The Turks
Turks are descendants of Central Asian tribes who migrated westward more than 1,000 years ago. This is why there are similarities in the cultures and languages of the different populations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Xinjiang in western China, Azerbaijan and the Crimea. It is during their movements towards the west that these tribes met the Persians and Islam.
The presence of the Turks in Anatolia is due to the Seljuk Turks who founded the first Turkic-speaking empire in the Middle East. After their victory at the battle of Malazgirt in 1071 against the Byzantine Empire, Anatolia opens up to the Turkish nomads.
Four centuries later, on May 29, 1453, the Ottomans enter Constantinople victorious. And Anatolia becomes the Ottoman Empire. During this period, the Turkish power is enormous, it radiates until the southeast of Europe. Five centuries later, in 1923, the modern Turkish Republic was proclaimed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk after the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire. Today, traces of Turkish descent remain in Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Ukraine, Macedonia and Iraq.
Turkish is a Turkic language. This linguistic family gathers more than 150 million speakers in all Eurasia.
The Kurds
For thousands of years, the Kurds have lived in the mountains bordering Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. There are no official and reliable statistics on the numerical importance of the Kurds in these territories, but it is estimated that the Kurdish minority has a weight of 15 to 20 per cent on Turkish soil, which is a considerable share of the total population of Turkey.
Kurdish settlements are concentrated in eastern and southeastern Anatolia, in the districts of Sivas and Marash, as well as in major Turkish cities such as Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara, Adana and Mersin. With, according to sources, between 3 and 10 million Kurds in Istanbul, the Turkish megalopolis is the first "Kurdish city" in the world.
The Kurds differ from the Turks in their Indo-European language, which originates from the Persian family, their traditions and their culture. They have their own founding myth, which is celebrated on "Nevruz", the Persian New Year, on March 21. The Kurds are predominantly Sunni Muslims.
The thorny "Kurdish question ". Although they have lived in Anatolia for centuries, the Kurdish question in Turkey is a delicate one. Conflicts between the Kurds and the Turks are ancient. In the 1920s, during the war for independence, they fought together.
At the end of the First World War, the Treaty of Sevres recognized the right of the Kurds to form an independent nation. But the revolution of Mustafa Kemal arrived, and the treaty was not applied. The treaty of Lausanne which succeeded it in 1923 left out the promise made to the Kurds. The creation of a Kurdistan did not take place and no special rights were recognized for them. Atatürk in power, he decreed the Turkish Republic, a unitary state in language, culture and identity, thus openly denying the cultural existence of the Kurds. These "Turks of the mountains" are obliged to become "authentic Turks". The use of their language and the wearing of their traditional costumes are forbidden. Kurdish schools, which had been subsidized by religious associations, were also closed. This strict policy resulted in violent acts of rebellion, culminating in March 1925, with several hundred thousand Kurdish deaths and deportations and dozens of villages destroyed.
In 1978, Abdullah Öcalan founded the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an armed Kurdish political organization that quickly proved to be the most structured Kurdish organization in Turkey. It is considered a terrorist organization by Ankara and much of the international community, including Australia, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, the European Union and the United Kingdom. Not all Kurds join the movement, but want their rights to speak, teach, read and broadcast their language respected. In response to the PKK's violent demands, the Turkish government indiscriminately treats any demand for Kurdish identity as separatist. From 1984 to 1998, the southeast of Turkey experienced violent struggles between the PKK and the Turkish authorities. Many Kurdish villages were ravaged in the armed clashes. In the early 1990s, nearly 40,000 people were killed. At the same time, initiatives were taken to begin recognizing Kurdish cultural identity, and the Kurdish language was officially authorized in 1991. In 1999, after 15 years of conflict, Abdullah Öcalan was captured in Kenya and imprisoned for life.
In the years that followed, the reasoned attitude of the Turkish authorities towards a political settlement of the "Kurdish fact" allowed other actions to be taken in this direction. In 2002, the state of emergency was lifted in the southeast, the deputies authorized the broadcasting of television programs in Kurdish and the teaching of Kurdish in public schools. The government embarked on a "Kurdish opening" in 2009 by addressing the political and social roots of the problem. TRT6, the Kurdish government channel launched on January1 of the same year, is seen as a further step towards a positive resolution of the issue. The peace negotiations between the PKK and the Turkish government are bearing fruit: on March 21, 2013, Abdullah Öcalan, the historical leader of the PKK who is imprisoned for life, calls on all PKK fighters to lay down their arms and asks the guerrillas to withdraw from Turkish soil. One more initiative towards peace. But, already, the Islamic presence on its borders is undermining the "solution process" recently begun. In the fall of 2014, on the Turkish border, the Syrian city of Kobane was taken over by jihadists. The government of Ankara decides to close its border. This act prevented the Kurds of Iraq from lending a hand to the Kurds of Syria, by passing through Turkish territory. Demonstrations broke out, immediately put down in blood by the Turkish authorities, resulting in dozens of deaths. The spiral resumed when bombings aimed at jihadist camps in Syria struck PKK camps at the same time. Exactions against the Turkish armed forces resumed, and so did the cycle of violence. The hopes for peace initiated a short time before evaporate in the smoke of the shootings.
