dagestan). The Karakalpaks have their own republic within Uzbekistan, and the Nakhichevan Azerbaijanis within Azerbaijan. Sovereign statehood within Moldova was proclaimed by the Gagauz.

So far, the statehood of the Crimean Tatars has not been restored, the Nogais, Meskhetian Turks, Shors, Chulyms, Siberian Tatars, Karaites, Trukhmens and some other Turkic peoples do not have statehood.

The Turks living outside the former USSR do not have their own states, with the exception of the Turks in Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots. About 8 million Uighurs, over 1 million Kazakhs, 80,000 Kyrgyz, and 15,000 Uzbeks live in China (Moskalev, 1992, p. 162). 18 thousand Tuvans live in Mongolia. A significant number of Turks live in Iran and Afghanistan, including about 10 million Azerbaijanis. The number of Uzbeks in Afghanistan reaches 1.2 million, Turkmen - 380 thousand, Kyrgyz - 25 thousand people. Several hundred thousand Turks and Gagauz live in Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, a small number of Karaites "- in Lithuania and Poland. Representatives of the Turkic peoples also live in Iraq (about 100 thousand Turkmen, many Turks), Syria (30 thousand Turkmen, as well as Karachays, Balkars.) There is a Turkic-speaking population in the USA, Hungary, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Australia and some other countries.

Turkic-speaking peoples from ancient times had a significant impact on the course of world history, made a significant contribution to the development of world civilization. However, the true history of the Turkic peoples has not yet been written. Much remains unclear in the question of their ethnogenesis, many Turkic peoples still do not know when and on the basis of what ethnic groups they were formed.

Scientists express a number of considerations on the problem of the ethnogenesis of the Turkic peoples and draw some conclusions based on the latest historical, archaeological, linguistic, ethnographic and anthropological data.

When covering one or another issue of the problem under consideration, the authors proceeded from the fact that, depending on the era and the specific historical situation, some kind of sources - historical, linguistic, archaeological, ethnographic or anthropological - may be more or less significant for solving the problem. ethnogenesis of this people. However, none of them can claim a fundamentally leading role. Each of them needs to be rechecked with data from other sources, and each of them in any particular case may turn out to be devoid of real ethnogenetic content. S.A. Arutyunov emphasizes: “No one source can be decisive and advantageous over others, in different cases different sources may prevail, but in any case, the reliability of the conclusions depends primarily on the possibility of their mutual cross-checking”

The ancestors of modern Turks - the nomadic Oghuz tribes - first penetrated Anatolia from Central Asia in the 11th century during the period of the Seljuk conquests. In the 12th century, the Iconian Sultanate was formed on the lands of Asia Minor conquered by the Seljuks. In the 13th century, under the onslaught of the Mongols, the resettlement of Turkic tribes to Anatolia intensified. However, as a result of the Mongol invasion of Asia Minor, the Iconian Sultanate broke up into feudal principalities, one of which was ruled by Osman Bey. In 1281-1324, he turned his possession into an independent principality, which, after the name of Osman, became known as the Ottoman. Later it turned into the Ottoman Empire, and the tribes inhabiting this state began to be called the Ottoman Turks. Osman himself was the son of the leader of the Oguz tribe Ertogul. Thus, the first state of the Ottoman Turks was the state of the Oghuz. Who are the Oguzes? The Oghuz tribal union arose at the beginning of the 7th century in Central Asia. The predominant position in the union was occupied by the Uighurs. In the 10th century, the Oguzes, pressed by the Kirghiz, moved to the territory of Xinjiang. In the 10th century, in the lower reaches of the Syr Darya, the Oghuz state was created with its center in Yanshkent. In the middle of the 11th century, this state was defeated by the Kipchaks who came from the east. The Oguzes, together with the Seljuks, moved to Europe. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the state system of the Oghuz, and today it is impossible to find any connection between the state of the Oghuz and the Ottomans, but it can be assumed that the Ottoman state administration was built on the experience of the Oghuz state. Osman's son and successor, Orhan Bey, conquered Brusa from the Byzantines in 1326, making it his capital, then captured the eastern coast of the Sea of ​​Marmara and entrenched himself on the Galliopoli Island. Murad I (1359-1389), who already bore the title of Sultan, conquered all of Eastern Thrace, including Andrianopol, where he transferred the capital of Turkey (1365), and also eliminated the independence of some of the principalities of Anatolia. Under Bayezid I (1389-4402), the Turks conquered Bulgaria, Macedonia, Thessaly and approached Constantinople. Timur's invasion of Anatolia and the defeat of Bayezid's troops at the Battle of Angora (1402) temporarily halted the advance of the Turks into Europe. Under Murad II (1421-1451), the Turks resumed their offensive against Europe. Mehmed II (1451-1481) took Constantinople after a month and a half siege. The Byzantine Empire ceased to exist. Constantinople (Istanbul) became the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed II eliminated the remnants of independent Serbia, conquered Bosnia, the main part of Greece, Moldova, the Crimean Khanate and completed the subjugation of almost all of Anatolia. Sultan Selim I (1512-1520) conquered Mosul, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, then Hungary and Algeria. Turkey became the largest military power of that time. The Ottoman Empire did not have an internal ethnic unity, and, nevertheless, the formation of the Turkish nation ended in the 15th century. What did this young nation have behind them? The experience of the Oguz state and Islam. Together with Islam, the Turks perceive Islamic law, which differs from Roman law just as significantly as the difference between the Turks and Europeans was significant. Long before the arrival of the Turks in Europe, the only legal code in the Arab Caliphate was the Koran. However, the legal subjugation of the more developed peoples forced the caliphate to face significant difficulties. In the VIl-th century, a list of advice and commandments of Mohammed appears, which is supplemented over time and soon reaches several dozen volumes. The set of these laws, together with the Koran, constituted the so-called sunna, or "righteous path." These laws constituted the essence of the law of the vast Arab Caliphate. However, the conquerors gradually got acquainted with the laws of the conquered peoples, mainly with Roman law, and began to present these same laws in the name of Mohammed to the conquered. In the 8th century, Abu Hanifa (696-767) founded the first school of law. He was a Persian by origin and managed to create a legal direction that flexibly combined strict Muslim principles and vital needs. In these laws, Christians and Jews were given the right to use their traditional laws.

It seemed that the Arab Caliphate had taken the path of establishing a legal society. However, this did not happen. Neither the Arab Caliphate nor all subsequent medieval Muslim states created a state-approved code of laws. The main essence of Islamic law is the presence of a huge gap between legal and real rights. The power of Mahomet was theocratic in nature and carried in itself both a divine and a political principle. However, according to the precepts of Mohammed, the new caliph had to either be elected at a general meeting, or be appointed before his death by the previous caliph. But in reality, the power of the caliph was always inherited. According to legal law, the Mohammedan community, especially the community of the capital, had the right to remove the caliph for unworthy behavior, for mental disability, or for loss of sight and hearing. But in fact, the power of the caliph was absolute, and the whole country was considered his property. Laws were broken in the opposite direction. According to the legal laws, a non-Muslim had no right to participate in the government of the country. Not only did he not have the right to be at court, but he could not govern a district or city. In fact, the caliph, at his own discretion, appointed non-Muslims to the highest public positions. Thus, if the Europeans, during the transition from the harmonic era to the heroic, replaced God with Roman Law, then, having spent their harmonic period in Central Asia, the future Mohammedans in the heroic era turned law, together with religion, into a toy of the ruler of the Caliphate, who was both a legislator and an executor , and a judge.

We saw something similar in the Soviet Union during Stalin's rule. This form of government is inherent in all Eastern despotisms and is fundamentally different from European forms of government. This form of government breeds unbridled luxury rulers with harems, slaves and violence. It gives rise to catastrophic scientific, technical and economic backwardness of the people. Today, many sociologists and economists, and primarily in Turkey itself, are trying to find out the reasons for the economic backwardness of the Ottoman Empire, which has survived to this day, despite a series of so-called revolutions within the country. Many Turkish authors criticize the Turkish past, but none of them dares to criticize the roots of Turkish backwardness and the regime of the Ottoman Empire. The approach of other Turkish authors to the history of the Ottoman Empire is fundamentally different from the approach of modern historical science. Turkish authors, first of all, try to prove that Turkish history has its own specific features that are absent in the histories of all other peoples. "Historians studying the social order of the Ottoman Empire not only did not try to compare it with general historical laws and patterns, but, on the contrary, were forced to show how Turkey and Turkish history differ from other countries and from all other histories." The Ottoman social order was very convenient and good for the Turks, and the empire developed in its own special way until Turkey came under European influence. He believes that under European influence, the economy was liberalized, the right to own land, freedom of trade and a number of other measures were legalized, and all this ruined the empire. In other words, according to this author, the Turkish Empire was ruined precisely as a result of the penetration of European principles into it.

