Who are the Turks really? Ottoman Turks Seljuk Turks and Ottoman Turks difference

The Seljuks: the Turkic Empire and Muslim Unity A fairly successful attempt to restore Muslim unity was made by the Seljuk sultans: the ideal of a unified Islamic state still influenced the minds of the inhabitants of the lands around Baghdad, where the Seljuks came to power.

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: Turkic nomadic pastoralists who moved to the territory of modern Turkey and separate groups of the local settled agricultural population. At the same time, one of the patterns of ethnic history was revealed in the formation of the Turkish people - 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. Based on historical, anthropological, linguistic and ethnographic, the formation of the Turkish feudal people, the features of the formation of the Gurian nation. In this work, an attempt is 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 Nile and Euphrates valleys in the second half of the 4th millennium BC. and we end in the 30s-20s for the Middle East. IV century BC, when Greco-Macedonian troops under the leadership of Alexander the Great captured the entire Middle East, the Iranian plateau, the southern part of Central Asia and the northwestern part of India. As for Central Asia, India and Far East, then the ancient history of these countries is 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 Caucasus Mountains and the southern shores of the Aral Sea. In this vast geographical area, 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 in the territory of Phenicia, Syria and Palestine, the Trojan Phrygian and Lydian kingdoms, states The Iranian Highlands, including the world Persian monarchy, which included the territories of almost the entire Near and part of the Middle East, state formations of Central Asia, states in 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 settlement of ethnic groups, in particular Turkic-speaking ones, in the light of their migrations and ethno-social development, in particular the process of assimilation.

Therefore, this study presents short review the history of migration of the Turkic nomads, the development of their society and state formations over historical time.

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

I learned that leaders played a large role in nomadic society; their role was sometimes decisive in the creation of states and the consolidation of tribes. “When in the steppe? was a talented organizer, he gathered around himself a crowd of strong and devoted people in order to subjugate his clan, and, finally, the tribal union with their help.” 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 kaganate - 740, the second - 745.

In the 7th century, the main area of ​​the Turks became a vast region in Central Asia, called Turkestan. 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 led by the Oguzy Khan. Then a large and powerful Seljuk state emerged. The attractiveness of Turkic rule attracted many people to their side. Entire villages of people came to the land of Asia Minor and converted to Islam.

The Turkish nation emerged by the middle of the 16th century from two main ethnic components: Turkic nomadic pastoral tribes, mainly Oguz 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. Some 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 large. Moving over vast distances, mixing with settled peoples, nomads - nomads - more than once redrew the ethnic map of entire continents, created giant powers, changed the course of social development, transferred 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 the first mounds in the steppes from the Dnieper to Altai - the burial places of their leaders. Of those Indo-Europeans who remained in the Black Sea steppes, new nomadic alliances later formed - the Iranian-speaking tribes of the Cimmerians, Scythians, Sakas, and Sauromatians. About these nomads, who repeated in the 1st millennium BC. the routes of their predecessors, a lot of information is contained in written sources of the ancient Greeks, Persians, and Assyrians.

To the east of the Indo-Europeans, in Central Asia, another large linguistic community arose - Altai. The majority 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 settled farmers. Product exchange began to develop faster Agriculture and handicrafts.

Relations between nomads and settled inhabitants were not always peaceful. Nomadic cattle breeding is very productive per unit of labor expended, but little 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 carried out raids and waged wars of conquest against settled peoples. The nomadic tribes, due to internal social dynamics, had their own elite - rich leaders, a clan aristocracy. This tribal elite, heading large alliances of tribes, turned into nomadic nobility, grew 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 them in favor of their nobility and subjugated entire states to the power of their leaders. During these conquests, gigantic powers of nomads arose - the Scythians, Huns, Turks, Tatar-Mongols and others. True, all of them were not very durable. As Chinggis Khan's adviser Yelu Chutsai noted, you can 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 priority not only in domesticating the horse, but also in creating a fast and maneuverable war chariot, the main feature of which was light wheels with a hub with spokes. (Before, for example, in Sumer of the 4th millennium BC, war carts had heavy wheels - solid wooden disks that rotated along with the axle on which they were mounted, and were harnessed to donkeys or oxen.) The light horse-drawn chariot began its triumphal march from the 3rd millennium BC In the 2nd millennium, it became widespread among the Hittites, Indo-Aryans, and Greeks, and was brought to Egypt by the Hyksos. The chariot usually carried a driver and an archer, but there were also very small carts on which the driver was also an archer.

