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The issue of the origin of today's Turks raises doubts, disagreements and reactions mainly from the Turkish side, but also a particularly burning question: are there Ottomans (Osmanlids) or Seljuk Turks today? If we look for Mongol traits in the characteristics of today's Turks, we will hardly find them. The few thousand Ottomans, Seljuks and Turkomans, who invaded Asia Minor, were assimilated by the pre-existing population. These small Turkish war groups incorporated many populations from the area of ​​Asia Minor (and not only). But did these war groups become a nation?

✔The Turks appeared in history as a tribal war group in the early 5th century BC in the steppes of Siberia after the departure of their relatives the Huns. In 402 AD, the Yuan-Yuan occupied the Altai region. From there, they expelled other war groups, who moved around Lake Aral (the cradle of the Huns who had abandoned it). The Byzantines gave these groups the name Hephthalites or White Huns. In 425 AD, the Hephthalites occupied present-day Afghanistan and part of Pakistan. Other war groups, who were expelled by the Yuan-Yuan, moved to northern China and created the empire of the T'o-pa Wei. They consolidated their position and now controlled the famous "Silk Road", which brought them great wealth. The same road also passed through the Hephthalites, who in turn secured enormous profits.

The Silk Road, which reached the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, was secured through fierce wars between the Tuo-pa and the Hephthalites against the Yuan-Yuan. In 429 AD, the Yuan-Yuan were defeated and disbanded. Warring groups that had previously been subordinate to the Yuan-Yuan rebelled against the Tuo-pa. The most powerful of these groups was the one the Chinese called the Tu-qiue. They gained their independence and created a state.

The Tu-qiu, led by Bumin, crushed the Yuan-Yuan in 552 and wiped them out. They captured their capital and settled there. When Bumin died, the empire was divided into two parts: his eldest son Mu-Han took the eastern part and the younger Istemi the western part. Now the two Tu-qiu empires covered the entire length of the Silk Road, conquering key areas.

✔Sultanato in Anatolia
The road passed further west and through the Sassanid Persian empire. The Byzantines, who were constantly at war with the Persians, were keenly interested in the most valuable commodity of the time. Since they were unable to trade with the Persians, they sent an embassy to the Tu-kiue. An alliance was signed and embassies were exchanged. The Silk Road changed course. It moved towards the northern Caspian Sea and ended up in the Black Sea, which was Byzantine. Through the Tu-kiue, they also established relations with China. In Byzantine texts, the name of the Tu-kiue is transcribed as Turks! The western branch of the Tu-kiue therefore receives this name.

All these tribes, the Yuan-Yuan, the Hephthalites, the T'o-pa Wei, the Tu-qiue, belong to the Turanian or Turkish family, which is a branch of the Mongolic and morphologically resemble the Mongols. Therefore, they broadly belong to the yellow race.

In 575, Tardu ascended the throne of the western Tu-Kyu and severed relations with the easterners, restored relations with the Chinese and secured full control of the Silk Road. It was then that his allies, the Byzantines, would reach China under the protection of the Tu-Kyu. They now dominated all of Central Asia and forced the Hephthalites to disintegrate and scatter. Some of these warlike tribes would come to Europe (via Russia) and would be known in history as the Avars, who, led by Khan Bayan, would unsuccessfully besiege Constantinople. They created a vast state from the Baltic to the Dnieper and from the Danube to the Elbe! With the death of Bayan, they will be limited to the borders of present-day western Hungary and Romania.

The western Turks (Turks) will be definitively separated from the Easterners. The westerners accepted the influence of Iranian culture and the easterners of Chinese. The western Turks, in addition to the profits of the Silk Road, are engaged in hunting and livestock farming. They feed on meat, milk and other livestock products. They live in tents and move on horseback from place to place according to the needs of their herds. The richest had their tents on carts. The royal family was called Gok Turk and did not have particular privileges. All the tribes were buduns, that is, groups of free people and all the men were warriors. The herds and agricultural work were taken over by slaves from the captives they captured.

✔Their religion was simple: they worshipped the forces of nature. So was justice. Rebellion and murder were punishable by death. Other offenses required compensation for the victim. For example, if someone gouged out another person's eye, they were obliged to give him a wife or daughter. Justice was administered by the tribal leaders and the king.

Their main trade was horses, which they sold mainly to the Chinese. Over time, agriculture entered their lives and the need for permanent settlements became imperative.