As stated earlier, the hallmarks of European culture were law, self-restraint, the development of the sciences, and respect for the individual. In contrast, in Islamic law, we saw the unlimited power of the ruler, which does not value the individual and gives rise to unbridled luxury. A society devoted to faith and passions almost completely neglects the sciences, and therefore leads a primitive economy.

Chapter III. The formation of Turkish nationality

The signs of the internal decline of Turkey, which were already outlined in the second half of the 16th century, were quite clearly manifested in all areas of economic, financial, public administration and military affairs by the middle of the 17th century. The threat of the complete disintegration and death of the Ottoman Empire gave rise to a desire among some of the Turkish ruling circles to carry out reforms. The first serious attempt of this kind was made during the reign of Sultan Selim III (1789-1807). The proclaimed reforms were called the "New System". And despite the extremely limited nature of these innovations, they aroused strong opposition from the Muslim clergy. The "New System" has failed. The collapse of the new system has shown that Turkey is not capable of accepting European norms of behavior. In 1826, Sultan Mahmud II also introduced some reforms. In particular, he replaced military administrators with civil officials, created ministries, founded the first Turkish newspaper. These events paved the way for the so-called Tanismat, which was the most serious attempt to make the Turkish Empire viable through reforms. But this attempt also ended in failure, because the non-European element was very stable in Turkey.

In 1876, a coup d'etat took place in Turkey, as a result of which Sultan Abdul Azis was overthrown and power actually passed into the hands of Midhat and the "New Ottomans". Abdul Hamid II promised Midhat a constitution modeled on European countries. In reality, Abdul Hamid viewed the Constitution as a diplomatic maneuver. He proclaimed the Constitution in 1876 on the eve of the opening of an international conference on reforms in the Balkans, but already in January 1877, as soon as the conference closed, he removed Madhat Pasha from the post of Grand Wazir and disbanded the parliament created on the basis of the Constitution. And this attempt to Europeanize Turkey ended in failure.

At the end of the 19th century, the Young Turk movement arose in Turkey. Its participants were representatives of the intelligentsia, officers, doctors, petty officials. The Committee "Unity and Progress" became the main political organization of the Young Turks. In 1908, the Young Turks came to power. They achieved the restoration of the Constitution and the convocation of parliament, but they themselves led a policy of brutal suppression of all freedoms and especially the freedoms of the non-Muslim population of Turkey. How far the Young Turks were from European forms of government is evidenced by the speech of Talaat Bey at a secret meeting in Thessaloniki before the members of the "Unity and Progress" committee. According to the testimony of the English vice-consul Arthur B. Henry, in the mentioned speech, Talaat said: “You know that according to the constitution the equality of Muslims and infidels was confirmed, but you all together and each individually know and feel that this is an unrealizable ideal. Sharia, all our past history, the feelings of hundreds of thousands of Muslims, and even the feelings of the infidels themselves, who stubbornly resist any attempt to Ottomanize them, present a formidable barrier to the establishment of real equality.We have made unsuccessful attempts to convert the infidels into loyal Ottomans.All such efforts will invariably fail until as long as the small independent states of the Balkan Peninsula have the opportunity to spread separatist ideas among the inhabitants of Macedonia, there can be no question of equality until we succeed in our task of Ottomanization."

To what extent is modern Turkey a European state? It should be recognized that Mustafa Kemal did a lot in this direction. Born in the fires of the First World War and in the storms of the Russian Revolution, the Turkish Parliamentary Republic has all the outward signs of a constitutional state. The Turkish Constitution, approved in 1924, is still in force with minor changes. The supreme power of Turkey belongs to the unicameral parliament - the Great National Assembly (Mejlis), elected by direct vote of citizens of both sexes. Moreover, in legal terms, Turkey is far ahead of its great neighbor - the USSR, with which and with the help of which it was born. Citizens of modern Turkey can freely travel abroad, can create various parties, publish any newspaper, organize strikes, etc. Nevertheless, Turkey, European in form, remains far from a European country in content. First of all, it should be noted that the Kemalist movement was launched not at all with the aim of Europeanizing the country, but with the aim of politically saving Turkey from the partition that was outlined by the Treaty of Sevres. We must pay tribute to Mustafa Kemal, who really saved Turkey. In front of the Europeans, he perfectly played the card of Europeanization and democratization of the country, and with Lenin he played socialism, and as a result he deceived both of them. Having come to power, he first shot the communists, then he began the work of enlightenment, which consisted in the rejection of Muslim law. All his reforms, and above all the introduction of Latin letters, were an escape from the Koran. But there was no democracy as such. The one-party system was preserved, and power was actually in the hands of the army. Only in 1945, Ismet İnönü announced a multi-party system. And it was only then that it became clear that Kemal had failed to deviate from Muslim law. The Democratic Party of Menderes, playing on the religious feelings of the people, was able to come to power. It was here that what today can be called the "Iranian phenomenon" happened. Just as the religious adherents of Ayatollah Khomeini almost without a single shot defeated the entire seemingly indestructible machine of the Shah, so in Turkey, soon after Kemal, those who restored the law on the wearing of veils by women, introduced prayers on Arabic and restored everything that further alienated Turkey from Europe.

Conclusion

The Turkish nation has come a long way of formation. In the ethnogenesis of the Turks, mainly Central Asian, Asia Minor, Balkan, Caucasian elements took part. You will almost never see a purely Turkic face in Turkey, perhaps the faces of some Yuryuk nomads will remind you that once the Seljuks and Mongols brought Mongoloid features to Asia Minor, then they almost completely disappeared into the Caucasoid local population.

Among the native Istanbulites, you can often find a blue-eyed blond. But this, of course, is a Turk, just like the true Turk, the famous poet Nazim Hikmet, whose grandfather was a Polish officer, and his grandmother was of Croatian origin. Many Turks will tell you that Hungarian, Albanian, Circassian blood flows in their veins, but in education and language they have gone far from their ancestors.

Until the end of the XIX century. the ruling class of the Ottoman Turks used the self-name "Osmanly" (named after Osman, the founder of the state in the 13th century), hence the somewhat Europeanized term "Ottoman"; "Turk" was a contemptuous name for Anatolian peasants. Only with the rise of the nationalist movement in the late XIX - early XX century. and wanting to get closer to the people, the rulers of the country again resurrected the forgotten name "Turk". Since that time, the country began to be called in the European way "Turkiye", which since the 20s has become the official name of the state.
N.G. Kireev "HISTORY OF TURKEY XX CENTURY". Publishing house Kraft+ IV RAS, 2007

