Mehmet Ziya Gökalp was a Turkish sociologist, writer, poet, and politician. After the 1908 Young Turk Revolution that reinstated constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire, he adopted the pen name Gökalp, which he retained for the rest of his life. As a sociologist, Ziya Gökalp was influential in the negation of Islamism, pan-Islamism, and Ottomanism as ideological, cultural, and sociological identifiers. In a 1936 publication, sociologist Niyazi Berkes described Gökalp as "the real founder of Turkish sociology, since he was not a mere translator or interpreter of foreign sociology".
Ahmed Vefik Pasha was an Ottoman statesman, diplomat, scholar, playwright, and translator during the Tanzimat and First Constitutional Era periods. He was commissioned with top-rank governmental duties, including presiding over the first Ottoman Parliament in 1877. He also served as Prime Minister for two brief periods. He also established the first Ottoman theatre and initiated the first Western style theatre plays in Bursa and translated Molière's major works. His portrait was depicted on the Turkish postcard stamp dated 1966.
The Sun Language Theory was a Turkish pseudolinguistic, pseudoscientific hypothesis developed in Turkey in the 1930s that proposed that all human languages are descendants of one proto-Turkic primal language. The theory's promotion of Turks as a progenitor race led to it finding favour among Turkish ultranationalists, who used it to justify their nationalist ideology.
The Karamanlides, also known as Karamanli Greeks or simply Karamanlis, are a traditionally Turkish-speaking Greek Orthodox people native to the region of Karaman in Anatolia.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until the Surname Law of 1934, was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism (Atatürkism).
Turkish people or Turks are the largest Turkic people who speak various dialects of the Turkish language and form a majority in Turkey and Northern Cyprus. In addition, centuries-old ethnic Turkish communities still live across other former territories of the Ottoman Empire. Article 66 of the Constitution of Turkey defines a Turk as anyone who is a citizen of Turkey. While the legal use of the term Turkish as it pertains to a citizen of Turkey is different from the term's ethnic definition, the majority of the Turkish population are of Turkish ethnicity. The vast majority of Turks are Muslims and follow the Sunni faith.
Edip Yüksel is an American-Kurdish activist and prominent figure in the Quranism movement. Born in Güroymak, Yuksel is the author of more than twenty books on religion, politics, philosophy and law in Turkish. After settling in the United States, where he began his career as a lawyer, he became a colleague and friend of Rashad Khalifa. However, his interpretation of the Qur'an has differed with Khalifa on a number of issues, and his work has represented a new trend within the Quranist movement.
Greek Muslims, also known as Grecophone Muslims, are Muslims of Greek ethnic origin whose adoption of Islam dates to the period of Ottoman rule in the southern Balkans. They consist primarily of descendants of Ottoman-era converts to Islam from Greek Macedonia, Crete, and northeastern Anatolia.
The 1974 Cypriot coup d'état was a military coup d'état executed by the Cypriot National Guard and sponsored by the Greek military junta. On 15 July 1974 the coup plotters removed the sitting President of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios III, from office and installed pro-Enosis nationalist Nikos Sampson. The Sampson regime was described as a puppet state, whose ultimate aim was the annexation of the island by Greece; in the short term, the coupists proclaimed the establishment of the "Hellenic Republic of Cyprus". The coup was viewed as illegal by the United Nations.
Anti-Turkish sentiment, also known as Anti-Turkism, or Turkophobia is hostility, intolerance, or xenophobia against Turkish people, Turkish culture and the Turkish language.
Turkic mythology refers to myths and legends told by the Turkic people. It features Tengrist and Shamanist strata of belief along with many other social and cultural constructs related to the nomadic and warrior way of life of Turkic and Mongol peoples in ancient times. Turkic mythology shares numerous ideas and practices with Mongol mythology. Turkic mythology has also been influenced by other local Asiatic and Eurasian mythologies. For example, in Tatar mythology elements of Finnic and Indo-European mythologies co-exist. Beings from Tatar mythology include Äbädä, Alara, Şüräle, Şekä, Pitsen, Tulpar, and Zilant.
Turks in Germany, also referred to as German Turks and Turkish Germans, are ethnic Turkish people living in Germany. These terms are also used to refer to German-born individuals who are of full or partial Turkish ancestry.
The Greek genocide, which included the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia, which was carried out mainly during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) – including the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1923) – on the basis of their religion and ethnicity. It was perpetrated by the government of the Ottoman Empire led by the Three Pashas and by the Government of the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire. The genocide included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches through the Syrian Desert, expulsions, summary executions, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece. Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire.
Turkification, Turkization, or Turkicization describes a shift whereby populations or places receive or adopt Turkic attributes such as culture, language, history, or ethnicity. However, often this term is more narrowly applied to mean specifically Turkish rather than merely Turkic, meaning that it refers more frequently to the Ottoman Empire's policies or the Turkish nationalist policies of the Republic of Turkey toward ethnic minorities in Turkey. As the Turkic states developed and grew, there were many instances of this cultural shift.
Turks of Western Thrace are ethnic Turks who live in Western Thrace, in the province of East Macedonia and Thrace in Northern Greece.
Mahmud Shevket Pasha was an Ottoman military commander and statesman.
The Komotini events occurred on 29 January 1990 between local Greek Christians and members of the Muslim minority in the Komotini area in northern Greece. The events started over the conviction and imprisonment of an ethnic Turkish MP, Sadik Achmet, by a Greek court. 400 shops were looted, and the offices of two Turkish newspapers ransacked. The clashes broke out after the murder of an ethnic Greek by a Muslim, while there were no Turkish casualties during the events.
The Turks in Libya, also commonly referred to as Kouloughlis(Arabic: كراغلة) are Libyans who claim partial descent from Ottoman Janissaries in Libya. Quantifiying their presence/population in Libya in the modern day is near impossible, due to them assimilating near entirely in the Libyan population over time. They mainly make up a small fraction of the populations of the cities, Misrata and Tripoli.
The Cappadocian Greeks, or simply Cappadocians, are an ethnic Greek community native to the geographical region of Cappadocia in central-eastern Anatolia; roughly the Nevşehir and Kayseri provinces and their surroundings in modern-day Turkey. There had been a continuous Greek presence in Cappadocia since antiquity, and the indigenous populations of Cappadocia, some of whose Indo-European languages may have been closely related to Greek became entirely Greek-speaking by at least the 5th century CE.
