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Hi there Westerners,
While I was reading this forum, I have noticed some wrong information about my people, on multiple threads. I decided to open this thread to correct them rather than answering them on the threads I mentioned. It is quicker and more productive for people who want to learn for real. If you have spare time, I recommend reading this.
First of all, Turks are not a race, stop thinking like that. I like Turkology, especially the works of Peter B. Golden, you can take a look at "Introduction to History of Turkic Peoples" if you are interested, I assume you are not, so I will make this quick.
THIS PART IS BORING, YOU ARE WARNED. Anyway, even the earliest Turkic Peoples of Central Asia was more of an ethnic confederation of different Turkic-speaking nomads than being a single ethnicity, or race you may call it. During the reign of Gokturk Khanate(second largest Khanate after the Mongol one), Chinese records show that "Turk" was a term used for all the nomads under Gokturk rule, the original name of the founding Turkic tribe was As-hi-na, in their language, "Türük" meant "reproducing being", or quite possibly, just "human". Therefore, the name was automatically used for Iranic, Mongol, Tungus, Indo-European(Yüechih) and originally Turkic nomads all together, later became the name used to describe the people of Gokturk Khanate.
Under hundreds of years with certain Turkic Dominance over all the areas north of China, Turkification or at least common usage of Turkic dialects among these different peoples was rather quick. Modern Turkic peoples we know are the mixture of these whole bunch of etnicities. That's why all modern Turkologists agree that "Turk" is an ethnicity based solely on language, not even culture, considering the huge cultural difference among Turkic peoples. We don't have a Turkish look, we can look Mongoloid, European, Iranic or anything. My ancestors were from a Turkmen village in Greece, I have blonde hair and green eyes and no idea if they have banged some Greek chicks or not. I have anatolian Yoruk(Turkmen) friends who are blonde, just like Ataturk who was an Avshar Yoruk.
One last thing, "Turkish" is the word used to describe Turks of Turkey, "Turkic" are the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, like Khazaks, Uyghurs, Turkmen, Kyrguz, Tatars, Uzbeks etc.
Now, about the Muslim matter. Turkey is not Arabia, we are not even related to Semitic states. We are a hardcore secular country and our average muslim girl makes a diet program before summer to be able to fit in her hottest bikinis. East of Turkey is radical, not so much but radical, Kurdish territory(South East) is fanatic, the other parts are basically the wannabe USA. Full of atheists, deists and all that stuff(trend among students), full of booze shops and pubs, motorcycle clubs with that hairy tattooed dudes, we have Armenians and Rums who are Orthodox, especially in Istanbul, Antalya and Izmir there are churches everwhere. An average Turkish guy gets seriously offended when called "hey, you are not secular enough!". You get my point.
Now the Armenian matter. There was indeed an Armenian genocide. Most of my people won't admit, because they are not able to. Because of the political interests of Turkey, our children history books has entire sections based on "Armenians always lie, bad Armenians fuck you", we all had that brainwashing. Our TV, our school, we even had to memorize all that propaganda to pass our fucking exams. This kind of shit leaves scars. Yeah, our government and most of our political parties are VERY nationalistic, but I guess that won't be a problem, considering the huge amount of nationalism and racism I see on this forum. I'm pretty sure most of states I know committed either a war crime, genocide or a pretty rapist invasion, current generation cannot be held responsible for what some people they don't know shit about did a hundred years ago.
About the Turkish immigrants in Europe. I can never understand racism, I'm currently in an activist group fighting Turkish racists(Grey Wolves) but I won't talk about that. When I was in Germany, I couldn't recognize the Turks I saw there, the language and all. Then I realized it sounded like Kurdish(silly me), but Turks weren't so different. I don't know what happens to those guys when they immigrate, they seriously supported Al-Qaeda and I was like wtf, you would go to jail if you said that in Turkey. May be the hard life forced them into religion, dunno, don't care.
That's all I can think of right now. I seriously don't think you red this all, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
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