Eremeev D. E., Ethnogenesis of the Turks, M., 1971

Turks

The main part of the population of modern Turkey are ethnic Turks belonging to the Turkic ethnic group of peoples. The Turkish nation began to take shape in the 11th-13th centuries, when the Turkic pastoral tribes living in Central Asia and Iran (mainly Turkmens and Oguzes), under the onslaught of the Seljuks and Mongols, were forced to move to Asia Minor. Some of the Turks (Pechenegs, Uzes) came to Anatolia from the Balkans. As a result of the mixing of Turkic tribes with a heterogeneous local population (Greeks, Armenians, Georgians, Kurds, Arabs), the ethnic basis of the modern Turkish nation was formed. In the process of Turkish expansion into Europe and the Balkans, the Turks experienced some influence from the Albanian, Romanian and numerous South Slavic peoples. The period of the final formation of the Turkish nation is usually attributed to the 15th century.
The Turks are an ethno-linguistic community that took shape on the territory of the steppes of Northern China, in the 1st millennium BC. e. The Turks were engaged in nomadic pastoralism, and in the territories where it was impossible to engage in it - agriculture. Modern Turkic-speaking peoples should not be understood as direct ethnic relatives of the ancient Turks. Many Turkic-speaking ethnic groups, today called Turks, were formed as a result of the centuries-old influence of Turkic culture and the Turkic language on other peoples and ethnic groups of Eurasia.
Turkic-speaking peoples are among the most numerous peoples of the globe. Most of them have long lived in Asia and Europe. They also live on the American and Australian continents. The Turks make up 90% of the inhabitants of modern Turkey, and on the territory of the former USSR there are about 50 million of them, that is, they constitute the second largest group of the population after the Slavic peoples.
In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, there were many Turkic state formations: Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnic, Bulgar, Alanian, Khazar, Western and Eastern Turkic, Avar and Uyghur Khaganates, etc. "Of these, only Turkey has retained its statehood to date. In 1991-1992 on the territory of the former USSR, the Turkic union republics became independent states and members of the UN. These are Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan. As part of the Russian Federation, Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Sakha (Yakutia) gained statehood. In the form of autonomous republics in As part of the Russian Federation, Tuvans, Khakasses, Altaians, Chuvashs have their own statehood.
The sovereign republics include Karachays (Karachay-Cherkessia), Balkars (Kabardino-Balkaria), Kumyks (Dagestan). The Karakalpaks have their own republic within Uzbekistan, and the Nakhichevan Azerbaijanis within Azerbaijan. Sovereign statehood within Moldova was proclaimed by the Gagauz.
So far, the statehood of the Crimean Tatars has not been restored, the Nogais, Meskhetian Turks, Shors, Chulyms, Siberian Tatars, Karaites, Trukhmens and some other Turkic peoples do not have statehood.
The Turks living outside the former USSR do not have their own states, with the exception of the Turks in Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots. About 8 million Uighurs, over 1 million Kazakhs, 80,000 Kyrgyz, and 15,000 Uzbeks live in China (Moskalev, 1992, p. 162). 18 thousand Tuvans live in Mongolia. A significant number of Turks live in Iran and Afghanistan, including about 10 million Azerbaijanis. The number of Uzbeks in Afghanistan reaches 1.2 million, Turkmen - 380 thousand, Kyrgyz - 25 thousand people. Several hundred thousand Turks and Gagauz live in Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, a small number of Karaites "- in Lithuania and Poland. Representatives of the Turkic peoples also live in Iraq (about 100 thousand Turkmen, many Turks), Syria (30 thousand Turkmen, as well as Karachays, Balkars.) There is a Turkic-speaking population in the USA, Hungary, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Australia and some other countries.
Turkic-speaking peoples from ancient times had a significant impact on the course of world history, made a significant contribution to the development of world civilization. However, the true history of the Turkic peoples has not yet been written. Much remains unclear in the question of their ethnogenesis, many Turkic peoples still do not know when and on the basis of what ethnic groups they were formed.
Scientists express a number of considerations on the problem of the ethnogenesis of the Turkic peoples and draw some conclusions based on the latest historical, archaeological, linguistic, ethnographic and anthropological data.
When covering one or another issue of the problem under consideration, the authors proceeded from the fact that, depending on the era and the specific historical situation, some kind of sources - historical, linguistic, archaeological, ethnographic or anthropological - may be more or less significant for solving the problem. ethnogenesis of this people. However, none of them can claim a fundamentally leading role. Each of them needs to be rechecked with data from other sources, and each of them in any particular case may turn out to be devoid of real ethnogenetic content. S.A. Arutyunov emphasizes: “No one source can be decisive and advantageous over others, in different cases different sources may prevail, but in any case, the reliability of the conclusions depends primarily on the possibility of their mutual cross-checking”
The ancestors of modern Turks - the nomadic Oghuz tribes - first penetrated Anatolia from Central Asia in the 11th century during the period of the Seljuk conquests. In the 12th century, the Iconian Sultanate was formed on the lands of Asia Minor conquered by the Seljuks. In the 13th century, under the onslaught of the Mongols, the resettlement of Turkic tribes to Anatolia intensified. However, as a result of the Mongol invasion of Asia Minor, the Iconian Sultanate broke up into feudal principalities, one of which was ruled by Osman Bey. In 1281-1324, he turned his possession into an independent principality, which, after the name of Osman, became known as the Ottoman. Later it turned into the Ottoman Empire, and the tribes inhabiting this state began to be called the Ottoman Turks. Osman himself was the son of the leader of the Oguz tribe Ertogul. Thus, the first state of the Ottoman Turks was the state of the Oghuz. Who are the Oguzes? The Oghuz tribal union arose at the beginning of the 7th century in Central Asia. The predominant position in the union was occupied by the Uighurs. In the 10th century, the Oguzes, pressed by the Kirghiz, moved to the territory of Xinjiang. In the 10th century, in the lower reaches of the Syr Darya, the Oghuz state was created with its center in Yanshkent. In the middle of the 11th century, this state was defeated by the Kipchaks who came from the east. The Oguzes, together with the Seljuks, moved to Europe. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the state system of the Oghuz, and today it is impossible to find any connection between the state of the Oghuz and the Ottomans, but it can be assumed that the Ottoman state administration was built on the experience of the Oghuz state. Osman's son and successor, Orhan Bey, conquered Brusa from the Byzantines in 1326, making it his capital, then captured the eastern coast of the Sea of ​​Marmara and entrenched himself on the Galliopoli Island. Murad I (1359-1389), who already bore the title of Sultan, conquered all of Eastern Thrace, including Andrianopol, where he transferred the capital of Turkey (1365), and also eliminated the independence of some of the principalities of Anatolia. Under Bayezid I (1389-4402), the Turks conquered Bulgaria, Macedonia, Thessaly and approached Constantinople. Timur's invasion of Anatolia and the defeat of Bayezid's troops at the Battle of Angora (1402) temporarily halted the advance of the Turks into Europe. Under Murad II (1421-1451), the Turks resumed their offensive against Europe. Mehmed II (1451-1481) took Constantinople after a month and a half siege. The Byzantine Empire ceased to exist. Constantinople (Istanbul) became the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed II eliminated the remnants of independent Serbia, conquered Bosnia, the main part of Greece, Moldova, the Crimean Khanate and completed the subjugation of almost all of Anatolia. Sultan Selim I (1512-1520) conquered Mosul, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, then Hungary and Algeria. Turkey became the largest military power of that time. The Ottoman Empire did not have an internal ethnic unity, and, nevertheless, the formation of the Turkish nation ended in the 15th century. What did this young nation have behind them? The experience of the Oguz state and Islam. Together with Islam, the Turks perceive Islamic law, which differs from Roman law just as significantly as the difference between the Turks and Europeans was significant. Long before the arrival of the Turks in Europe, the only legal code in the Arab Caliphate was the Koran. However, the legal subjugation of the more developed peoples forced the caliphate to face significant difficulties. In the VIl-th century, a list of advice and commandments of Mohammed appears, which is supplemented over time and soon reaches several dozen volumes. The set of these laws, together with the Koran, constituted the so-called sunna, or "righteous path." These laws constituted the essence of the law of the vast Arab Caliphate. However, the conquerors gradually got acquainted with the laws of the conquered peoples, mainly with Roman law, and began to present these same laws in the name of Mohammed to the conquered. In the 8th century, Abu Hanifa (696-767) founded the first school of law. He was a Persian by origin and managed to create a legal direction that flexibly combined strict Muslim principles and vital needs. In these laws, Christians and Jews were given the right to use their traditional laws.
It seemed that the Arab Caliphate had taken the path of establishing a legal society. However, this did not happen. Neither the Arab Caliphate nor all subsequent medieval Muslim states created a state-approved code of laws. The main essence of Islamic law is the presence of a huge gap between legal and real rights. The power of Mahomet was theocratic in nature and carried in itself both a divine and a political principle. However, according to the precepts of Mohammed, the new caliph had to either be elected at a general meeting, or be appointed before his death by the previous caliph. But in reality, the power of the caliph was always inherited. According to legal law, the Mohammedan community, especially the community of the capital, had the right to remove the caliph for unworthy behavior, for mental disability, or for loss of sight and hearing. But in fact, the power of the caliph was absolute, and the whole country was considered his property. Laws were broken in the opposite direction. According to the legal laws, a non-Muslim had no right to participate in the government of the country. Not only did he not have the right to be at court, but he could not govern a district or city. In fact, the caliph, at his own discretion, appointed non-Muslims to the highest public positions. Thus, if the Europeans, during the transition from the harmonic era to the heroic, replaced God with Roman Law, then, having spent their harmonic period in Central Asia, the future Mohammedans in the heroic era turned law, together with religion, into a toy of the ruler of the Caliphate, who was both a legislator and an executor , and a judge.
We saw something similar in the Soviet Union during Stalin's rule. This form of government is inherent in all Eastern despotisms and is fundamentally different from European forms of government. This form of government breeds unbridled luxury rulers with harems, slaves and violence. It gives rise to catastrophic scientific, technical and economic backwardness of the people. Today, many sociologists and economists, and primarily in Turkey itself, are trying to find out the reasons for the economic backwardness of the Ottoman Empire, which has survived to this day, despite a series of so-called revolutions within the country. Many Turkish authors criticize the Turkish past, but none of them dares to criticize the roots of Turkish backwardness and the regime of the Ottoman Empire. The approach of other Turkish authors to the history of the Ottoman Empire is fundamentally different from the approach of modern historical science. Turkish authors, first of all, try to prove that Turkish history has its own specific features that are absent in the histories of all other peoples. "Historians studying the social order of the Ottoman Empire not only did not try to compare it with general historical laws and patterns, but, on the contrary, were forced to show how Turkey and Turkish history differ from other countries and from all other histories." The Ottoman social order was very convenient and good for the Turks, and the empire developed in its own special way until Turkey came under European influence. He believes that under European influence, the economy was liberalized, the right to own land, freedom of trade and a number of other measures were legalized, and all this ruined the empire. In other words, according to this author, the Turkish Empire was ruined precisely as a result of the penetration of European principles into it.
As stated earlier, the hallmarks of European culture were law, self-restraint, the development of the sciences, and respect for the individual. In contrast, in Islamic law, we saw the unlimited power of the ruler, which does not value the individual and gives rise to unbridled luxury. A society devoted to faith and passions almost completely neglects the sciences, and therefore leads a primitive economy.

