AHC: Iraq or Syria or Palestine or Egypt become majority Turkophone, like Anatolia did?

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
What would it take for Turkish to supplant Arabic in major countries of the Middle East for all except religious uses?
 

mad orc

Banned
Anatolia was home to many different peoples in ancient times who were either natives or settlers and invaders. These different people included the Armenians, Hittites, Persians, Luwians, Hurrians, Greeks, Cimmerians, Galatians, Colchians, Iberians, Carians, Lydians, Lycians, Phrygians, Arameans, Assyrians, Corduenes, Cappadocians, Cilicians, Jews, Truvans and scores of others.
It was due to this, that the Turks could easily supplant them .
So many different cultures .
Egypt and Syria on the other hand, only large scale famine and something equivalent to the black death may do the job !
 
It's not impossible, but highly unlikely. By the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, most of the Middle East had been ruled by Turkic or Turkic-descended dynasties off-and-on for almost a thousand years. Yet even then, lasting Turkicization of areas of the Middle East only occurred in Azerbaijan, Turkey, and some corners of Iran.
 
IMO you'd need to have the Byzantines defeat the Turks and begin to expand again. That's the only way you could even get them to settle somewhere else. Plus, it's important to note that a lot of Turks in Anatolia are actually Greeks or members of a plethora of other cultures who converted to Islam and were Turkicized. You'd need to have the center of power be in Egypt, and if anyone wanted to actually progress in society they'd need to become Turcicized before you started having true cultural conversion, and even then, you're more likely to get a kind of "Egypto-Turkic" culture, in the same way turks today or in the Ottoman Empire were vastly different than Turks out on the steppes.
 
What would it take for Turkish to supplant Arabic in major countries of the Middle East for all except religious uses?

More Turkish focus on Syria first. North Iraq used to have a large population of Turkmens. Towns like Mosul and Erbil had even Turkmen majorities, hence Ataturks desire for the Mosul Vilayet.

It is possible. But requires more focus than OTL. Like the Balkans. Have more Turkish migration to the Levantine countryside and you're half way there.
 

Redcoat

Banned
Anatolia was home to many different peoples in ancient times who were either natives or settlers and invaders. These different people included the Armenians, Hittites, Persians, Luwians, Hurrians, Greeks, Cimmerians, Galatians, Colchians, Iberians, Carians, Lydians, Lycians, Phrygians, Arameans, Assyrians, Corduenes, Cappadocians, Cilicians, Jews, Truvans and scores of others.
It was due to this, that the Turks could easily supplant them .
So many different cultures .
Egypt and Syria on the other hand, only large scale famine and something equivalent to the black death may do the job !
This just makes me mad at all the diversity we lost...
 
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