Selected Books
Turkey in Europe & Europe in Turkey
Turgut Özal

The Turks

"One man shall be like all men, and all like a single man."
Democritus

This book is mainly concerned with Turkish history after our entry into Anatolia in the eleventh century. However, I feel that it is important to discuss that part of our history which preceded this event.31

Turks lived in the Eurasian steppe to the north of present-day Russian and Chinese central Asia, which I shall call `Central Asia' for the sake of simplicity. Despite the number of tribes, the total population was small and extremely sensitive to climatic changes within a precarious ecology.

To define Turks, race in an anthropological sense is not always the best criterion. Some of them were short, brachycephalic, Mongoloid; others like the Kirghiz were tall, blond, with blue eyes, while others were like us with an appearance of an Alpine or Mediterranean race. Historically religion was not a yardstick either. They were totemist, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Manichean, Nestorian and so forth. Most of them became Muslim between the eighth and tenth centuries. They did not originate from a well-defined region which could be called a country. They lived in the vast Eurasian steppe. The only reliable characteristic which united them was language. All tribes spoke dialects of Turkish. Perhaps the more ambiguous but not necessarily less effective unifying tie was, and still is, their sense of belonging to the same family of peoples.

Central Asia, which they always coveted as a sedentary region, was a crossroads where the Chinese, Indian, and Iranian civilisations met, and where the Hellenic one intruded. In this respect, it could be likened to the Mediterranean basin where Indo-European and Serrhitic civilisations overlapped and mingled with indigenous ones. Geographically also it is a dried-out sea, as attested by the survival of the Caspian Sea, and the Lakes Aral and Balkash.

Central Asia has been inhabited throughout the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods, and in the Bronze Age in the river valleys and basins. Let us leave aside east Turkestan where Turks appeared for the first time in history, and consider west Turkestan from where the Turks set out towards the eastern Mediterranean. The Achaemenid Empire conquered and ruled eastern Central Asia (Bactria and the area between Oxus and Jaxartes or Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya) for over two centuries from the middle of the sixth century BC onwards. After the conquest of Alexander the Great (329 BC) it remained first under the Seleucid and then the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. It was destroyed in 30 BC by the Yueh-chi tribes who were being pushed westwards by the Hunnish Empire founded in eastern Turkestan.

The Yueh-chi rule, which lasted for almost six hundred years in west Turkestan, was later called the Kushan period (Kuei-shuang) during which the `Great Silk Road' between the Far East and the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire was established, and Buddhism spread. The `Migration of the Peoples' brought to western Turkestan around AD 450 a people called the Hephthalites or White Huns.32 According to Chinese sources the ruling house of this people could have been a branch of the Turkish Kao-chu (Kirghiz)33 who reigned until roughly AD 550, when a Kaganate (Göktürk) with the name Türk (T'u-küe/ Türük) appeared in history, a steppe empire covering the whole of Central Asia from northern China to southern Russia. During the period of Hephthalite (Kirghiz) and Turkish rule in the sedentary regions of Central Asia there were no acute conflicts between settled urban and farming culture on the one hand, and the world of nomads on the other, and the general situation remained stable.

The Turkish Kagans were content to maintain a general control as overlords and showed the liveliest interest in the development of international trade.34

There was no uniform official religion in Central Asia, where many religion co-existed, a suitable situation for the formation of syncretic creeds. At a time when the Khazars were practising a policy of tolerance that historians find astonishing, the Türük Kaganate, while preserving their old religion, were exposed to the universal creeds, thus preparing the ground for this extraordinary Uighur society which will succeed them and introduce them to high culture, and which will present to the world the unheard of spectacle of real ecumenicity.35

From the early part of the sixth century AD onwards, Turkish nomads started settling in Central Asia in successive waves following the transfers of power from one Turkish state to another in this land with a long history of sedentary civilisations - influenced by those of Iran, China, and India-which became Turkish thereafter.36

If one takes into account the dates of Charlemagnes's crusades against the Saxons and the Saxons against the Slavs, the conversion of the Scandinavians, the Nomad Magyars and forest-dwelling Poles as well as the very late conversion of those in the Highlands of Scotland, the transition of Turks into the sedentary way of life, together with their conversion to higher religions, cannot be considered late.37

In the face of unprecedented Chinese expansion, the Göktürk Empire gradually disappeared in the second half of the seventh century. At this critical juncture of Turkish history, a popular movement surfaced in Ötüken (the original country of the Turks) against the Iranization and especially Sinicization of the Kaghans and the Turkish nobles. Intellectually and politically engineered by a noble, Tonyukuk, who served as advisor to the Kaghans, the Turks transcended their tribal allegiances towards a concept of unity very close to nationalism. They abandoned recently acquired Buddhism and returned to Tengri (a cosmic sky god), their own religion which prepared the ground for their later conversion to Islam. They also revived their language at the expense of Sogdian (an Iranian language) as we see from the imperial inscriptions of Orkhon. Their reign between 681 and 744, which was profoundly nationalistic, based on a State in the real sense of the word, gave a great and lasting impulse to Turks by reinforcing their identity at a time when they were about to set out on their westward adventure.38

