Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald offers some much-needed observations about what Turkey has been and what it is now:
During the Cold War, Turkish behavior was obscured. Turkey offered bases and listening posts -- to be directed at its historic enemy, Russia. Thus, for good and sufficient reasons of its own, Turkey collaborated. It sent Turkish soldiers to Korea (where they left behind thousands of Korean converts to Islam -- still a potential security problem).The United States, in turn, resolutely ignored the failure of the Turks to begin to start to even try to recognize the mere existence of the Armenian genocide. Certainly no one was about to discover that what prompted that genocide was not something inherent in Turks, but the hatred felt for non-Muslims. Anyone reading the eyewitness accounts, either of the first genocide of 1894-96, or the second much larger one of 1915-1920, cannot fail to notice how often the word "giavour" or Infidel was shouted, and with what glee Armenians priests were crucified and their wives and daughters raped.
In 1955, when the pogrom smack in the middle of Istanbul took place against the Greeks, the American State Department praised the Turkish government for its actions in bringing things under "control," rather than denouncing or even analyzing those acts -- which were prompted by the attitudes that Islam necessarily encourages.
As for the belief of assorted Turkish antisemites that Turkey has always been "good to the Jews," this is nonsense. The Jews who settled in Salonika after their expulsion from Spain replaced a previous community of Jews whom the Ottomans had displaced, and it was not generosity but raison d'etat that prompted this: the Jews were felt to be less of a threat than Christians. What's more, they could dilute the Christian position in Salonika and possibly could be expected, as a weak and isolated community, to more readily do the bidding of the Ottoman government, as grateful and economically active dhimmis (not to mention the fact that the padishahin, or Sultans, always took Jewish doctors, believing them to be superior in their knowledge -- you can even find note taken of this in the Topkapi compound).But Jews in the Balkans were subject to the forced levy of children, or devshirme, though few seem to recall this. And Jews were subject to all the legal disabilities that other non-Muslim populations suffered from. But in the fantasy world of Turkish belief, one in which some Jewish commentators have willingly participated, the Jews of Turkey were treated practically like kith and kin.
For another illustration of the real Turkish behavior, on December 12, 1941 the dilapidated and leaking Struma, a ship loaded with more than 800 desperate Jewish refugees from the Nazis, left the Rumanian port of Constanta. A few days later the engine died. It was eventually towed into the harbor of Istanbul, and then, once more after a brief period, the Turks, not wishing to offend the Germans, towed the ship out into international waters. On February 12, 1942 an explosion -- very likely caused by the Soviet navy, which had been ordered by Stalin to attack any ship entering the Black Sea beyond Turkish waters -- caused the ship to sink. More than 800 people died. There was one survivor. The Turks might have let those refugees land, but did not. That failure belies the claims of Turks that they have always befriended the Jews.
As for the experience of the Jews of Palestine under Turkish rule, the local Turkish satrap was making plans for genocide on the Armenian model when World War I intervened. Nonetheless, Turkish behavior during the war led half the Jewish population to leave the area that would become Mandatory Palestine. During the war the famous agronomist Aronsohn, his sister Sarah Aronsohn, and others provided intelligence to the British that was far more valuable (as British intelligence agents explicitly recognized) than the few hundred horsemen, exaggerated into a "100,000 men," that Abdullah provided T. E. Lawrence. Those horsemen did little more than harry, ineffectively, the Turks on the Hejaz railway line. The Aronsohns and other members of the Nili Group (as it was called) were caught and killed; Sarah Aronsohn was tortured, but managed to commit suicide to prevent worse.
That a handful of prominent Jewish refugees did spend the war in Turkey, and some -- one thinks of Erich Auerbach, who re-wrote his important literary study "Mimesis" from scratch after having lost the first draft -- were grateful to the Turkish government. And one can still find, in those used bookstores along Istiqlal Caddesi, the odd volumes belonging to German Jewish scholars who continued to live in Turkey well into the 1960s and even 1970s, and then gradually, died out.
But let us not exaggerate Turkey's wonderfulness. A collective letter about Turkish antisemitism, signed by Turkish intellectuals, including Mustafa Akyol (who has taken a few whacks at this site for criticism of his attempt to suggest that Islam can be easily reformed, by tinkering here and there, in some unspecified fashion, with the contents of Sira and Hadith), recently appeared. There were some prominent Turks -- Orhan Pamuk among them -- who did not sign that letter.