From the 1st millennium BC. The main and, perhaps, even the only type of army of the nomads was the cavalry, which used cavalry and rifle tactics of a massive strike in battles: a cavalry lava rushed towards the enemy, spewing out clouds of arrows and darts. It was first widely used by the Cimmerians and Scythians, and they also created the first cavalry. From childhood, nomads were excellent riders, trained for long marches, and were proficient in weapons and techniques of cavalry combat. The weaker development of class relations among nomadic tribes compared to 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 connections masked social contradictions, especially since the most severe forms of exploitation - robbery, raids, collection of tribute - were directed outside the nomadic society, towards the settled population. All these factors united the tribe with strong military discipline, which further enhanced the fighting qualities of the tribal army.

The spread of many languages ​​- Indo-European (mainly Iranian), Arabic, Turkic and Mongolian - is associated with the movements of nomads in Asia. When settling on the land and mixing with the local population, the nomads, as a rule, assimilated it in 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 region - Pannonia). A similar process occurred in Anatolia, as well as partially in the Balkans, after the resettlement of Turkic tribes here during the era of Seljuk and Ottoman rule 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 power to which they gave their name - the Turkic Kaganate. Kagan, Khakan, or Khan - this is what 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 Yellow River to the Caspian Sea, from Tibet to the Urals... The Turks made important improvements in horse riding techniques: they invented a hard saddle and stirrups. The horse's "under-the-top" equipment, as we know it now, was completed. This was a new stage in the development of transport and military affairs. Weapons were also modernized: the Turks widely used the complex bow, invented back in the Hun era, the curved saber-checker replaced the straight heavy sword.

Another important achievement of the ancient Turks contributed to the increase in the mobility of 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 made of coastal willows

Durable, fresh, comfortable and beautiful.

The yurt cannot be shaken by a whirlwind.

The rain makes her chest hard.

There are no dungeons or corners in it.

But inside it's cozy and warm...

Felt against frost - wall.

Even the shroud of snow is not scary.

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

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

The historical fate of the Turkic Kaganate 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 disintegrated, and from their former constituent elements the embryos of future nationalities were formed. At this time, not only great ethnic changes took place, but also revolutionary social shifts. Feudalism, a new socio-economic formation, pushes aside the old tribal relations among the “barbarian” peoples and deals a crushing blow to the slave society in the states of ancient civilization. Rome, the stronghold of slavery, falls under the double onslaught of “barbarians” and rebel 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 area of ​​the Asian Turks became a vast region in Central Asia, which received the name “Turkestan” (Turkic Stan, Country of the Turks) in Iranian languages. However, already in the 8th century. Most of Turkestan was conquered by the Arabs, who created a new giant 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 endure Arab domination for long. Already in the 9th century. they create their own state led by Khan Oguz, the leader of the Oguz tribes. The Oguzes are ousting their rivals, the Pechenegs, another Turkic tribe, from Central Asia. The Pechenegs go to the Russian steppes, but there they meet resistance from Kievan Rus, migrate to the Balkans and fall under the rule of Byzantium. Having adopted Christianity, they settled on earth and served in the armies of the Byzantines.

The borders of the Oguz state reach the Volga steppes. Here it faces the rivalry of the Khazar Kaganate and Volga Bulgaria. In the fight against them, the Oguzes find a powerful ally - Kievan Rus, which is in the prime of its strength. In 965, Prince Svyatoslav concluded a military treaty with the Oghuz-Torks. The Khaganate of the “foolish Khazars” falls under the blows of the Rus and Torques. In 985, Prince Vladimir, in alliance with the Torques, set out on a campaign along the Volga against the Bulgars. The princely squad sailed in boats, and the Torquay horsemen rode along the shore. Volga Bulgaria was defeated.