✔With the death of the great Khan Bak-Chor (716), the Western Turkish Empire faces a terrible crisis with many uprisings of conquered peoples and slowly collapses. It is then that the Arabs, who are the bearers of a new religion: Islam, arrive at the outskirts of their empire. In order to dominate the conquered lands, the Arabs need strong mercenary forces. Thus, they turn to the Turks, where over the years they will staff the majority of the Arab army. Soon the Turkish mercenaries raised their heads and raised and lowered caliphs in Baghdad. The uneducated Turks, in the 9th century, essentially took Baghdad!

In the 10th century, a powerful Turkic group, the Karluks, who lived in Chinese Turkestan, were expelled by the Chinese Song dynasty, poured into the western steppes of Central Asia, and occupied Bukhara, creating their own kingdom. What is the significance of this event? It is the first Turkic Muslim kingdom in history.

✔Another Turkish tribe, the Ghuz, who also lived in Central Asia, were pushed westward by pressure from the Chinese and Indians. They flourished under the dynasty of a ruler named Seljuk. His grandson, Togrul-beg, managed to discipline the unruly warbands of the Ghuz, who would henceforth be known as the Seljuks. Togrul's ability and the paralysis of the Caliphate of Baghdad ensured their supremacy throughout the Middle East.]

✔The course and growth of the Sunni Seljuks' power amaze the world. There are three chronological milestones in their impressive course: in 1055 they become official protectors of the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad. The caliph has formal power. The real power is held by the Seljuks! In simpler words, they become the representatives of Islam. In 1071 their sultan, Alp-Arslan, crushes the Byzantines in the monumental battle of Manzikert (in Eastern Asia Minor). The Byzantine emperor himself, Romanos Diogenes, is taken prisoner! It is a fatal blow for the Byzantines. In 1078 the Seljuks capture Damascus and now dominate the Muslim world.

After their victory at Manzikert, they founded a state in Asia Minor with Iconium as their capital. From the time they were driven from the steppes, within thirty years they became masters of the Caliphate of Baghdad and founded a state in Asia Minor. Not even the Arabs had penetrated so deeply into Byzantine territory!

Their primitive and simple organization gives unity to the Muslim world, at the moment when the Crusades begin. The Seljuks conquer Asia Minor thanks to their policy. The rural world was tired of the tax oppression of the Byzantine state. The Seljuks lightened their taxes and won them over. Thus, thousands of Christian populations convert of their own free will!

The Crusades, whose main purpose was to open trade (of spices and silk) with the Far East, united the Muslims and allowed the Seljuks to extend their rule to the most important centers of the Muslim world. But as soon as the Crusades ended, the disputes between the Muslim sects resurfaced and their empire fragmented.

At this difficult time for the Muslim world, the scourge of the terrible Mongol Genghis Khan arrives like a hurricane, which began in the same area (Central Asia) from which the Huns and the Turks began. The Mongols occupy Baghdad and Syria and push the Turkish tribes further west. The history of the Mongols of Genghis Khan, Hulagu and their successors also acquires great importance for the history of modern Greece: the swept and plundered Turkish kingdoms are dissolved and Turkish peoples are expelled towards the Middle East and Asia Minor.

Faced with the destruction wrought by the Mongols, the Turkish tribes retreated towards Muslim lands. The Mongols followed them and conquered Persia, taking Baghdad and then Syria. Now, the Turkish tribes were pushed towards the Middle East.

✔One of the most active groups of Turks are the Oghuz or Oghuzes according to the Byzantines. Until the 10th century. they live nomadically. During the 11th century. they settle in Sogdia (Eastern Persia). They accept Islam, but the strange thing is that they impose their language on the neighboring peoples and Turkify them. The Oghuz did not have their own writing and their first texts are written in Chinese form! In Sogdia they will adopt the Arabic alphabet. So it is from these Oghuzes that the Osmanlids or Ottoman Turks also originate.

Among the Oghuz war groups that were pressured by the Mongols was the group of Ertugrul Pandisah, who settled in the region of Armenia in 1224. He was the son of the chieftain Suleiman Pandisah and the father of Osman or Othman, the leader of the Ottoman dynasty. Around Ertugrul, 400 families gathered with their herds. Under pressure from the Mongols, they abandoned Armenia and retreated west, to Asia Minor. As they retreated, they found themselves on the battlefield between the Mongols and the army of the Seljuk sultan Alaeddin Kaykobad I. Ertugrul sided with his fellow Seljuk and helped Alaeddin win the victory.