Why not? And why now is that same Orhan Pamuk about to be tried for daring to mention the Armenian genocide -- or if in the end he is not tried, it will only be out of the desire not to scare the women, the horses, and the inhabitants of the E.U.
Nagorno Karabakh is sadly forgotton in the above article and that ethnic cleansing was only 10 years ago. I think Turkey still has and "illegal" economic blockage on Armenia.
The British Foreign Office, when asked about the genocide in Nagorno Karabakh, wrote in a written response:
"Britian has no interest in affairs abroad but only interests and there is oil in the region"
With Turkey's support of Azerbiajan NATO weaponry was used.
Anyway the attempted genocide saw the classic Jihad activities of rape, aim rockets at schools, saw off heads, bomb civilian targets, and destroy churches (I quote "weapons were stored and fired from the church above susha because they new the Armenians would not destroy the church").
The other classic Islamic tactic of lying and obscuring also occured. Azeris get the mass media in and show how the Armenians have done one bad act so that makes all of theirs justifiable. The likelihood is the Azeries multilated their own dead at Khalodgy for the media anyway. I have good reason to believe that, having been there myself.
NK's sin was to have democracy and vote with a 90% majority to undo Stalin's work and leave Azerbiajan.
As far as I can tell the whole world is still pissed with these people for wanting self determination and getting it.
They have a buffer zone as a result of starting to win the war.
When NK started to win then the world stepped in and Russia saw to it that the war stopped.
NATO and Russia and USA and UK and EU don't want democratic people to have the upper hand and please when you think of Turkey do not forget this historic fact - both from 100 years ago and from 10 years ago.
If you do forget it it then it could be you evacuating a school before a missile hits it and hoping your teenage daughter isn't raped and beheaded in front of you.
If you think I am wrong then do you have a better explaination for Hitler's success other than he saw the world do nothing about the Armenians and realised, in that case, they would not stop him?
(30+ million dead in western Europe alone does not count as stopping him, it counts as limiting him)
Absolutely excellent post, Hugh. It's past time that the US government free itself from the perncious influence of the Turkish lobby. Few people outside of the government realize that the Turkish Lobby, formal and informal, rivals that of Japan, South Korea, or Germany, in influence on Capital Hill.
The Turks display themselves as secularists, but as you so clearly show, Secular Turkey was just as anti-Christian and anti-Jewish as the Ottomans. Ask any Greek whose ancestors were murdered, raped, and violently driven from Smirna in 1928. This by the "great secularist" Ataturk. Ask any Assyrian Christian still living in Mardin what it's like to be ruled by the Turks.
Many want to excuse the Turks because they allow so-much Western decadence into the country (but that only increases the Islamist attitutes of the average Muslim) or because Turkiye has a pro-Israel foriegn policy (but that is just payback to the Arabs for seceeding from the Turkish empire), while in fact Turkey is an illegitimate regime imposed on the forceful absorbtion of the original Christian peoples of Anatolia and Thrace.
Unfortunately, even the current Greek government has been so undermined by its "Europeanism" that they have no will to stand up to the monster next door. The question is... Will anyone?
That we would point to a place like Turkey and a people like Turks as a beacon of hope indicates how low our ambitions have sunk.
The hopeless Struma sinking into the Black Sea makes a neat allegory for the West's collective future in its relations with Islam.
Pravo,
the Smyrna affair was in 1922. On this read George Horton's Blight of Asia, Marjorie Housepian's Smyrna Affair [title?]. Ernest Hemingway was in the region in those days and alludes to events there in In Our Time.
Lord Kinross recounts the Greek-Turkish war after WW One in his biog of Ataturk.
Hemingway describes in his classic style the taqiyya or Kasb of a Turkish leader. He was then working for a Toronto newspaper. The passage below is from this link.
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2005/07/plopalestinian-authority-spokesman.html
Bismarck said all men in the Balkans who tuck
their shirts into their trousers are crooks. The
shirts of the peasants, of course, hang outside.
At any rate, when I found Hamid Bey --next to
Kemal, perhaps the most powerful man in the
Angora government-- in his Stamboul office
where he . . . [draws] a large salary as
administrator of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, a
French capitalized concern-- his shirt was tucked
in, for he was dressed in a gray business suit.
