"Turkishness" is a fairly recent concept. I don't think you can find evidence for it older than 700 years ago, , which in a region with civilizations going back to thousands of years
You are right that Turks settled in their current territory fairly recently (early 1070s, iirc), and so they come after the Greeks & Romans and the Hittites that preceded all of them.
However, what you call "Turkishness" is a race, part of whom stayed in Central Asia, while some came to Anatolia and started the Ottoman state that later became the Empire.
If you have started looked only at Anatolia, it is not surprising that you would have concluded "'Turkishness' is a fairly recent concept", a product of intermingling of local races, sort of like "American". Try looking further back, and you will see that isn't so.
Check out their language - Turkish has nothing to do with Arabic or European languages, and is apparently closer to Japanese than anything else. In Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, etc they still speak Turkish - hence the reason they are called "Turkic".
The best I managed to conclude was that there were many races in what we now call Turkey that were subdued by a small tribe. In one form or another, most of the ethnic groups (with the exception of Kurds and Armenians) were melted into a "Turkish" concept.
You are right that during the Ottoman Empire, many ethnic groups were called "Turk" a la Americaine, a proof to which is that in especially the western parts of Turkey, people look nothing like the Turks of Central Asia - no slanted eyes, no flat & round face, colored eyes galore, etc.
But as a race or as deep historical concept, Turkishness is an ambiguous concept.
I don't know what you mean by a 'deep historical concept' (neither by 'Turkishness', in fact) but it is a race :-) Check out the history from Central Asia, genetics, and especially the language. |
