Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Turks
The modern Turks are descendants of Central Asian tribal groups that began moving
westward through Eurasia over 1000 years ago. As such, the Turks retain cultural and lin-
guistic links with various peoples through southern Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Central Asia
and western China. Turkish is in the family of Turkic languages , spoken by over 150 mil-
lion people across Eurasia.
The predecessors of the modern Turks encountered the Persians and converted to Islam,
before the Seljuks established the Middle East's first Turkic empire. Over the following
centuries, Anatolia became the heartland of the Ottoman Empire and the core of the mod-
ern Turkish Republic. Owing to Ottoman imperial expansion, today there are people of
Turkish ancestry in Cyprus, Iraq, Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria and Ukraine.
Kurds
Turkey's significant Kurdish minority is estimated at over 15 million people, with about
eight million in southeastern Anatolia. Kurds have lived for millennia in the mountains
where the modern borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria meet.
Kurds retain a distinct culture, folklore and language (related to Persian and, distantly,
Indo-European tongues). Most Turkish Kurds are Sunni Muslims. The Kurds have their
own foundation myth, associated with Nevruz, the Persian New Year (21 March).
Unlike the Greeks, Jews and Armenians, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne did not guarantee
the Kurds rights as a minority group. The Turkish state was decreed to be unitary, or in-
habited solely by Turks. Denying the Kurds a cultural existence swiftly caused problems;
fighting between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), classed internationally as a terrorist
group, and Turkish military continues in southeastern Anatolia.
Previous Turkish governments have refused to recognise the existence of the Kurds,
calling them 'Mountain Turks'. Even today, census forms and identity cards do not allow
anyone to identify as Kurdish. However, progress is being made, with debate about how
Turkey can accommodate a Kurdish identity, and Kurdish language courses are allowed at
government schools.
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