Ankara takes a dim view of the Kurdish power growing stronger on its doorstep following the recapture of the city of Kobane on July 19, 2012, by soldiers of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish power allied with the PKK. Of course, things are changing and signs of opening up have been initiated. The 2014 and 2018 presidential elections even saw the candidacy of a Kurdish politician, Selahattin Demirtaş, winning 10% and 8.4% of the vote respectively. But the "Kurdish question" is dependent on the will of the government and geopolitical logics that go beyond Turkish territory alone.
The Armenians
The Armenians have been living in Anatolia for a very long time, they originate from the Caucasus mountains. In the 4th century BC, they founded a kingdom around Lake Van. But its existence is short-lived. Then they built other kingdoms on the borders of the great empires (Byzantine, Abbasid, Persian and Ottoman), and developed their own alphabet. They were mainly settled in the cities, but were also numerous in the villages of the former kingdom of Armenia, in Cilicia and in the Hatay region. The Armenians were the first nation to convert entirely to Christianity. They form the largest Christian community in Turkey. The Hemichis are Armenians who have converted to Sunni Islam. The figures given for the Armenian community in Turkey vary between 60,000 and 70,000 people.
The Armenian "genocide". In 1915, on the evening of April 24, about 250 Armenian intellectuals were arrested in Istanbul by order of Talaat Pasha, the Minister of the Interior of the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian population was deported en masse to camps in Syria. The extent of the massacres of Armenians in eastern Turkey is a matter of controversy. According to the Armenian community, 1.5 million people died during the forced march to the desert. The Turkish authorities, on the other hand, dispute this by pointing to other abuses perpetrated by Armenians on the Turkish population at the same time. Even today, and while 29 states recognize the "Armenian genocide", Ankara denies having followed an ideology of systematic and organized extermination in this tragedy, brandishing the "fact of war" against the Armenian community, guilty of treason with Russia. The Armenians want Turkey to recognize the genocide and demand financial and territorial compensation. For Turkey, this is unthinkable. The situation is frozen. The settling of scores and resentments remain. In 2014, however, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, offered his condolences to the Armenians. The Turkish state also returned property to Armenian foundations.
The Jews
The Jews have been present in the Anatolian lands for more than 2,000 years. At the time of the Reconquista in 1492, they were driven out or fled from the Spanish Inquisition, and found refuge in the Ottoman Empire. Today, the Jewish presence in Turkey is mainly concentrated in Istanbul where some have preserved the use of the Judeo-Iberian language, Ladino. The community numbers some 15,000 people. Faced with the rise of nationalism and anti-Semitism in recent years, more and more of them want to become Israeli, Spanish or Portuguese citizens.
The Greeks
After the Armenians, they make up the other large Christian community in the country. During the time of the Ottoman Empire, the Greek population was significant. Then, the population exchanges of 1923 and from 1955 to 1980, between Greece and Turkey, considerably reduced the number of Greeks on Turkish territory. Today, the community is very small and lives mainly in the city of Istanbul.
Since the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, the Greek Orthodox of Turkish nationality have a special status. Based on the Ottoman organization of the "millet", they keep their own cultural particularities: their patriarchate, their language recognized by the Turkish state, their religion and their schools. The Orthodox community is called "rum" ("Roman nation"), regardless of the ethnicity of its members.
Other communities
The Lazes are a Georgian ethnic group of Muslim faith. Many members of this community live in the mountains near Trabzon.
In the southeast of the country there are a few small Christian minorities belonging to the Chaldean Catholic Church in Diyarbakır, or to the Syriac Orthodox Church in Midyat.
Istanbul also concentrates many other minorities. Bosnians, Macedonians, Croats, Serbs, Albanians, but also Muslim Bulgarians have found refuge in the Turkish megalopolis. There is also a Sudanese community, Turkish-speaking Muslims descended from former slaves from Sudan or Nubia. The gypsy community is also important. Sedentary for centuries in Istanbul, they live in the large districts of Sultanhamet, Kasımpaşa or Ayvansaray. They speak a wide variety of languages: Greek, Kurdish, Romanian, Armenian, Bulgarian, and of course the ancestral Roma language. Many are Muslims, the rest are Christians.