But the crisis of the Oghuz state is already beginning. In the south of its possessions, the Seljuk clan, a large clan of the Oghuz tribe, is strengthening. He gathers around him tribes dissatisfied with the power of the khan. And in the middle of the 11th century. New Turkic newcomers from Central Asia - the Kipchaks - burst 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 border fortifications. The Oghuz-Torks founded their city here on the banks of the Stugna - Torchesk - and gradually merged with the Rus. The Byzantines also resettled the fleeing Oguzes in their domains. Another part of the Oguzes escaped from the Kipchaks by going to the very south of Central Asia and further to Khorasan, the northeastern region of Iran. Here they accepted the patronage of the strengthened Seljuk clan. And soon a new ethnic entity enters the arena of history - the Turkmens, or, more precisely, the Turkmens. And the south of Central Asia receives the name “Turkmenistan” - Turkmenistan.

We need to tell you more about the Turkmens. After all, many Turkmen tribes (and some of the Oguzes who had not yet merged with them) later moved to Transcaucasia and Asia Minor, marking the beginning of 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 sedentary. They absorbed the remnants of the Saks and Alans, and absorbed part of the Sogdians and Khorezmians. This pre-Turkic layer, or, in ethnographic terminology, the substrate (sublayer) had a strong impact on the Turkmens. The Mongoloid features inherent in the ancient Turks have almost disappeared in their appearance. In other words, the Turkmens anthropologically, that is, by race, became Caucasians. The culture of the Turkmen was enriched by the achievements of local settled peoples: agriculture and the construction of permanent dwellings were new things for nomadic pastoralists. A number of Turkmen tribes switched to full or partial settlement (semi-settlement).

By the end of the 11th century. Turkmen and Oghuz tribes came very close to Asia Minor. They seemed to have taken up their starting positions in order to, under the leadership of leaders from the Seljuk clan, set off on a further journey to the west, to the country that would later be called Turkey.

Chapter II. Turks

The bulk 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) were forced to move to Asia Minor under the pressure of the Seljuks and Mongols. Some of the Turks (Pechenegs, Uzes) came to Anatolia from the Balkans. As a result of the mixing of Turkic tribes with a diverse local population (Greeks, Armenians, Georgians, Kurds, Arabs), the ethnic basis of the modern Turkish nation was formed. During the process of Turkish expansion into Europe and the Balkans, the Turks experienced some influence from Albanian, Romanian and numerous South Slavic peoples. The period of the final formation of the Turkish people 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 cattle breeding, and in territories where it was impossible to engage in it, farming. Modern Turkic-speaking peoples should not be understood as direct ethnic relatives of the ancient Turks. Many Turkic-speaking ethnic groups, called today 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 globe. Most of them have long lived in Asia and Europe. They also live on the American and Australian continents. Turks make up 90% of the inhabitants of modern Turkey, and in the territory former USSR There are about 50 million of them, i.e. they constitute the second largest population group after the Slavic peoples.

In ancient times and the Middle Ages, there were many Turkic state formations: Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnic, Bulgar, Alan, Khazar, Western and Eastern Turkic, Avar and Uyghur Khaganates, etc. "Of them, only Turkey has retained its statehood to this day. 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. Russian Federation Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, and Sakha (Yakutia) gained statehood. In the form of autonomous republics within the Russian Federation, the Tuvans, Khakassians, Altaians, and Chuvashs have their own statehood.

The sovereign republics include Karachais (Karachay-Cherkessia), Balkars (Kabardino-Balkaria), Kumyks (Dagestan). The Karakalpaks have their own republic within Uzbekistan, and the Nakhichevan Azerbaijanis within Azerbaijan. The Gagauz people declared sovereign statehood within Moldova.