Pan-Turkism is one of the ideologies and political practices that are deeply hostile to the idea and cause of Eurasian integration. The heyday of pan-Turkist sentiments in the post-Soviet space came in the 1990s, when in the post-Soviet states of Central Asia and in the Turkic republics of the Russian Federation (primarily in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan), not only the forces oriented towards Turkey, but also the leadership of these states openly declared themselves and republics often led an openly pro-Turkish policy. In the 2000s, everything changed: states such as Uzbekistan began to move away from Turkey, local nationalists subsided in the national republics of the Russian Federation, demoralized by Putin’s strengthening of the “federal vertical”. However, who knows “what the coming day has in store for us”?

Political processes often develop in cycles, and the new in them is well forgotten old. Moreover, the corresponding "calls" already exist. In 2012, the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who used to be famous for his Eurasian sentiments, stated at a forum in Istanbul: “As Ataturk said: “The time will come when all the Turks will unite.” Therefore, I want to greet all Turkic-speaking brothers. Between Altai and the Mediterranean Sea, over 200 million brothers live. If we all come together, we will be a very effective force in the world.” In 2013, Nazarbayev proposed to include Turkey in the Customs Union. In 2017, he demanded that the state apparatus prepare the country for the translation into the Latin alphabet, and officials in Kazakhstan do not hide the fact that this step implies a rapprochement between Kazakhstan and Turkey.

At the same time, we have a vague idea of ​​the essence of pan-Turkism, its program and the mechanisms of its political implementation. In addition, there is a lack of analysis of pan-Turkism from the standpoint of the Eurasian theory. This is what we will do.

Pan-Turkism: emergence and development at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries

Pan-Turkism arose at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries as an ideology of cultural and political unification of the Turkic peoples, that is, the peoples who speak Turkic languages ​​and live on the territory of the legendary Turan, usually opposed to Iran and Persian culture.

In fact, Pan-Turkism is a kind of Turkic analogue of Pan-Slavism and Pan-Germanism, Turkic super-nationalism, and this already indicates that it is devoid of any roots in the traditional cultures of the Turkic peoples.

Pan-Turkism is an artificial construction created by representatives of the Westernizing circles of the national intelligentsia of the Turkic peoples of the Russian Empire and Turkey in imitation of the then popular forms of European political culture (for example, one of the founders of Pan-Turkism, Yusuf Akchura, studied at the School of Political Sciences at the Sorbonne in Paris and did not hide the fact that the ideas "Turkic nationalism" arose under the influence of the French scientists Sorel, Renault and Boutmy, who in their lectures preached the concept of "healthy nationalism").

The origins of pan-Turkism were the Crimean Tatar publisher and journalist Ismail Gasprinsky and the Turkish philosopher and writer of Turkmen origin, the ideologist of the Young Turk movement Ziya Gekalp. The already mentioned Tatar-Turkish public figure, writer, poet, journalist Yusuf Akchura (Yusup Khasanovich Akchurin) also played a big role in the formation of pan-Turkism. Moreover, if Gasprinsky developed the ideology of cultural pan-Turkism, which he combined with the ideas of the harmonious coexistence of the Turks with the Slavs in the Russian Empire, then Gekalp and Akchura were the creators of political anti-Russian pan-Turkism.

The Pan-Turkists were a kind of nation-builders who implemented the project of "delayed nationalism" in response to the expansion of European culture and the political and economic practices of Western imperialism. But it was, as they say, super-nationalism. That is, the classics of pan-Turkism considered the Turks to be a "single nation" (reducing the differences between the Tatars, Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Turks to the differences between the sub-ethnic groups of this nation) and advocated the creation of a state of the Turkic nation, which would stretch from China to Central Asia and from the Volga region to the Balkans.

It should be noted at the same time that many Turkic peoples (such as Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Bashkirs) at the beginning of the 20th century were not nations in the cultural sense (in other words, modern homogeneous cultural communities), of course (the process of building their cultural nations took place in Soviet times , and it seems that they have not yet turned into political nations), so the creation of a common Turkic or Turanian nation in more favorable political conditions at the beginning of the 20th century was still possible. However, this did not happen, and, as they say, you can’t turn back history.

The doctrine of Pan-Turkism in the Ottoman Empire was adopted by the Young Turks (Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha Jemal Pasha). Their ideological leader was the already mentioned Zia Gekalp, who, by the way, proclaimed that the Turk is the superman, whose appearance Nietzsche predicted. The Young Turks set themselves two tasks:

1. the transformation of the motley, multinational Ottoman Empire into a homogeneous Turkish nation-state;
2. the accession to this Turkey of territories inhabited by Turkic peoples, primarily Azerbaijan, Russian Turkestan, the Caucasus, the Volga region, Crimea, with their gradual Turkishization, since the “Turkic nation” was understood by the Young Turks precisely as a Turkish nation.

The Young Turks began to solve these problems by using real genocide against other peoples of the Ottoman Empire. So, it is they who are responsible for the Armenian genocide, as a result of which from 1 to 1.5 million Armenians were destroyed, including the elderly, women and children. In their secret telegrams, the Young Turks directly spoke of the "final liquidation" of the Armenians.

In addition, the Young Turks took an active part in the Russian civil war. The Turkish army in 1918 invaded the territory of the former Russian Empire, Azerbaijan, and reached Derbent. The Turks tried to pursue their policy in the Crimea as well. Finally, the Young Turks supported the Basmachi movement in Central Asia, and one of their leaders Enver Pasha (Minister of War of the Ottoman Empire under the Young Turk regime and a member of the leadership of the Unity and Progress party) even died in Central Asia in battles with the Red Army.

Mustafa Kemal, who replaced the Young Turks in power, abandoned their pan-Turkic project (therefore, it is unlikely that Kemal could speak about the unification of all Turks). Kemal chose the path of isolationist, Anatolian nationalism (by analogy with "Greater" and "Little Germany" one can call this the "Little Turkey" project). A certain role was played by the assistance that was provided by Soviet Russia to Kemalist Turkey: Ataturk did not want to spoil friendly relations with the USSR.

However, Kemal continued the work begun by the Young Turks to Turk the population of the former Ottoman Empire and the genocide of other peoples (primarily the Kurds, who were denied and even now denied the right to be called by their own name, they are still officially considered “mountain Turks” in Turkey). This is a fact against which those who ascribe to Atatürk a kind of French-style civic nationalism (“millietchilik”) as opposed to the German-style ethnic nationalism of the Young Turks (“Turkchelyuk”) have nothing to object to.