Ernest Hemingway
I know that Hemingway is out of literary fashion nowadays, but give him credit for what he did well.
Provoslavni is right. Turkey is just wearing a mask of secularism. Its islamic core shows in its anti-Christian deeds.
Turks are allowed to build mosques are in Germany. But in Turkey there is no freedom of religion and no building of churches is allowed; the Christian religious minorities are persecuted and harrassed.
If anything, in 'modern' Turkey like in all Muslim countries, the Islamic doctrine is growing in importance both politically and socially.
This goes to prove that the much quack-quacked Turkish secularism has been always only a thin veneer.
Indeed, as APF states above -- any performance by an Islamic nation which rises above the level of "utterly deplorable" to, say "deplorable" is seen as a great success... If their performance on a wide range of topics such as rule of law to religious tolerance rises above unacceptable to, say, "tolerable", then that Muslim nation is considered a paragon of virtue in the world...
Clearly, the more ardent the belief in Islam, the less likely any Muslim nation is to be a beacon for anything but darkness and backwardness... in short, no beacon at all..
Turkey as a "beacon" unto the world? -- You might say 'when pigs fly' -- only then will Turkey be a beacon... Or, you might say, when Turkey tolerates the eating of bacon, it will be a beacon -- but that will probably never come to pass, and such an expectation would be rasher still...
What a hamfisted joke.
Your right Eliyahu, It was 1922. I also mis-typed "Capitol" so sorry about the typos.
Still my point is valid, since Ataturk was already in control by 1922. I believe that is also the year they formally abolished deposed the last Sultan, Mehmed VI, who was already a limited constitutional monarch since 1918. On March 3, 1924 theyt would formally abolish even the ceremonial Caliphate of Abdul Mejid II and expel from the shores of Turkey all of the Osmanlis. The old Caliph settled on the French Riviera as a painter while Ataturk would assumed the official role of a fascist style Dictator.
Remember, just getting rid of the fez and wearing a Western suit and tie doesn't make a Muslim autocrat any less oppressive.
Eliyahu,
I read the site you posted: http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2005/07/plopalestinian-authority-spokesman.html and my compliments.
We have too many short-sighted politicians and advocates who would rather live in their fantasies of what these Muslims are after than see what's really happening. That's why I'm like a broken record repeating the need for a Jewish-Christian Alliance in the Middle East. It's past time we solve the problems that separate us and face the real threat to all of us. Christians and Jews can compromise, reach real agreements, and live together in peace and cooperation. That will NEVER happen with the Muslims. Again, my compliments.
Take this quote of Turkish Minister Mehemt Aydin, intelectual wonderboy of the Erdogan goverment, on a OCSE summit about Antisemitism in Europe:
I find it very meaningful that we meet today in Cordoba- a city which has for
centuries been a venue of interaction and sharing among cultures and civilizations as
well as a symbol of respect for diversity. It was in this part of the world that the
second wave of Islamic philosophy and science, which was universal in form and
content, had flourished and contributed greatly to the development of European
thought in general and Renaissance in particular. It was here that Muslims, Jews and
Christians created a constructive and creative form of coexistence which lasted until
the so-called “Catholic supremacy”. This achievement was also one of the major
sources of the pax ottomana, i.e., the Ottoman “Millet System” which also embraced
the Jews of Andoluz- a system that still draws the attention of many first class social
and political scientists. The Turkish Republic has molded its modern philosophy and
practice of the regime of toleration out of this historical experience and strengthened
it by the inclusion of the Western achievements in this field."
http://www.adl.org/main_International_Affairs/osce_cordoba_1.htm
Dutch bestseller historian Geert Mak who compared Theo van Gogh's submission to "Der Ewige Jude" of Goebels announced a year ago that "the Ottoman Empire is actually an EU avant le lettre". He mend it as an advertisement to join again, as the united happy Millets
http://www.nkr.am/eng/news/index.htm
We have something to learn from these guys who have lived there for all of recorded history and still do despite Islam and Turkey
I quote from the above link, the anti-dhimmi attitude of the latest victoms of pan-turkish nationalism:
The NKR state independence is the highest value for the people of Artsakh. Though currently the international community takes the NKR as a de-facto independent state and an essential factor of regional security, appeals are sounded to turn back the time, to return to the past, from which we are divided by a whole generation of young people who have never seen despotism, discrimination and violence, which their parents underwent in Azerbaijan.
