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The Turkish people, or the Turks (Türkler), are a Turkic ethnic group living mainly in the Republic of Turkey and the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. They speak the Turkish language, which is the most widely spoken Turkic language.

The Turks form by far the largest ethnolinguistic group in the Republic of Turkey, where they are commonly referred to as Anatolian Turks (Anadolu Türkleri) in the Anatolian regions. However, this term is less common in the Aegean, Marmara, and Mediterranean regions, where people refer to themselves simply as "Turks". The Turkish people also form a majority in the breakaway state of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus - which is populated mostly by Turkish Cypriots and recent Anatolian Turkish settlers. Moreover, under Article 1 of the 1960 Cypriot constitution, the Turkish Cypriots form one of the "Two Communities" of the Republic of Cyprus (alongside the Greek Cypriots); hence, they have equal power-sharing rights and are not officially a minority group.

There are also ethnic Turks who form minorities in other former territories of the Ottoman Empire, such as in the Balkans, the Caucasus (historically concentrated in the Meskheti region in Georgia) and the Arab world, particularly in North Africa (where they were historically called "Kouloughlis" in the Barbary coast) and Mesopotamia. Turkish is a recognized language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, the Republic of Macedonia, and Romania.

In addition, a modern diaspora has been formed since the early 20th century, including Meskhetian Turks deported to Central Asia, Russia, and Ukraine from Georgia in 1944 by Soviet authorities, Turkish Cypriots in the United Kingdom and other British territories due to the Cyprus conflict, and from the mid-20th century onwards, economic emigrants in Western Europe, and to a lesser extent Australia and North America. Consequently, Turks today form the largest ethnic minority in Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands, and the second largest minority in Austria.

Who are the Turks?
The term "Turks" generally applies to various Turkic speaking people who traditionally live between the Balkans in the west to East Turkestan in the east. However, with the establishment of independent Turkic states in the twentieth century, radical nation-building policies and distinct national identities have been formed by these Turkic groups. Today the ethnic Turkish people - who live primarily in the Republic of Turkey, Northern Cyprus, and other former lands of the Ottoman Empire - are recorded as "Turks" in national censuses of all Turkic states, whilst these nations distinguish their own ethnic groups as "Azeri", "Kazakh", "Kyrgyz", "Turkmen" and "Uzbek" rather than as "Turks".

Perhaps the earliest mention of the ethnonym "Turk" dates back to 484-425 BCE when the ancient Greek historian Herodotus referred to Targitas (the first king of the Scythians or to the lyrcai people). Thereafter, by the first century CE the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela referred to the "Turcae" in the forests north of the Sea of Azov, whilst the Roman writer Pliny the Elder listed the "Tyrcae" as also living in the same area. However, the first definitive references to the "Turks" come from sixth century Chinese sources which refer to a diverse group of Turkic speakers living in the north and west of Chinese territory.

The first Turk Empire, known as the Turkic Khaganate, was established in 552 CE and stretched from northern China towards the territories of Sassanid territories in Central Asia. However, by the 580s internal strife occurred between the "Eastern" Gök Turks and "Western" Oğuz Turks and by 711 the latter broke away from the khaganate. The mid-eighth century Turkic text – known as the Orkhon inscriptions – sheds light on these events.

Today's ethnic Turkish people trace their lineage to the Oğuz Turks, who were overwhelmingly nomadic and were probably mostly shamanists prior to their conversion to Islam. However, once the Muslim Arab armies reached Amu Darya in 674, Islam was firmly established in Central Asia after Arab raids in 751. The conversion of the Turks to Islam was filtered through Persian and Central Asian culture, as well as through the efforts of missionaries, merchants and Sufis. However, many Turks also converted to Islam once they became the slaves of Arab raiders.

Under the Umayyads the Turks were mostly domestic slaves whilst under the Abbasids they were trained as soldiers and fought for the expanding Muslim empire. By the ninth-century Turkish commanders began to lead the caliphs’ Turkish troops into battles, and assumed even more military and political power when the Abbasid caliphate began to decline. By the mid-tenth century, the Seljuk Turks established the Seljuk Empire (1037–1194) which established the first mass migration of Turks to the Middle East.