As a reward, he was given the Dumanic region, on Mount Olympus in Bithynia, to graze their flocks, and the Sogut plains for wintering. Thus, Ertugrul took on the task of guarding the borders with the Byzantines, that is, he played a role similar to that of the Byzantine Akriti. The sultan, appreciating his loyalty, granted him a timarium in the Puzunu region (Eski Şehir). There he lived peacefully for fifty years, without anything noteworthy being mentioned about him. He died in 1288 and his tomb is one of the most revered monuments of the Ottomans. He left three sons: Osman or Othman, founder of the Ottoman dynasty, Guduzalp and Saruyati Savci.

✔Osman was born in 1259 and died in 1326. He was called gazis, meaning conqueror. He showed exceptional abilities. He captured the Byzantine fortress of Hemegia and captured the Byzantine commander Michael Kossifos, whom he befriended and after converting, he was named Kesse. He helped him consolidate the Ottoman state.

The Seljuk Sultanate of Iconium paid tribute to the Mongols. In 1298, Alaeddin Kaykobad III became sultan and this, for unknown reasons, provoked reactions among the Mongols. They invaded the sultanate and deposed Alaeddin III, dividing his possessions among their vassal petty princes (1300). Few retained their possessions. One of them was Osman. 1300 is a landmark year: it is the date of birth of the Ottoman state. It was an insignificant state (emirate), which no one took seriously. This insignificance saved it from the Mongols!

Osman, with Kesse as his advisor, turned his attention to the paralyzed Byzantine Empire. He began to conquer various regions and in 1307 surrounded Bursa. The situation remained stagnant until 1326, when the city surrendered to Orhan, Osman's son. With Bursa now as their capital, the Ottomans invaded the area of ​​Nicaea and besieged Nicomedia. The Byzantine emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos tried to save Nicaea with a bold campaign. The Ottomans overtook him at Chrysoupoli and in 1330 the only notable battle between Byzantines and Ottomans was fought, in which the Byzantines were defeated and Nicaea fell definitively in 1331.

With the capture of Nicaea, the Ottomans stopped the wars of conquest and began to reorganize their state, led by Orhan's brother, Alaeddin, who took the office of Vizier. The rest of the events are more or less known: the Ottomans would methodically conquer all of Asia Minor, the Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa, becoming one of the greatest empires in history.

But here a serious question arises: how is it possible that 400 families, who arrived with Ertugrul in Asia Minor, achieved these impressive achievements? The key to the answer lies in the various Christian sects of the peoples of Asia Minor!

The peoples of Asia Minor maintained their distinctiveness during Persian rule, as well as during the Hellenistic, Greco-Roman and Byzantine periods, with a typical autonomy, with their customs, traditions and distinct psyche. However, apart from the Greek populations, they lost their original language and developed linguistic idioms based on Greek. 
The exceptions were the Armenians and the Kurds.

The peculiarity of the peoples of Asia Minor was expressed in heresies. The Byzantine state was based on three points: on its formidable bureaucratic apparatus, on the all-powerful Orthodox church and on its mercenary army. The people paid large taxes to support the empire. However, as the extent of the state was limited, the tax burdens became unbearable. The peoples reacted to oppression with heresies, which expressed their general resistance movement. Antioch was the seat of Monophysitism and Nestorianism. As the Byzantine borders shrank, heresies were the expression of the reaction. The Armenians tended towards Monophysitism. In the center of Asia Minor, Manichaeism, Nestorianism, the iconoclastic Isaurians, the Paulicians in Pontus, the Tondrakites and other heresies developed.

The Byzantines fiercely persecuted these heresies, slaughtering their followers mercilessly. Many Manichaeans were burned in their churches. The Paulicians were slaughtered and some of them were transported to Thrace, where Bogomilism later developed. Many Nestorians fled to Arab countries and reached Siberia. A large part of Genghis Khan's army was Nestorian! Also, the famous Akrites of Byzantium, who had autonomy and tax exemptions, when the Byzantine territory was limited, a tax was imposed on them, for which they would react and essentially turn against Byzantium.

✔Somehow this was the situation when the first Turkish war groups arrived. First, the Seljuks, who defeated the Byzantines, took the peoples, who had suffered oppression and persecution, to their side, and exempted them from heavy taxation. They limited it to 10%, while the Byzantines were sucking out 50% to 70% of them! Tax exemption is made under the condition of "conversion to Islam". The peoples accepted Islam superficially at first, but they maintained their faith in the heresies. Only the Greeks, although not all, and the Armenians maintained their religion, since initially there was no violent conversion to Islam. Therefore, the peoples of Asia Minor and the Akrites are the secret of the success of the Turks. The non-Orthodox Christians of the Near and Middle East, who were the majority, considered the Turks a gift from God, who punished the wickedness and arrogance of their oppressors, namely the Byzantines!