In Turkey, during the life of Ataturk, pan-Turkism was practically semi-underground. A number of Pan-Turkist organizations opposed to the Kemal regime were defeated and their leaders ended up in prisons (although other Pan-Turkists found their niche in the Kemalist state). Only in the 1940s, with the beginning of the Cold War, were there attempts to revive it in order to sow enmity between the Slavs and the Turks in the USSR.

Let us now turn to the history of Russian pan-Turkism. Unfortunately, the ideas of Ismail Gasprinsky about the civilizational unity of the Slavs and Turks in Russia, which were a kind of "Eurasianism before Eurasianism", were not developed. After the revolution of 1917, the Pan-Turkist politicians of the Russian Empire split into right and left wings. Representatives of the right wing (for example, Mustafa Shonkai) fought against the Soviet regime, trying to create Turkestan autonomy within the framework of "White Russia", and faced a sharp rejection of this idea by Kolchak. Then, in exile, they became close to the Turkish pan-Turkists, created their own print organ - the journal "New Turkestan" and an organization - the Turkestan National Association, closely monitoring what was happening in Soviet Turkestan and hatching plans for revenge.

During the Second World War, they tried to cooperate with Hitler, trying to get into the leadership of the Nazis planned Reichskommissariat "Turkestan". However, supporters of such cooperation, aimed at annexing Turan, were at that time in the Turkish government. Prime Minister Saracoglu said bluntly in 1941: "The destruction of Russia is a feat of the Fuhrer, the equal of which can be accomplished once in a century, and this is also the eternal dream of the Turkish people."

The left pan-Turkists (Sultangaliyev, Vakhitov) during the years of the civil war in Russia supported the Bolsheviks, tried to create a pan-Turkic state in the Volga region (Tatar-Bashkir Soviet Republic), the Russian Muslim Communist Party. The result of an attempt at cooperation between the left pan-Turkists and the Bolsheviks was the Turkestan ASSR, which was part of the RSFSR, later transformed into a union republic. However, in 1923 Sultangaliyev was arrested, his ideas were declared counter-revolutionary, in 1924 the Turkestan Republic was liquidated, in the place of which the Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, and Uzbek republics would later arise.

Pan-Turkist emigrants like Validov and Shokay were furious about this, they reproached the Bolsheviks for dismembering a single "Turkic" or "Turanian" nation in order to weaken it. Be that as it may, in 1924 the Bolsheviks forever abandoned the project of creating a “socialist pan-Turkic nation”, the title for the corresponding republic, and set a course for the construction of many “socialist Turkic nations” - Tatar, Bashkir, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek. Until the era of perestroika, pan-Turkism within the USSR was over.

The revival of Pan-Turkism after the fall of the USSR

The revival of pan-Turkism - both as an ideology and as a policy - occurred only after perestroika and especially after the fall of the USSR, both in the post-Soviet space and in Turkey. This, of course, is about right-wing, pro-Turkish pan-Turkism. Since the 1990s, Turkey has been striving to be active in the Turkic states of the CIS and in the Turkic regions of Russia with the support of the numerous pan-Turkist societies, movements and parties that exist there. This is expressed in economic assistance to these states and regions, in large investments, the development of business ties, as well as in cultural and propaganda work, the opening of Turkish educational institutions, attracting students to study in Turkey, holding scientific symposiums, broadcasting Turkish radio and television on these territories, opening branches of Turkish media there. It is impossible not to mention missionary work, visits to the Turkic regions by Turkish Islamic preachers. At the same time, the Russian special services have repeatedly noted that under the guise of preachers, teachers, businessmen, Turkish intelligence officers often go to the post-Soviet states.

Turkey made a big bet on the transition of the post-Soviet Turkic peoples from Cyrillic to Latin. Experts believe that there is a political interest behind this: “Pan-Turkist circles expect to move from a single alphabet to a single language, then to a single national community and the creation of a single state in which Turkey will play a dominant role”.

Recently, the process has moved into a phase of political integration. In 2009, the Cooperation Council of the Turkic States was established in Kazakhstan, which includes the Council of Heads of State, the Council of Foreign Ministers, and the Council of Elders. The Turkic Business Council is located in Istanbul. In fact, we have an alternative to the Eurasian Union, and under the auspices of Turkey. Gekalp's dream of a federal "Great Turan" is starting to come true...

It is clear that such a development of events is contrary to the political and geopolitical interests of Russia. But this does not bode well for the Turkic peoples of Russia themselves. When Turkish pan-Turkist emissaries talk about the unity of all Turks, their listeners and sympathizers from Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan naively think that we are talking about an equal union of all Turkic peoples. But this, of course, is a delusion. The Turkish language does not even have two words to distinguish between the concepts of "Turks" and "Turks".

When Turkish pan-Turkists talk about a single Turkic nation and Turkic culture, they simply mean the Turkish nation and Turkish culture. Bashkirs, Tatars, Kazakhs, Uzbeks are offered to dissolve in the Turkish nation, in other words, to become Turks.

It is for this that Turkey diligently imposes the transition to the Latin alphabet on all these peoples (in the case of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and now Kazakhstan, this has already been achieved, there are many enthusiasts of such a transition in Russian Tatarstan). This will give the “titular” peoples of these republics access to Turkish literature and the media (Turkic languages ​​are close to each other, it is not difficult for speakers of other Turkic languages ​​to learn Turkish). Further assimilation will follow, of course, not now, but in two or three generations, who will already be learning Latin at school and will not know either Cyrillic or plain Russian (it is clear that Turkey’s influence will increase only if the federal center in Russia is weakened and sovereignty of the Turkic regions).

Of course, in this case, the Bashkirs, Uzbeks, Tatars, Kazakhs will have to forget their many decades of culture created in Soviet times. Instead of Mustai Karim, they will be offered Ahmetzaki Validi, and instead of Musa Jalil - Yusuf Akchura. Validi and Akchura are examples of Bashkir and Tatar intellectuals who abandoned their national identity (after all, they sincerely believed that Tatars and Bashkirs belong to the Turkish ethnic group, like Ryazanians and Siberians to Russian) and deliberately declared themselves Turks both in culture and in language , and political affiliation. The same path is offered to all Turkic peoples by Turkish politicians and their henchmen in the expanses of Russian Turan.

Turks and Russian Turks do not constitute a single culture

They can be countered with a Eurasian view of the relations between the Turks of Russia and the Turks, which would be based not on the concept of civilization on a linguistic basis (like Pan-Slavism and Pan-Turkism), which has long been outdated, but on the theory of local development. The founders of Eurasianism, P. N. Savitsky and N. S. Trubetskoy, believed that, despite the cultural overlaps between the Slavic peoples, there was no single Slavic civilization, because these peoples belonged to different geopolitical zones, places of development. There were no representatives of the Turkic peoples in the group of Eurasians (of the non-Russian Eurasians, only the Kalmyk Khara-Davan and the Jew Bromberg can be named), therefore, the Eurasian classics did not make a critical analysis of Pan-Turkism from the standpoint of Eurasian theory, symmetrical to their critical analysis of Pan-Slavism. But it is easy to understand that this analysis would be based on two fundamental theses.

First, the Ottoman Turks are absolutely in vain to impose on the Eurasian Turks the idea that they constitute a single culture and civilization. On the contrary, both anthropologically and in terms of their culture, and even more so geopolitically, the Ottoman Turks are the heirs of the Byzantine civilization that developed in the “around Tsaregrad area” (P. N. Savitsky). And the second: both in their culture and geopolitically, the Eurasian Turks are members of the Eurasian civilization and are much closer to the Eurasian Slavs than to the Ottoman Turks.

Let's try to substantiate the first thesis.

The basis of the foundations of the ideology of pan-Turkism is the idea of ​​the biological, cultural and civilizational unity of all Turkic-speaking peoples, including the Ottoman Turks who lived in the Ottoman Empire and live in modern Turkey, and the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tatars, Bashkirs, in short, the Turkic peoples of the Russian Empire, USSR and post-Soviet space. The idea is deeply false and at least has a lot of internal strains and inconsistencies. To understand this, let us first turn to the ethnogenesis of the Ottoman Turks.

Official Turkish science (namely, the ideology of Turkish nationalism and pan-Turkism is based on its conclusions) proceeds from the fact that modern Turks are the descendants of the Turkic Oguz tribes (Turkmen), who penetrated from Central Asia to Anatolia and founded their principalities there. One of the largest among them was the Ottoman principality, which turned into the Ottoman Empire after the conquest of Byzantium. However, as always happens in such cases, the number of conquered far exceeds the number of conquerors. At one time in the 17th century, the Manchus (by the way, related to the Oghuz Turks) also conquered China, but after a few generations they themselves actually turned into Chinese in culture and language, although for centuries the nobility remembered their Manchu origin (as well as the Chinese remembered this , who at the beginning of the 20th century nevertheless overthrew the Manchus, although they actually did not differ from the Chinese in any way).