Nobody should have any illusions - there is no return to the past.
From Hugh's article,
Yep. The Korea Times recently reported:
And while businessmen from South Korean revel at contracts won in The Saudi Kingdom, it is obvious that they know nothing of Islam's reciprocation.
Nor does the rest of the free world.
The story of how Turkish soldiers managed to engage in Da'wa in Korea has been mentioned many times at Jihadwatch. For example:
#1.
In Japan, Jihad supporters could be smuggled in among the Koreans. During the Korean War, Turkish soldiers managed to convert large numbers of South Koreans -- remember, every Muslim has a duty to perform daw'a, to help convert others. Some reports suggest there are now, as a result, 50,000 Muslims in South Korea. These figures need to be checked, and Korean, Japanese, and American security services must investigate this source of people who could, if they wished, blend in. Nothing like an attack on American servicemen in Japan to demonstrate one's potency. Ordinarily, the pride taken in one's ancestry, in China, Japan, Korea, and similar pride in a rich cultural heritage, stand in the way of Islam. The Cultural Revolution, in its war on Chinese scholars and its indifference to everything in China but Communism, and in the deliberate destruction of old manuscripts and artifacts (see Simon Leys' "Chinese Shadows" and "The Emperor's New Clothes") was akin to Islam, in its indifference or primitive hostility to everything outside itself).
Meanwhile, watch those converts, the descendants of those who, perhaps grateful to Turkish soldiers, started listening to their siren-songs.
Christianity, on the other hand, spread in Korea through other means, and in particular through the work of the Rev. Horace J. Underwood (the name smacks, I know, of a character played by Groucho Marx), of the typewriter-family, who brought Presbyterianism to Korea, and founded Chosen Christian College (it has changed its name to something I forget). It was he who converted half of Korea to the Presbyterianism that causes us, today, to see those comforting signs, in Korean, outside otherwise sparsely-attended churches. Here's to Reverend Underwood!
One hopes that all manner of help will be given to Christian missionaries in China, who stand a good chance of beating Islam at the game of conversion, if properly funded.
Posted by: Hugh at June 3, 2004 06:14 PM
#2.
The "Christian function" could well be any number of interfaith meetings. You know the kind: one or two representatives of "each" group, pieties about how "we need to stress what unites us, not what separates us" (i.e. let's talk about monotheism, our "abrahamic" faiths, and whatever else we can find that will help us to avoid even so much as hinting at the uncompromising division of the world, in Islam, between Believer and non-Believer, the requirement that dar al-Islam ultiamtely swallow up dar al-Harb, the status of permanent humiliation, degradation, and insecurity which is imposed on non-Muslims under Muslim rule (see Antoine Fattal, Le statut legal des non-musulmanes en pays d'Islam, Dar el-Machreq Sarl Editeurs, Beyrouth, 1995, for the fullest account of the Muslim theory, and the books by Bat Ye'or, for the fullest account of the practice, of dhimmitude).
Oh, there are all sorts of Islamochristians, or Christianomuslims, loose inthe world. There is the brigade, dwindling fast as the Christian Arabs flee from the Holy Land (unless they are able to obtain Israeli citizenship, rather than that of the "Palestine Authority"), of tame Christians who willingly join in promoting the relentless Jihad against Israel, all gussied up to look, for the outside world, and for the most gullible in that world, as a "struggle for legitimate rights" of the recently-invented "Palestinian people" (born c. 1968, kept on artifical life-support for nearly half-a-century, likely to disappear just as soon as Israel goes under, and there is no further need). There is Naim Ateek, and Hanan Ashrawi, and all those Western Christians who so devoutly want to believe that there is just a discrete matter of Israel, and once that matter has been "solved" then all manner of things shall be well. All sorts and conditions of idiocy.
So it would not be a surprise if an Al-Qaeda member were coming to address such a group in Korea. But he might also be coming to visit local Muslim sympathizers and supporters. In South Korea, the Turkish troops who were there during the Korean War (known in Turkey ever after as the "Korelis"), left behind a legacy: converts to Islam, who may now number now in the tens of thousands. And they, like Muslims everywhere, are supposed to owe their allegiance not to the nation-state but to their fellow Muslims. Perhaps they do; perhaps they don't. How would one know? And if one cannot know for sure where loyalties lie, given the widespread dissimulation known as taqiyya, or kitman, which is religiously sanctioned in Islam in order to protect Islam and the Believers,what, in order to exercise reasonable caution, must Infidels assume?