Before coming to the Islamization of the Turks, I should like to dwell briefly on the Uighurs whose cultural contribution to Turkish civilisation is unique. They were one of the three tribes which overthrew the Göktürk. They established the first capital city surrounded by a fortress, Ordu Balhk, the long-time dream of the Turks, adopted Manicheism as the state religion, the religion professed also by St Augustine before his conversion to Christianity, and made Sogdian the second official language with its alphabet duly adapted to Turkish vowels. Thanks to Sogdian they became familiar with Iranian culture and civilisation, and through them with that of the Mediterranean. Religious meditation had a civilising effect on them; agriculture and trade developed. Towards AD 800 they established rich colonies in the oasis of Tarim. When the Uighur Empire was destroyed by Kirghiz in 840, some of them moved to these colonies, which later became Chinese Turkestan.

Unlike other Turks who appeared in history through militarism, the Uighurs refused to prove themselves by force of arms. `A great zone of silence reigns over eastern Turkestan, disturbed only by the murmur of prayers, bellowing cows, and the clamour of merchants. Arrogance is replaced by modesty, conquest by administration and migration by immobility.' 39 Their cultural level had remarkably increased. They inherited the great artistic school of Central Asia and further developed it. They were the people who invented miniature painting. What is astonishing is that in their cities the faithful of three higher religions, Manicheism, Buddhism, and Nestorian Christianity, together with animism, lived side by side in their quarters. In bazaars Muslim and Jewish merchants traded freely. This ecumenism, which tolerated mutual scepticism but rejected sectarianism, can be seen nowhere else except, perhaps, in other Turkish societies. The Uighurs served as educators to all the Central Asian powers which emerged later.

It is very difficult to state an exact date or event which marked the Islamicization of the Turks, but the battle of Talas in 751 between the Turks of western Turkestan, the Karluks and Muslim Arabs of the Sogdian garrison on the one hand, and the Chinese forces on the other played a crucial part in this respect. Consequently, the encounter between the Turks moving westward and the Arabs going eastward turned into collaboration rather than into a collision. The exact opposite was to occur three centuries later when the crusaders met the Turks in Anatolia. As a result, the Islamic penetration gained momentum while Chinese influence retreated from western Turkestan. Turkish immigration to the Middle East, which had started westwards in the eighth century, increased dramatically in the ninth century. They had been massively recruited as soldiers by the Abbasid Empire where they soon entered the ranks of the ruling élite. They seized power in Egypt in the middle of the ninth century, and continued there under the name of Mameluks until the sixteenth century. The Turkish settlement in the Arab-Muslim Middle East, first as soldiers, then as the ruling élite, and finally as philosophers as the result of close religio-cultural contacts between western Turkestan and the Middle East, served as a training ground for four centuries before the founding of the Ottoman Empire.

The landslide conversion of the Turks to Islam in the tenth century led to the establishment of the Karakh3nid Kingdom in western Turkestan, the first Turkish and Muslim State, and the Ghaznavids in Afghanistan which during the reign of Mahmud attained a very high degree of civilization, with the capital Ghazna comparable in size and brilliance only to Constantinople. The Ghaznavid Kingdom is also important as a stepping-stone for the Moghul rule in India, established in the late fifteenth century. The Seljuks, being Sunnites, put an end to the Shi'ite Buyid state in Iran where they reigned for more than a century. The Iranian renaissance, which had started earlier, reached its zenith under their rule, and greatly facilitated the passage of the Turks to the eastern Mediterranean, during which they were exposed to a fresh Iranian cultural influence. With the Seljuks, the Turks entered into direct contact with the Eastern Roman Empire, while controlling both the Iranian and Middle Eastern Arab worlds where the Abbasid State was reduced to a nominal power. Finally in 1071, at Malazgirt (Manzikert) a Seljuk army defeated the Eastern Romans and opened the way to Anatolia.

The Seljuks assumed the role of the defender of the Caliphate and Sunnism in the Islamic world, and as such raised the banner of Islam against Christianity. This double role enabled them to survive in a Shi'ite Iran and expand against the Eastern Roman Empire, serving two eminently secular ends. They were not hereditary enemies of the Orthodox Empire like the Iranians, and they were still heterodox and less fervent Muslims. Therefore it was not difficult for them to gain the sympathy of the local population. When fighting against the Mongols of Ghengis Khan, the Anatolian army included Greek forces from Trebizond and the Kingdom of Nicaea, as well as Franks.

In the light of these facts it is perhaps easier to answer the question as to whether the Turks who conquered Anatolia and founded the Ottoman Empire towards the end of the thirteenth century were actually nomads or semi-nomads. This is crucial to our argument for, depending on the answer, we will conclude whether Ottoman civilisation was arrested because of its nomadic past or the nomadic nature of its institutions.

Not every Völkerwanderung is nomadic just because migrants arrive on horseback. As I explained earlier, the Turks had been engaged in the settlement process in Central Asia and the Middle East for over half a millenium before they finally entered Anatolia. Then the question which requires a plausible answer is: why did they leave their supposedly sedentary life with such apparent ease and head westwards for Anatolia? Furthermore, the kingdoms they established in Central Asia had always been short-lived, suggesting a nomadic background.