The Seljuks, who named their state the Sultanate of Rum (Romans), collaborated with the peoples of Asia Minor, showing understanding of their particularity and strengthening their autonomy, while also offering better living conditions than those prevailing during Byzantine occupation. The favorable policy of the early Seljuks and their moderation towards the Christian populations contributed to the gradual decline and fall of the Byzantine Empire.

As the Byzantines hardened their oppression as they lost territory, the oppressed peasants of Asia Minor renounced Christianity to save themselves from Byzantine persecution. The Turks (Seljuks, Turkomans, Ottomans) created powerful war groups, which became the mechanism of their power, but left the peoples to their autonomy and their particularity. They simply controlled the peoples militarily. The Turks were foreigners, who held power with their swords, but they did not make Asia Minor their homeland, since it was the homeland of other peoples. They were sovereigns of the regions they occupied, but nevertheless foreigners, they only dominated peoples!

The Turkish tribes, who came with their herds, women and children, were small groups. The Seljuks, a few tens of thousands, and the smallest group, the approximately 3000 thousand Ottomans, men, women, children. Their success against the Byzantines was due to the support they found from the oppressed peoples of Asia Minor. The defeated mercenaries of the Byzantines would join the Turkish groups in large numbers. Therefore, the local elements, who pass into the Turkish army, become Turks, in the sense that they operate within the framework of the Turkish war group. The most capable locals are selected as soldiers, after of course they are first made Muslims. The few Ottomans, who arrived with Ertugrul in Asia Minor, in two centuries would dominate from Spain and Central Europe to Arabia and Persia! The Turks are therefore a warlike group that dominates the peoples of Asia Minor, which is not their homeland. This should be sought in the Far East, in Turkestan or even beyond.

✔This situation will be maintained until the end of the 18th century, when the principle of nationalities is promoted and the peoples over whom they dominate acquire national consciousness and will gain their national independence: first the Greeks, then the other Balkans, but to a certain extent also the Armenians and the Kurds. In this climate, the Turks themselves seek their national identity. During the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the Turks go through a period of terrible crisis of national identity.

The culmination of this crisis can be seen in the suggestion of Midat ​​Pasha to transform the Ottoman Empire into a federation of national communities, where the Turks would have the administration, as well as the decision of the “Union and Progress” committee to Turkify the peoples over whom they dominate. Initially, they said that they should promote the principle of pan-Turkism, which would include all Turkish-speaking peoples. However, they were disappointed by the difficulty of the project and limited their positions to the so-called Ottomanism, but they were again refuted. The national claims of the peoples and the prepared uprising of the peoples of the Balkans (Balkan Wars), led the representatives of the committee, at their congress in 1911 in Thessaloniki, to Turkify the peoples by force and, those who did not submit, to slaughter them! It was within this framework that the genocide of the Armenians and the massacre and uprooting of the Greeks of Asia Minor were organized, precisely because these two peoples had acquired a national consciousness and it was not possible for them to be Turkified!

Finally, we will mention as an example numerous Muslim tribes of present-day Turkey, which are not Turkish:

The Kurds are descendants of the Kardush.
The Yuruks are descendants of ancient inhabitants of Asia Minor.
The Kiliz Bash (Reds) are native to Asia Minor.
The Sanni or Channi are an ancient people of Asia Minor.
The Circassians who originate from the Caucasus.
The Afsars are the Isaurians of the Byzantines.
The Colchis or Mingrelians are the descendants of the Colchis.
The Bithynian Muslims are not Turks, but Asia Minor.
The Dervishes are an Asia Minor development of the old Christian heresy of the Nestorians.
The Pomaks are an ancient Thracian tribe.
The Gauls are the people who settled in Asia Minor during the Hellenistic years.
The Lazians are also among the ancient peoples of Asia Minor, relatives of the Colchis.
The Mesochaldines are descendants of ancient inhabitants of the Trebizond region.
The Zeibeks are Thracians who converted to Islam.
The Pontians who remained in Asia Minor, and if we exclude perhaps their Turkish names, have the same dialect, music and many customs as their fellow citizens who arrived in Greece.

Article author, Christos Barbagiannidis
Source: Website, Fundraiser.

Indicative bibliography provided by the website

– Pericles Rodakis, THE GORDIAN BOND OF NATIONALITIES, GORDIOS PUBLICATIONS
– Nikolaos Heiladakis, WHO ARE THE TURKS?, PELASGOS PUBLICATIONS
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_people tablets.