To date, 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 thousand Kyrgyz, 15 thousand Uzbeks live in China (Moskalev, 1992, p. 162). There are 18 thousand Tuvans living 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, Turkmens - 380 thousand, Kyrgyz - 25 thousand people. Several hundred thousand Turks and Gagauz live on the territory of Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, a small number of Karaites live 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 Karachais, Balkars). There are Turkic-speaking populations in the USA, Hungary, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Australia and some other countries.

Since ancient times, Turkic-speaking peoples had a significant influence on the course of world history and 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 about 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 type 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 lay claim to a fundamentally leading role. Each of them needs to be cross-checked 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 single source can be decisive or superior to others; in different cases, different sources may have predominant importance, but in any case, the reliability of the conclusions depends primarily on the possibility of their mutual re-verification.”

The ancestors of modern Turks - nomadic Oghuz tribes - first penetrated into 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 disintegrated into feudal principalities, one of which was ruled by Osman Bey. In 1281-1324, he turned his possession into an independent principality, which, after Osman, became known as the Ottoman principality. Later it turned into the Ottoman Empire, and the tribes inhabiting this state began to be called Ottoman Turks. Osman himself was the son of the leader of the Oghuz tribe, Ertogul. Thus, the first state of the Ottoman Turks was the state of the Oguz. Who are the Oguzes? The Oghuz tribal union arose at the beginning of the 7th century in Central Asia. The Uighurs occupied a predominant position in the union. In the 1st century, the Oguzes, pressed by the Kyrgyz, moved to the territory of Xinjiang. In the 10th century, an Oghuz state was created in the lower reaches of the Syr Darya 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 Oghuzs, together with the Seljuks, moved to Europe. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the state structure of the Oguz, 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 East Coast Sea of ​​Marmara and settled on the island of Galliopolis. Murad I (1359-1389), who already bore the title of Sultan, conquered all of Eastern Thrace, including Andrianople, where he moved the capital of Turkey (1365), and also eliminated the independence of some 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 stopped the advance of the Turks into Europe. Under Murad II (1421-1451), the Turks resumed their attack on 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, Moldavia, 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. Türkiye became the largest military power of the time. The Ottoman Empire did not have internal ethnic unity, and, nevertheless, in the 15th century the formation of the Turkish nation ended. What did this young nation have behind it? Experience of the Oghuz state and Islam. Together with Islam, the Turks perceive Islamic law, which is as significantly different from Roman law as the difference between the Turks and the Europeans was. Long before the appearance of the Turks in Europe, in the Arab Caliphate the only legal code was the Koran. However, the legal subjugation of more developed peoples forced the caliphate to face significant difficulties. In the 6th century, a list of Mohammed’s advice and commandments appeared, which was expanded over time and soon reached several dozen volumes. The set of these laws, together with the Koran, constituted the so-called sunnah, or “righteous path”. These laws constituted the essence of the law of the huge Arab Caliphate. However, the conquerors gradually became familiar 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 legal school. He was a Persian by origin and managed to create a legal direction that flexibly combined strict Muslim principles and the needs of life. These laws gave Christians and Jews the right to use their traditional laws.

It seemed that the Arab Caliphate followed 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 existence of a huge gap between legal and real rights. The power of Mohammed was theocratic in nature and contained both divine and political principles. However, according to the precepts of Mohammed, the new caliph had to either be elected at a general meeting or appointed before death by the previous caliph. But in reality, the power of the caliph was always inherited. According to the legal law, the Mohammedan community, especially the community of the capital, had the right to remove the caliph for unworthy behavior, for mental deficiency or for loss of sight and hearing. But in fact, the power of the caliph was absolute, and the entire country was considered his property. Laws were also broken in the opposite direction. According to 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 also could not rule the region or city. In fact, the Caliph used his discretion to appoint non-Muslims to the highest government 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 observed 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 gives rise to unbridled luxury of 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 figure out the reasons for the economic backwardness of the Ottoman Empire, which has persisted to this day, despite a number 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 liberalization of the economy occurred, the right to land ownership, 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 went bankrupt 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 science, 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 given over to faith and passions almost completely neglects the sciences, and therefore leads a primitive economy.