Anyone who flies over the area between Amu-darya and Syr-darya sees a desert called Kizilkum (Red Sand), and cannot fail to notice in many areas the traces of irrigation canals barely covered by the desert which in the past used to irrigate an area almost half the size of Anatolia. How and when this area became desert is the real question for which we need to seek an answer.

Long-term droughts have always driven nomads out of the precarious steppe ecology. But the migration of sedentary peoples required a lasting climatic change which turned the area into an outright desert.

Unfortunately, the climatic research of Central Asia during the Holocene epoch has not been completed. However, the limited findings already indicate that in the post-Roman and Carolingian period (AD 400 to 1000) the important invasions of western Europe by the Huns and the Goths may have been generated by deteriorating climatic conditions in Central Asia. Radio-carbon dating and studies of ancient Chinese literature have disclosed that when the glaciers of Central Asia were large, the melt-waters fed springs, rivers, and lakes on the edge of the desert, and human communities flourished. When there was a warm phase, the water supply failed and the deserts encroached. Thus, in Central Asia (and the Tarim basin) during the cool Roman period, the Old Silk Road permitted a regular trade between Rome and China where the Han dynasty was flourishing (206 BC to AD 220). During the Wei dynasty (AD 422 to 535) this trade declined. This coincides with the migration of Turkish nomads into the sedentary regions, and the establishment of the Göktürk Empire. In the Tang dynasty (AD 618 to 907) there was a reopening of the trade routes along which Uighur oasis colonies were active. But until the Yuan dynasty (AD 1279 to 1368) when this route was again in use there must have been another dry period during which the Turks of western Turkestan had to abandon their once cultivable land and emigrate westward, being pressed at the same time by the Mongolians. Radio-carbon dating of the 8.6 metre-high lake level at Sogo Nuur showed overflow conditions from AD 1300 to 1450, which coincides with the last flourishing of Central Asia under the Timurid Empire. Thereafter a gradual, fluctuating, but progressive desiccation followed, and today the area is almost total desert.40

Therefore, the majority of those people who settled in Anatolia were the settled population of western Turkestan. Certainly, Turcomans who operated along the East Roman-Seljuk frontier were nomads. The regular Seljuk forces were probably also largely composed of nomadic elements, but they were in the minority among the Turks who settled in Anatolia.

J. P. Roux, in his book entitled L'Histoire des Turcs (p. 239), indicates that:

Turks who entered Anatolia in great numbers escaping Mongolian invasion. . . for reasons which are still unknown settled quite rapidly and displayed a particular aptitude for adapting themselves to the new environment and becoming civilised. They took over the brilliant Seljuk culture, but far from being slaves of it, they transformed it quite profoundly, opening the way to that which could be the classical Turkish civilisation of the sixteenth century. Keeping away from Iranism, which was then fashionable in the Muslim East, they spoke only Turkish and imposed it for the first time in Anatolia as official language.

I believe that the `unknown' reason underlying this phenomenon is that these Turks had already been sedentary in Central Asia before they were uprooted and forced to flee westward by the Mongolians.

The main evidence to support this thesis is of a different order. Although some chroniclers claim that Anatolia was devastated by Turcoman nomads in the eleventh century, it became one of the most prosperous regions of the Old World in the thirteenth century. In view of the crusades on the one hand, and the Mongolian invasion on the other, how this happened is hard to explain. The irrigation systems were working, forests were intact, and the population density remained stable. Muslim civilisation being essentially mercantile, the Seljuks built caravanserais and re-established the security of the roads, as a result of which trade flourished. Although there was no metropolis, Simon de Saint-Quentin says that there were a hundred cities in Anatolia in the thirteenth century, whereas Ibn Said reduces the number to eighty, while insisting that there were 400,000 villages, which is an obvious exaggeration. Ghazna, the capital of the Ghaznavids, provided an urban life for perhaps a million inhabitants, while Isfahan under the Seljuks was a great city of culture.

Although Islam is naturally tolerant towards Jews and Christians, Anatolia had no equivalent in the Islamic world. Cities such as Antalya, for instance, had Jewish, Christian, and Turkish quarters. In this respect, the Seljuk Turks shared the same tradition as Uighur and the T'u-küe. Arab travellers of the Middle Ages could not help envying this situation.

Last but not least, another important indication that they were sedentary rather than nomads is that the Turks Turkicized Christian Anatolia, whereas nomadic incursions everywhere ended up with the total assimilation of the nomads by the local superior civilisation and people.

Claude Cahen estimated the number of Turks at between two and three hundred thousand in the beginning. Although this figure seems to be somewhat underestimated, their population must have been around ten per cent of the total during the thirteenth century. Peaceful co-existence and marriage between the Turks and the local population must have accelerated the latter's conversion to Islam, along with other political, economic, and cultural reasons, to the extent that early in the present century the Christians of Anatolia represented no more than five per cent of the total population, despite the bloody wars of the last two centuries during which so much of young Anatolian Turkish manhood perished.

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