The Oghuz Turks did not succeed in completely dissolving among the local population, this was prevented by the religious barrier between the Muslim Turks and the Greeks, but the mixing reached a very large scale. So, already in the first centuries after the resettlement to Asia Minor, the Mongoloid features of the Oghuz Turks practically disappeared, which are still characteristic of many Turkic ethnic groups of the Russian and post-Soviet area. Experts note that modern “The Turks, to some extent genetically, are the successors of the population of Asia Minor, who lived there long before the Turkic tribes arrived there. Many descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Anatolia were assimilated by the emerging Turkish ethnos".

Of course, the Greeks had a great influence on the ethnogenesis, as well as on the cultural genesis of the Turks. Actually, anthropologically modern Turks have little in common with Kazakhs or Uzbeks (to whom the emissaries of pan-Turkism impose the idea of ​​their mythical “kinship”), but they are very close to the Greeks. This is no coincidence; a significant number of their ancestors are Byzantine Greeks who converted to Islam. In the case of the Turkish nobility, the mixing took place even without conversion to Islam: Islam allows you to take Christian women as wives, and the spouses (and, accordingly, mothers) of many Turkish sultans were Orthodox Greek; this applies to the wife of Orhan I, mothers of Murad I, Bayezid I and many others. It is clear that at the court there were a huge number of relatives of Greek princesses who married Turkish aristocrats. Greek military leaders converted to Islam and became Ottoman aristocrats. So, the famous aristocratic family of Mikhaloglu went back to the Byzantine feudal lord Michael Kese. The Greeks who converted to Islam were the famous Ottoman architect Sinan, the navigator Piri Reis.

By the way, the influence of the Slavs on the Turkish anthropological type is also great. The mothers of many Turkish sultans (such as Mohammed II and Suleiman the Magnificent) were Slavic, and these sultans understood the Slavic language. Janissaries were mainly recruited from among the Balkan Slavs. Slavs who converted to Islam were many of the highest officials of the Ottoman Empire (such as the vizier Sokolu Pasha). In the Turkish service, one could meet both Poles and Russians, moreover, there were so many Slavs among the diplomats of the early Ottoman Empire that the Serbian dialect of Church Slavonic became the language of diplomacy there. Marriages with Slav women were not uncommon among ordinary citizens of the Ottoman Empire. Nowadays, one can often meet in Turkish cities the anthropological type of Turks, in which the Slavic influence is easily guessed: its carriers have light skin, blond hair, blue eyes. It is enough to compare the photograph of Mustafa Kemal with the appearance of an average Kyrgyz or Kazakh in order to understand the value of the pan-Turkists' tales about the genetic relationship of the Turks and the Turks of Russia and the USSR.

Pan-Turkists like to argue that the Turks nevertheless practically have a common language. Indeed, the modern Turkish language is quite close to Azerbaijani or, say, Tatar. But this is a consequence of the fact that the Turkish language was artificially Turkified during the era of the Kemalist cultural revolution. In the Ottoman Empire, the official language of the Turkic subjects (in general, the empire was divided into millets, and each millet had its own language) was the Old Ottoman language. However, to call it Turkic can be a very big stretch. Up to 90% of his vocabulary consisted of Arabic and Persian borrowings (there were also many words from Greek, mainly terms related to navigation and fishing). In fact, it resembled Surzhik: Turkic grammar and Persian-Arabic vocabulary.

Mustafa Kemal, wanting to create a “Turkish nation”, carried out a language reform and introduced an artificial language, where all these borrowings were replaced by invented Turkisms (it’s as if the Russian government replaced borrowings in Russian with neologisms invented by Slavophiles: “galoshes” with “wet shoes” , "sidewalk" to "ambulance"). The practice of Kemal's language reform reached the point of absurdity: journalists who propagandized the reform first wrote their articles in their native Ottoman language, then submitted the texts to special language commissions (ikameci), where linguists translated the texts into "New Turkish" and then sent them to print. Readers, of course, also had to use dictionaries in order to understand the newspaper article. By the way, the reform led to the impoverishment of the language and to the separation of the Turks from the golden age of Turkish literature, which occurred in the first decades of the 20th century, when they were still writing in Ottoman.

This newspeak, which the Turks have been forced to speak for 100 years, is, of course, close to the Turkic languages, but we have evidence not so much of the relationship of the Turkic languages ​​as of the barbaric despotism of the builder of the “Turkish nation”. Historians say that Kemalist Newspeak is “a completely new Turkish language” and has little to do with the real historical language of the Ottoman Turks (it is, however, associated with the dialects of the semi-literate lower classes of the Ottoman Empire, but they were perceived by educated Ottomans, as English aristocrats perceive London "cockney").

It turns out that at first the Pan-Turkists of the first generation Turkified the Ottoman language, and now the Pan-Turkists of the second generation, pointing to the proximity of New Turkish to other Turkic languages, assert: this means that we are all brothers.

Before us is nothing more than a juggling of arguments, but, alas, they do not pay attention to this.

If we turn to the true culture of the Ottoman Turks (from which, as it was said, modern Turks have been cut off for about a century as a result of the reform of the language and the transition to the Latin alphabet), then we will see that it also goes back to the Greek, Byzantine culture. We will not give examples regarding architecture - the connection between Byzantine basilicas and Ottoman mosques is obvious and well known. Let us turn to everyday and folk culture. Many dishes of Turkish cuisine actually date back to Byzantine, Mediterranean (and after all, cuisine is the most conservative part of the national tradition, preserved even with the loss of the language), the famous Turkish baths are nothing more than Roman baths that existed in Byzantium, dances and Ottoman folk music is often difficult to distinguish from Greek dances and music.

The influence of the Byzantines on the Turks manifested itself even in the sphere where, it would seem, they were opposed to each other. Historians write: “Greeks and Turks venerated the same saints. St. George and St. Theodore incarnated in Khidr Elyas, St. Nicholas - in Sary-Altuk, St. Kharlampy - in Hadji Bektashi ". The dervishes of the Biktashi order had a kind of communion with wine, which was, of course, an imitation of the Christian sacrament. It is no coincidence that Sufism (especially Bektashism) spread in the Ottoman Empire with its idea of ​​a supra-confessional mystical path to God, as well as Alavism (Alevism) with its direct roots in Orthodox mysticism and Gnostic Christian sects (still from 3 to 25 million inhabitants of Turkey are Alawites). ).

An appeal to the political and economic institutions of the Porte will further convince us of the opinion expressed. The Turkish (or more correctly, Ottoman) sultan had the official title "Sultan ar Rum", that is, "King of the Byzantines." The Turks adopted from the Byzantines the palace ceremonial, the system of administration, the tax system (the Byzantine tax zevgarion was simply renamed the chief), and they reorganized the army along the lines of the Byzantine one. Finally, the Turks borrowed from the Byzantines even their coat of arms - a crescent with a star, because in the Roman Empire it was the coat of arms of Constantinople, dating back to the ancient cult of Artemis, which was depicted with a crescent and a star in her hair (the crescent became a symbol of Islam precisely thanks to the Turks, the Arabs did not have such a symbol, Persians-Iranians still consider it a pagan sign).

So, the real, pre-Kemalist Turkish culture has not only Turkic, but also powerful Byzantine roots. The Turks, both anthropologically and culturally, are not Turks at all, but a Turkic-Greek-Slavic, South Eurasian synthetic ethnos, which has no direct relation to our northern Eurasian type.

This, by the way, was well understood by the Turkish nationalists of the early 20th century, who set themselves the task of creating an artificial entity - a modernist Turkish nation with an equally artificial new Turkish language. The already mentioned Ziya Gekalp frankly stated that it was necessary to “cleanse” Turkish culture from Byzantine influences.