The migration of Turks (and subsequent Turkification) of Anatolia occurred once the Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Turks continued to migrate to Anatolia for centuries under the rule of the Sultanate of Rum (1077–1308), the Anatolian beyliks and the Ottoman Empire (1299–1922) - many of which intermarried with local Anatolian inhabitants. The policy of Turkificiation (through language and/or religion) was also implemented to varying degrees when the Ottomans conquered territories in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Cyprus the Levant, North Africa, and Mesopotamia, by sending Turkish-speaking Anatolian Muslims, who were by-and-large loyal subjects of the Ottoman administration, to these regions.

By the nineteenth century the Ottoman intelligentsia, as well as Ottoman Muslims (particularly the Turkish-speaking), played a crucial role in the development of Turkish nationalism which emphasized Anatolia as the "Turkish homeland" ("vatan"). From the late eighteenth century onwards many Ottoman subjects began to migrate "back" to the "vatan" as muhacirs, which continued even after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923.

From Principality to Empire: The Ottoman era
The Ottoman administration divided its multi-ethnic empire into religious rather than ethnic groups, known as the Millet system. Hence, the identity of the ethnic Turks was transformed into a religious one and the ethnic Turks were grouped as "Ottoman Muslims", alongside the rest of the Muslim millet. Nonetheless, from the very beginning of Ottoman expansion into Europe, Murad I sought to increase his influence in the region by transferring ethnic Turcoman and Tatar nomads from Asia Minor into the Balkans. This state-organized population transfer continued under the sultan’s successors who continuously sought to increase the Turkish population in the conquered lands of the empire by encouraging the Turks to voluntarily migrate or by forcefully deporting them.

The Ottoman Turks' main contribution to the preservation of the Turkish character of their state was making the Ottoman Turkish language the official language of the Ottoman Empire, which was in direct contrast to the practice of other Turkish dynasties that used Arabic and Persian in their state affairs. Early forms of Turkish national consciousness can be traced back to the fourteenth century when Anatolian folk poets had a tendency to use only Turkish words, and deliberately chose to avoid using Arabic and Persian expressions. This was particularly evident during the reign of Murad II (1421-1451) and was mostly connected with the Sufi mystical orders like the Bektaşi's.

Many Western travelers to the Ottoman Empire noted that the term "Turk" was used by the Ottoman elite as a derogatory connotation or to classify a Turkish-speaking Ottoman; however, several writers of the Ottoman court embraced the Turkish ethnicity in their work. For example, one of the most well-known Ottoman-Turkish divan poetesses Mihri Hatun wrote the following couplet in the fifteenth century:

"Şimdiki halkun katında Türklüktür itibar (In the eye of this world’s people, being a Turk is an honor) Keşlü tarhanalarında sum olaydum kaşki (Would that I were garlic in their sour tarhana soup) - Ottoman poetess Mihri Hatun"

Nonetheless, in general, the Ottoman court favoured Türkî-i fasîh ("eloquent Turkish") in literary works which involved the use of Arab and Persian linguistic rules on eloquence. This placed a wide linguisitc gap between the written language of the literate Ottoman elite and the vernacular of the common Turkish-speaking people.

By the nineteenth century the Christian millets in the Balkans turned to nationalist movements based on religio-national communities. Once they gained their independence during the various rebellions and wars, over five million Muslims died in these wars or from starvation and diseas, whilst eapproximately 5.5 to 7 million Turkish and non-Turkish Ottoman Muslims fled persecution and took refuge in Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. The surviving Ottoman-Turkish refugees (known as muhacirs) unified around a common Turkish-Islamic identity and enhanced Anatolia’s Turkish/Muslim demographic base. Moreover, with the mass deportation of Armenians to the Vilayet of Syria during World War I and the population exchange between Greece and Turkey of their Muslim and Greek Orthodox minority populations, Turkey become a predominately Turkish-speaking Muslim country.