Posted by: Hugh at July 13, 2004 08:20 AM
And there are many others.
Hugh,
The only reason I cited those articles was your article reminded me of what I had read just a few days ago.
Hugh,
Your prowess is secure, but may I make a suggestion?
When responding to a post, doesn't it make sense to qualify the person's name or tagline?
That person would be delighted by your acknowledgement.
I'm not sure how to ask this question, but are you educator or are you lord?
Erdogan himself was onc in hot water over his religious statements. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2270642.stm
I do not believe Turkey is nearly as secular as is being reported in the west. Perhaps as compared to SA, it is, but nonetheless it is a far cry from a truly pluralistic society. One need only look to the failure to admit Armenian genocide and restoration of Christian sites as examples of Islam uber alles.
Until I see TRUE secularism for a long time there, I will doubt that it is even possible. That is my belief today and I await to be proven wrong.
You have a point. Justification for the practice so far: I often scroll through very fast, to see if something might usefully be commented on at this full-service website. Many things are missed, of coures. And I often do not stop to take careful note of the nom-de-post. But sometimes I do, and sometimes (when there is an ongoing debate of some kind, when I may have to quickly turn the fuse around on an Acme Missile so that it explodes in the dynamite-setter's face) I answer at great length. Perhaps I'll change. Nothing lordly or dismissive about it (when I want to be dismissive, I take the time to do it right). Besides, I'm too broke to be a lord; why, I'm still paying off on the installment plan last year's copy of the Almanach de Gotha.
Hugh,
Thanks.
P.S. You still didn't acknowledge me, but I can forgive you knowing your full schedule. I can't read Kennedy, by the way.
To Aiken Bryce above--
You will be happy to learn that I have spent the past few hours researching the history of Aiken, South Carolina, after which I thought you may be named (or perhaps the town was named after your family). And I got up before dawn in order to read the collected works of James Bryce (well, really just "The American Commonwealth," both volumes, and the first 150 pages of his book on South America). I'm taking my voluntary duties seriously, especially toward all those with whom I sense an elective affinity.
On another note, who is the "Kennedy" you refer to?
Hugh
You have written extensively about Turkey. I read somewhere that Qur'an states Turks had mongoloid features.Are the Gog and Magog people Turkish?
Now a days Turkish people can not be distinguished from their Christian neighbors. Is it because of intermarriage and widescale conversion of Eastern Romans and Armenians ?
Are the White Huns Turks? Edward Gibbon states that the Hun's complexion and features became white due to geographical conditions!!This opinion can not be deemed as scientific.
It's is interesting to know how proud the Turks are about the Mughal Empire.This is why they maintain warm relations with Pakistan and supported it with military facilities on every war it fought against India.
The Qur'an says nothing about the Turks, Seljuk or Ottoman or any other kind. How could it? Whether one accepts the Muslim dates, or the later, and more accurate dates of Western scholars, for the "final" Qur'an, this all pre-dates the arrival of the Turkic peoples from Central Asia. Or should we go with the various national myths created by Kemalists about the Turks having been in Anatolia since the time of the Hittites (and wasn't Tocharian just a Turkish dialect). The whole mythology about the Turkish People (depicted as being in Anatolia since long before the real Turks arrived on the secne) was offered as a replacement for the mythology of Muhammad and Islam (with Ataturk replacing Muhammad as the object of supreme veneration). Back in 1954 or so, Bernard Lewis wrote understandingly, sympathetically, of this false history that the Turks had created (he fell very hard for Turkey, did Lewis -- and his subsequent inability to tell the full truth about the nature and role of Islam, and the treatment of non-Muslims, which he has consistently scanted or misunderstod) pro) -- may have been a necessity, given the need for many to have such objects of worship, with one belief-system having to yield to another rather than to nothing at all.
Few wish to wander lonely as an escaped cloud in the universe, Leibnizian monads with nowhere to hang their belief-hat. Hence the whole business created, with Ataturk's blessing, to satisfy the primitive impulse.