The Ottoman Turks were also the heirs of Byzantium in geopolitics. As already mentioned, the founder of Eurasianism, P. N. Savitsky, introduced the term “around-Tsaregrad area”, which includes Asia Minor, Greece and the Balkans. From the point of view of Eurasian theory, this place of development is the arena where the main events of Greek and Turkish history unfold. The empires that arise in it seek to fill this place of development, regardless of the ethnic substratum of the states. P. N. Savitsky wrote: “The Turkish Empire was the heir of Byzantium and adopted for itself the “around - Constantinople” (in the broad sense) place of development, that is, the northeastern (partly eastern and southern) part of the Mediterranean.”

Thus, the Ottoman Turks pursued the same policy as the Byzantines, gathering Byzantine lands, including Bulgaria and Serbia, around Constantinople, renamed Istanbul (just as in another, Eurasian location, Muscovite Russia gathered Horde lands around itself). Clearly, from these positions, the pan-Turkist direction of policy is completely unnatural for Turkey.

It is no coincidence that even Mustafa Kemal, with his ideas of Turkic-Turkish nationalism in foreign policy, chose not the path of pan-Turkism, which was logical from the point of view of his doctrine (if the Turks are the descendants of the Turks, then their direct duty is to annex their historical homeland, Central Asia), but the former "Tsargrad" course and, dissociating himself from the pan-Turkic adventures of Enver Pasha, tried to create a "Turkish-Greek confederation". In this regard, it is amusing to observe the pan-Turkist attempts of modern Turkish politicians, who, apparently, are going to become greater Kemalists than Kemal himself.

The common fate of the Eurasian Turks and Eastern Slavs

So, the Turks are by no means relatives and brothers to the Eurasian Turks, no matter what the pan-Turkists say about it (just like the Poles are no brothers to the Russians, no matter what the pan-Slavists say).

Let us now turn to the second thesis of criticism of pan-Turkism - that Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet Turks are culturally and geopolitically close to Russians and other Eastern Slavs.

The interaction of the Eastern Slavs and the Turks is rooted in antiquity. Kievan Rus was surrounded by Turkic peoples - Pechenegs, Polovtsy, Khazars, relations with which were far from always hostile: they traded with each other, the Turks were in the service of Slavic princes, and the steppe "princesses" became wives, and then mothers of Slavic aristocrats . The Golden Horde included both the Kipchak Turks and the Slavs. Many aristocratic Russian families go back to the Kipchak “Murzas” (Urusovs, Yusupovs, Apraksins, Kochubeys, Aksakovs). From the 15th century, Moscow princes, and then tsars and emperors, began to collect the lands inhabited by the Turks, and “serving Tatars” played an important role in this, which was noted by P. N. Savitsky in his famous aphorism “without Tatars, there would be no Russia.” This process ends in the 19th century, when Central Asia became part of the Russian Empire. After the collapse of the empire, its territories were again united into a single state - the USSR, which included both the Turkic allied and autonomous republics. And after the collapse of the USSR, Slavic-Turkic interactions remain both in the post-Soviet countries themselves and between them, within the framework of such integration projects as the EurAsEC.

Of course, such a long coexistence could not but affect the culture. Usually, the influence of Turkic cultures on Russian is noted. Indeed, in the Russian language there are about two thousand words of Turkic origin (“bazaar”, “goods”, “money”, “customs”, “pencil”, “esaul” ...). Political traditions, the economic system of the Golden Horde, even the organization of the postal service - all this served as a model for the Muscovite kingdom. However, little attention is paid to the reverse influence - Russian culture on the cultures of the Turkic peoples of Eurasia. At the same time, over many centuries of coexistence, these cultures have intertwined, forming a multi-ethnic symbiosis, so that breaking them, as N. S. Trubetskoy once put it, is impossible without great suffering and blood.

A clear evidence of such an influence is the presence in the languages ​​of the Turkic peoples of a significant number of Russianisms, that is, words that came from the Russian language and through the Russian language. Moreover, we are talking not only about the layers of the Soviet vocabulary, but also about the more ancient ones. So, in the Bashkir language there are many words borrowed from Russian, but so long ago that they “obashkirilis”, that is, they began to obey the law of syllabic synharmonicism characteristic of the Turkic languages, so to speak, adapted to the language. Now it is sometimes even difficult to guess about their Russian origin. These are words such as arysh - “rye”, bүrәnә - “log”, kүstәnәs - “hotel”, kәbeҫtә - “cabbage”, miҙal - “medal”, simeshkә - “seeds”, sirkәү - “church”, sәynuk - “ teapot”, tormә - “prison”, eshlәpә - “hat”, үtek - “iron”, өҫтәл - “table”. The language reflects the life of peoples, and the appearance in the Bashkir language of the Russian words "rye", "cabbage", "tea", "teapot" speaks of the changes that have occurred in the culture and life of the Bashkirs after their meeting with the Russians.

The Bashkirs began to sow rye (“arysh”), grow vegetables (“kabysta”), from Russian merchants they (together with other Turkic peoples) received an invigorating drink “tea”, which became the national symbol of the Russian Turks and without which it is now impossible to imagine their life (It is curious that, although modern Turks also prefer tea to other drinks, this is a completely new phenomenon: Ataturk taught them to do this - a tireless fighter against everything Turkish and national. Before Ataturk, Turks, like Greeks and Serbs, drank only coffee).

Of course, relations between the Turks and Russians did not always go smoothly, and the 18th century was replete with Bashkir uprisings, but already in the 19th century, Bashkir horsemen bravely fought as part of the Russian army against Napoleonic soldiers. The common fate of the Russians and Turks of Eurasia is sealed with the blood of military exploits...

However, the final rapprochement came, of course, in the Soviet years. Before the revolution, the Turks still lived somewhat apart due to their religious otherness: most of them belong to the Muslim peoples (the exceptions are the Yakuts and Chuvashs, who are connected with the Russians by a common religion - Orthodoxy, and, according to some historians, the Chuvash conversion to Orthodoxy saved them from assimilation among the Tatar people, which was in full swing in the era of their Islamization in the Kazan kingdom). The disappearance of religious barriers in the Soviet period opened the way for rapprochement up to fraternization and blood ties. It was at this time that mixed Russian-Turkic marriages appeared in large numbers, especially in cities.

But the main thing is not even this, but that the modernization of the Turkic peoples of “Russian Eurasia”, which for the most part were at the stage of traditional society before the revolution, was carried out on the model of Russian modernization (unlike the Turks, whose modernization was carried out according to French and German samples).

Through the Russian language and Russian culture, the Eurasian Turks touched the riches of European and world cultures; literature, theater, painting, cinema - all forms of modernist art, as well as science, education systems, were built in accordance with the paradigm of the corresponding Russian forms.

That is why the attempts to de-Russify Turkic cultures, which are undertaken by Turkic nationalists and pan-Turkists in the post-Soviet era, quite naturally lead to the archaization of these peoples...

Another war that went down in our history as the Great Patriotic War, much more cruel than the Napoleonic invasion, became another test of the connection between Russians and Turks, and it passed this test.

Today, Russian-Turkic relations in Eurasia are again going through hard times. Turkic nationalists and pan-Turkists, actively supported from abroad, especially from Turkey, are trying to break the mechanisms of coexistence of our cultures that have been operating for centuries. Instead, they offer a myth about the "kinship" of the Turks and the Eurasian Turks, supposedly constituting a single culture and civilization. I hope in this article I was able to show that this is nothing more than a myth.

Russian-Turkish wars

History in tables, maps and loosles.

Reader warning:

This is the so-called beta version of the text. Misprints will be corrected, commas added, history rewritten. The author disclaims responsibility for the possible rethinking of these events, replaying wars and revising their results.

Who are the Turks and why were they so powerful?

The Turks are the descendants of the Turkish tribes (Seljuks) who invaded the peninsula of Asia Minor. Their language is similar to Tatar, Bashkir, Kipchak (Polovtsian) and, to a much lesser extent, Mongolian.

In all eras, Asia Minor was a rich, densely populated agricultural region. Before the defeat from the Seljuks, its territory belonged to Byzantium (as we call this country, but no one cares how the natives called the empire). Under the conquerors, the agricultural population was mostly preserved - it fed the huge Turkish army. Some of the local residents have retained their national identity - many Greeks still live in Turkey. The rest gradually assimilated.

Soon after the conquest, the traditional fragmentation of their states set in among the nomads. Against this background, one of the Turkish tribes rose - the Ottomans (in the European version - the Ottomans). Since 1288, they have been picking up small sultanates for themselves and eating up the remnants of Byzantium. True, before his death, the Roman state managed to do a good job of spoiling Europe, which had abandoned it to the mercy of fate. The Greeks used the Turks to fight the rebellious vassals - Bulgaria, Serbia, Epirus. The Ottomans liked the European coast so much that they conquered it for themselves and moved their capital.