Chapter III. Folding Turkish nationality

The signs of internal decline in Turkey, which had already emerged in the second half of the 16th century, by the middle of the 17th century were quite clearly evident in all areas of economic, financial, public administration and military affairs. The threat of complete collapse and death of the Ottoman Empire gave rise to a desire for reforms among some of the Turkish ruling circles. 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" failed. The collapse of the new system showed that Türkiye is incapable of accepting European norms of behavior. In 1826, Sultan Mahmud II also carried out some reforms. In particular, he replaced military administrators with civilian officials, created ministries, and founded the first Turkish newspaper. These events paved the way for the so-called Tanizmat, 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 Vizier and dissolved 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, and minor officials. The main political organization of the Young Turks was the Committee of Unity and Progress. In 1908, the Young Turks came to power. They achieved the restoration of the Constitution and the convening of parliament, but they themselves pursued 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 Talaat Bey’s speech at a secret meeting in Thessaloniki before members of the “Unity and Progress” committee. According to the testimony of the English Vice-Consul Arthur B. Henry, in the aforementioned 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 an insurmountable barrier to the establishment of real equality. We have made unsuccessful attempts to convert the infidels into loyal Ottomans. Any such efforts will invariably fail until as long as the small independent states of the Balkan Peninsula are able to spread separatist ideas among the inhabitants of Macedonia, there can therefore be no question of equality until we succeed in our task of Ottomanization."

How European is modern Türkiye? It must be admitted that Mustafa Kemal did a lot in this direction. Born in the fire of the First World War and in the storms of the Russian revolution, the Turkish Parliamentary Republic has all the external signs of a rule of law 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 Grand National Assembly (Majlis), elected by direct vote by citizens of both sexes. Moreover, in legal terms, Turkey was far ahead of its great neighbor - the USSR, with whom and with the help of which it was born. Citizens of modern Turkey can freely travel abroad, can create various parties, publish any newspapers, organize strikes, etc. And yet Türkiye, European in form, remains far from European country. First of all, it should be noted that the Kemalist movement was not launched with the goal of Europeanizing the country, but with the goal of politically saving Turkey from the partition that was outlined by the Treaty of Sèvres. We must pay tribute to Mustafa Kemal, who really saved Turkey. In front of the Europeans, he played the card of Europeanization and democratization of the country perfectly, but with Lenin he played socialism, and as a result he deceived both of them. Having come to power, he first shot the communists, then began the work of enlightenment, which consisted of abandoning 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. Single-party rule remained, and power was actually in the hands of the army. It was only in 1945 that Ismet İnönü declared a multi-party system. And only then did it become clear that Kemal had failed to deviate from Islamic law. The Democratic Party of Menderes, playing on the religious feelings of the people, was able to come to power. This is where what today can be called the “Iranian phenomenon” happened. Just as the religious adherents of Ayatollah Khomeini, almost without firing a single shot, destroyed the entire seemingly indestructible machine of the Shah, so in Turkey, soon after Kemal, those who restored the law on women wearing veils came to power with an overwhelming majority of votes, introduced prayers on Arabic and restored everything that further alienated Turkey from Europe.

Conclusion

The Turkish nation has gone through a long journey of formation. Mainly Central Asian, Asia Minor, Balkan, and Caucasian elements took part in the ethnogenesis of the Turks. You will hardly see a purely Turkic face in Turkey, perhaps, perhaps the faces of some Yuryuk nomads will remind you that the Seljuks and Mongols once brought Mongoloid features to Asia Minor, then they almost completely disappeared into the Caucasoid local population.

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

Until the end of the 19th century. the ruling class of Ottoman Turks used the self-name “Ottoman” (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 at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. and wanting to get closer to the people, the rulers of the country again resurrected the forgotten name “Turk”. From that time on, the country began to be called in the European manner “Turkiye”, which since the 20s became 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