Turkey supported Pakistan not because of admiration or nostalgia for the Mughal Empire (though the mythology about Muslim conquerors of India would attract Turks and Persians, for obvious reasons) but because Turkey is Muslim and Pakistan is Muslim, and was fighting India, a non-Muslim enemy. Nothing else needed to be known about the conflict. The only time any Muslim state might take the side of a non-Muslim power is when it feels it can do more good for itself (and hence, in its reasoning, "for Islam") by using that Infidel power against more threatening, but essentially "non-Muslim" Muslims. Saudi Arabia could justify supporting the first Gulf War because Saddam Hussein was threatening "real Muslims" -- not so much Kuwait, as after it Saudi Arabia itself. Besides, Saddam Hussein was a Ba'athist, and held to be insufficiently -- at that point -- Muslim by Saudi standards (permitting women to become Dr. Germ and Dr. Anthrax, admirable if they were to let loose on the Infidels -- was nonetheless islamically incorrect). In those limited circumstances, for the limited reason of self-defense, to support the American effort was okay. It was not really support for the Infidels. That would be out of the question. Always. Everywhere.
And let us not forget that Turkey is territory rightfully belonging to Greece that has been occupied by Islamic invaders!
Ah! How 'wonderful' it all is! Aren't we all burning with the peace of Islam!!! Millions of Greeks and Armenians certainly did!!!
And by the way, let us remember the once-wonderful Smyrna!!
I am impressed Hugh respect Korea, I din´t know that.
I really find this thread fascinating, so much to learn and what an excellent group of contributers.
Muslims in Korea I didn't know. Is there any part of the world where Da'wa has been held back and there are no Muslims?
The European Union is committing 'harakiri' the day they allow Muslim Turkey to join them. The writings on the wall. What the savages cannot do with a military conquest; they will achieve by infiltration, as none of the Western leaders have a back bone to stop the expansion of Islamists into their territories.
Hugh,
You're right again about the Turkish regime in Ancyra (Ankara) and their Pan-Tocharian propaganda. In fact, the majority of the current Turkish speakers in Anatolia are descended from Greeks, Armenians, Celts (Galatians), Assyrians and others forcibly converted to Islam and Turkish culture by Seljuk and Osmanli rulers.
The Osmanlis clearly "looked" Mongolian when the first entered Asia Minor but intermarried with the conquered peoples. The Turks of Kazakhstan, Kyrgizstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan still look like their original ancestors.
However, unlike the Turkiye of Anatolia, who became the primary force of Islam, many Turks in Central Asia (especially the Kazakhs and Kyrghiz) have only a very shallow Islamic veneer and maintain much of their original Shamanic religious traditions, as well as a long cultural relationship with Russia. These nations could be won for Orthodox Christianity if a concerted effort were made.
In fact, many Turkic nationalities that are not Muslim at all.
The Gaugauz Turks of Moldova are almost all Orthodox Christians. They are closely related to the Turks of Turkiye except for their Christianity. After Marshal Suvorov liberated Bessarabia (today's Moldova) from the Ottomans, these Christian Turks moved north to Russia and settled along the Dniester River.
The Chuvash (also known as the Volga Bulgars)were a mixed Turkic/Bulgar tribe converted to Islam in the 13th Century and part of the Khazan Khanate by 1400. Russian rule over the Chuvash people began in 1552. Soon, Islamic ways were forgotten and the Chuvash are almost all Orthodox today.
The Khakas are a Turkic-speaking people related to the Kyrgyz. Traditionally they lived in the middle reaches of the Yenisei river in Siberia and were nomadic herders. In the last two centuries they have become Christianized. Since 1991, they have been an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation.
The Urum are several thousand Turkish language speakers who inhabit a few villages in the Southeastern Ukraine and in Georgia. These Christian Turks were called Urum (from "Rum" i.e. Constantinople)which was a term used by the Ottomans for all non-Muslims.
The Chulym Turks live near Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk Krai in Russia. They speak Chulym-Turkic language and adhere to Russian Orthodoxy mixed with their original Shamanist beliefs.
The Tuvans are almost all Mahayana Buddhists of the Tibetan Gelugpa school and are loyal to the Dalai Lama. Tuva (Tyva) is a soveriegn autonomous republic within the Russian Federation.
The Yakut (Sakha) are Orthodox or Shamanic, while most Altaian Turks follow Shamanism or Russian Orthodoxy and in the last few years Tibetan Buddhism has begun making inroads by way of neighboring Mongolia and Tuva.
The Sari Uygurs (Yellow Uygurs) of western China are another Buddhist Turkic group.