Sultan Bayezid was great - it was he who finished off the “Serb brothers” on the Kosovo field, it was he who laid the good Turkish tradition of killing all close male relatives upon accession to the throne (as a result, the Ottoman Empire was spared from fragmentation and internecine strife for 200 years). And then, on the ruins of an old chapel... and then Tamerlane came and almost bombed the young state into the Stone Age. Didn't get it, hack...

In 1453, Sultan Mehmed II captured Constantinople. Byzantium is over. In Moscow, they bent their fingers and figured out that now they are Babylon-5, the Third Rome. The Turks did not agree with the Muscovites - after all, in their opinion, the "Second Rome" did not disappear anywhere - the power simply changed in it. Since then, national ideas have tragically intersected among the two imperial peoples.

Moscow - the Second Sarai - is taking over the lands of the former Golden Horde. Including - the territory of its Muslim peoples.

Moscow - the Third Rome (and, concurrently, the Second Jerusalem) - is fighting for the unification under its rule of all Orthodox peoples.

Later - in the 19th century - the idea arose of the right of Russia to unite the Slavic peoples (pan-Slavicism)

Istanbul - the Second Rome - also collects Byzantine lands, trying to reach the borders of Justinian.

The Ottoman state also proclaims itself the New Caliphate - a single state of all Muslims. Under this pretext, the Arab and Persian territories, which were not part of the Roman Empire, join.

Finally, the Turks - which is quite logical - claim power over all Turkic-speaking peoples (pan-Turkism)

Comparing the ideological claims of the two powers, we see: a conflict of interests arises in Central Asia, the Volga region, the Caucasus and the Crimea. All the Balkan countries, Palestine and the very heart of the Turkish Empire - Constantinople are affected.

Turkey is the first to realize its ambitions. By the time Ivan IV arranged a campaign against Kazan (1552), the Balkans, Crimea, the Middle East and North Africa already belonged to the Ottoman ruler Sauron Suleiman the Magnificent. They control almost the entire Arab world. Most of the lands of the empire recognize themselves not as provinces, but as vassals of the Black Lord of the Turkish Sultan. But this does not make it easier for the enemies of the High Port - on the borders there are still fortresses with strong Turkish garrisons, like Azov, Cafe (Feodosia) and Ochakov in the Black Sea region.

Stop! It seems that I completely confused the reader with the names. It should be clarified that the words "Turkey", "Ottoman Empire", "Ottoman Empire" and "High (Brilliant) Port" are used to denote the same state in the same period - from the 14th century to 1922). The Republic of Turkey has existed for the last 90 years.

In the language of the natives, the capital of the Turks is called Istanbul, in Russian - Istanbul, sometimes the city continues to be called Constantinople.

The rulers are called sultans.

The vizier is an analogue of our minister.

Pasha - governor of the province, governor, military leader.

The power of the Ottomans was based on the populous and food independence of their state (all the “bread” regions of the Middle Earth of the Mediterranean were under the rule of the Sultan. The population of the empire reached 110 million people (For comparison, in the then Muscovy there were barely 10 million, and in modern Russia 142 million live). citizens and migrant workers). Large land plots in the occupied territories were requisitioned and split up - many small owners recruited into high-quality infantry and fleet. Now it is clear that if the Muscovy state turned out to be the main, and not a secondary enemy of Turkey, the kings would be unhappy ... To Fortunately, Central Europe and Persia have traditionally been the main gateways for Ottoman butting.

2. Crimean rudeness khanate

The very productive plains of the Black Sea region, combined with several coastal trading cities, were the economic core of the Golden Horde. Therefore, during the collapse of the Tatar-Mongolian state in the middle of the 15th century, the Crimean Khanate was the first to free itself from the power of Sarai and withstood the pressure of neighboring powers. In an offensive campaign, the Crimeans could mobilize up to 50,000 cavalry soldiers. If the war was unsuccessful, from the interfluves of the Don, Dnieper and Donets, subjects migrated to the peninsula, leaving the pursuing opponents with a waterless, burned and poisoned steppe. From the most stubborn enemies, several rows of fortifications protected the Perekop Isthmus from sea to sea.

The favorable geographical position allowed the Crimeans to get away from such archaic forms of activity as agriculture and animal husbandry. The country was fed by trade and war.

Every spring, as soon as the first grass came out, hordes of nomads set off "into the corral". Penetrating into the territory of Russia and Rzhechi Commonwealth, the flying detachments of the Tatars captured the "yasyr" - a living commodity - and drove the slaves to the markets of Yenikale, Kaffa and Gezlev (Kerch, Feodosia, Evpatoria). There was no slavery in Crimea itself - the Slavs were sold to the Ottoman Empire. This way of existence of the state even got its own term - "raid economy". I will add that we could see the features of this in Chechnya in 1992-2000.

Fortifications on land allowed the khans to go to the most vile impudence and decide on the most impudent meanness. But for landing from the sea, Crimea is absolutely defenseless. And to the Turkish capital - three or four days of leisurely sailing. As a result, since 1466 the Geraev labor dynasty became a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. The Turks strengthen Kerch, which blocks the Sea of ​​Azov, put the fortress of Azov at the mouth of the Don, and Ochakov, Tavansky town (Kakhovka), Kherson on the Dnieper. The Black Sea is becoming an internal "Turkish Lake". In order to protect itself from the Crimean raids, the Russian state should, first of all, “uncork” the river mouths and put up a force that can compete with one of the strongest military fleets in the world.

This is the disposition at the time of the first clash between the Kremlin and the High Porte in the reign of Ivan IV

The history of the emergence and formation of such a people as the Meskhetian Turks is covered with interesting historical facts. The position of this nation on the geographical and socio-political map of the world has been very ambiguous for several decades. The origin of the Turks and the features of their identification in the modern world are the object of research by a number of scientists - sociologists, anthropologists, historians and lawyers.

Until now, in the study of this issue, researchers have not come to a common denominator. It is important that the Meskhetian Turks themselves ambiguously designate their ethnicity.

One group considers itself to be the indigenous Georgians who converted to Islam in the 17th-18th centuries. and those who mastered the other are the descendants of the Turks who ended up in Georgia during the Ottoman Empire.

One way or another, in connection with historical events, the representatives of this people endured many migrations and led a nomadic way of life. This is due to several waves of deportations experienced by the Meskhetian Turks (from Meskhetia, located on the territory of southern Georgia in the Meskhet-Javakheti region). Moreover, the Meskhetians call themselves Akhaltsikhe Turks (Ahıska Türkler).

The first large-scale expulsion from the settled native places dates back to 1944. It was then, on the orders of I. Stalin, that the “undesirables” in the person of the Meskhetian Turks, Chechens, Greeks, and Germans had to be deported. It was during this period that more than 90,000 Meskhetians went to the Uzbek, Kazakh and

Thus, not having time to recover from ordeals, the Meskhetian Turks of the new generation suffered oppression as a result of hostilities in the Fergana Valley of the Uzbek SSR. Having become victims of a massacre, after the order of the Government of the USSR, they were evacuated to Central Russia. One of the main goals pursued by the Fergana "mess" was the Kremlin's pressure on Georgia and the entire people, who declared their desire to be independent and free in April 1989.

With the growing conflict and instability of the situation not only in Ferghana, but also in other territories of the country, the Turks dispersed in Russia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. In total, about 70 thousand people became

In the modern world, the issue of repatriation and protection of the rights of the Meskhetian people is very relevant and complex, coming to the forefront of international relations and political vicissitudes. The problem is exacerbated by the ambiguity of goals, deadlines and wishes, both on the part of the authorities and the representatives of the people themselves.

Having joined in 1999, Georgia undertook to raise and resolve the issue of the return of the Turks to their homeland within 12 years, intensify the process of repatriation and integration, and give them official citizenship.

However, there are factors that complicate the implementation of this project. Among them:

The once active armenization of the historical homeland of the Turks (Meskheti and Javakheti); there are fanatical attitudes of aggression of one minority against the return of another to this territory;

Insufficiently resolute position of the Georgian official bodies;

The low level of the legislative and legal framework regulating this issue, which is the reason for the lack of results of all the adopted and announced decisions.