One of the most interesting Turkic peoples are the Karaim Turks of the Crimea and other parts of Eastern Europe, who follow a unique form of Judaism that accepts the Torah but rejects the Talmud and the Rabbiniate.
There are also the Krymchaks (also known as Judeo-Tartars) who are a community of Rabbinical Jews on the Crimean peninsula. They speak a Turkish language with numerous Hebrew and Aramaic loan-words and written in Hebrew characters.
Although the Bashkirs have been officially Muslim since the 1400s, in 1555, the Bashkir tribes voluntarily joined Muscovy declaring they would rather serve a Christian Tsar than be ruled by other Muslims. They are one of the few Muslim nations that has never lived under Sharia.
So the Muslim regime in Ankara is being completely dishonest by representing itself a the voice of the world's Turks, when their claim even to be Turks at all, is only as deep as a language and a religion imposed by conquest.
Yes thank you Provoslavni Khazaria was one of the most interesting things in the history, the Former Israel, and almost all the ascendents of the jews, they are the primitive askenazis. Very impressing.
"Is there any part of the world where Da'wa has been held back and there are no Muslims?"
Google "Islam" and "penguins" for reports of an incipient Antarcticarabia.
Provoslavni's adumbration of a Turkic taxonomy is fascinating: it's almost like the Turks are categorizable into innumerable discrete machine-like integers or insect-like formications. Perhaps this is true of all peoples, but it seems like the Turkic differentiation is the most complexly stratified.
Franze,
The interesting thing about the ancient Khazars was their long term effect on Europe. Unfortunately, the Khazars have been misused by certain anti-Semites to make the claim that the Askenazi aren't really Semites but the descendants of Khazars. This claim is self-contradictory but it did gain some currency in the Muslim press.
Arthur Koestler wrote a book claiming that the Askenazi (like himself) were all descendants of Khazar converts. While his book has some good history in it, I believe his conclusions were way too simplistic.
When the Khazar Khagan converted to Judaism, there was alread a substantial number of Jewish refugees from Islam in Khazaria. I suspect that he then invited more Jews to settle in his empire and teach both religion and literacy, as they would be more highly educated than his powerful but illiterate Turko-Bulgar tribe.
At the time, most Jews lived in the Middle East where they were suffering under the Dhimmitude of the Caliphate. Many of these Jews, hearing about a Jewish king to the north, opted to migrate north and settle in a land that welcomed them. These Jews, now living in freedom in a Jewish state for the first time in centuries underwent a population explosion and soon the children of the Jewish immigrants outnumbered the Khazars.
This was the origin of the large Jewish population in the Pale of Eastern Europe and Russia. When the Mongols destroyed Khazaria, these Jeews migtrated to Ukraine, Poland and other parts of eastern Europe where they joined the Jewish populations already there.
Of course, much intermarriage occurred between the Khazars and these Jewish immigrants. So what? That doesn't make the Ashkenazi any less Jewish since intermarriage has always occured among every people.
However, if one is actually looking for the descendants of these original Khazar converts, I would suspect that the Krymchaks and the Karaites are the most likely candidates. This is just my theory and I'd appreciate any corrections from Jewish scholars more knowledgeable about the subject.
I don´t believe in a pure race, I am not racist, I think that Khazaria like the current Israel, where argentinians, americans, ethiopic, russian, frech, indians and other jews, are building together the state, the important is the religion, the culture, the language, the race isn´t important.
But when I listened Khazaria, I was very surprised.
Franze,
I certainly didn't impute any racism at all, and your post didn't imply any.
It's just that Khazaria was one of the most interesting and complicated of the non-Muslim Turkish nations. I only hope that people, more qualified that me, will do more study on its role in history.
I was using your very kind post to me as a welcome excuse to confront an issue that some Muslim apologists often try to use.
Great post. I am worried what I read today. That Turkey is building up its naval force in the aegean. A commentator for the greek newspaper ekathimerini commented that by 2015 Turkey will have naval supremacy in the Aegean. It is obvious that they intend to split the aegean in half. How can an aggessive, expansionist nation possibly be considered for EU candidacy. How can people be so blind. Of course we know the answer. The EU politicians are blinded by their PC attitudes and only want to see the world as they want it to be and not how it is.
As for the comments on Turkish tolerance I agree that Turkish tolerance of Jews is a myth.