Alternate Turkish Homeland Locals

I do wonder, if it is possible that the Turkish people of Modern Day Turkey could have ended up somewhere else besides the Anatolia? Where else could they have ended up?

The first scenario I can think of of WHY their would not be a Turkey or Turkish Empire based in the Anatolia would be their defeat by a resurgent Byzantine Empire. In one short story of the "Sideways in Crime" anthology there was such a scenario. Byzantines got gunpowder early and defeated the Turks and eventually their new empire streched from the Balkans to Baghdad, yet their was still a Turkish Empire in the story. So where else could they have settled? I would suppose the next best hospitable area would be lower Mesopotamia and the Levent. Maybe in Egypt?

The question is where else would the Turks have settled, as in OTL the best choice in reach would be the Anatolia because it is quite fertile compared to the rest of the Middle-East. Whats the next best choice?
 

Xen

Banned
I did something one time where they ended up in Egypt

Other locations other than Anatolia and Eastern Europe? Well as I said before Egypt is one place, there is also Mespotamia, the Levant, perhaps even Persia or the Volga region of Russia
 

Keenir

Banned
Yeah, I know, that's why. It was a seperate country. You could easily have a lot of Turks to go and live there after a Byzantine victory.

question is, would the Khazars be that welcoming of their Seljuk/Ottoman cousins?
 
Here's another idea: Osman was lucky because his lands were near Constantinople. What if was someone else who became powerful, like Aydın or Karaman?

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Another idea could be Turks in Finland and the Baltic area (instead of Uralic peoples, as in OTL).
 
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question is, would the Khazars be that welcoming of their Seljuk/Ottoman cousins?
Probably not, because it was generally in the Khazars' best interest to keep incoming nomadic tribes out of Khazaria. Witness the hundred years of struggle between the more sedentary Khazars and the purely nomadic Patzinaks / Pechenegs from c. 890s-1000s. (The Magyars were, of course, an exception: they were very closely tied to the Khazars both politically and culturally, and these ties remained for some time even after the Magyars settled in Pannonia.)

However, I can't see the Turks migrating wholesale to Khazaria (unless proselytized and invited by the khagan, which is another story). In the period in question, it was only the Turkic groups, which lost wars with the Tokuz-Oghuz confederation / more powerful Turkic tribes, who were forced to migrate the northern route. This itself was only triggered by a Samanid (Persian, Muslim dynasty in ninth-century Central Asia) attack on the Karluks (IIRC) in the 890s.

How about just never having the Turks get pushed off of the Central Asian Steppe?
That's a much better idea, and very doable. Just have the Samanids be destroyed by the Saffarids in the 870s-80s and replaced by a much weaker dynasty. Thus no expedition against the Karluks, and no Turkic migration. There will be a trickle west and south, but not nearly as much as OTL. I could see northern Central Asia developing into a more sedentary version of OTL, sort of like a larger Kara-Khanid Khanate.
 
Egypt was the original target of the Seljuk Turks, with Anatolia simply a side-show that opened up into a new opportunity. However, even if they had ignored Anatolia and gone to Egypt as planned, I doubt they could have completely displaced the native population like we saw in Anatolia. More in likely, they would be culturally absorbed, like the Mamlukes.

As for an actual homeland, well, traditionally, it was thought to be beyond the Oxus.
 
Egypt was the original target of the Seljuk Turks, with Anatolia simply a side-show that opened up into a new opportunity. However, even if they had ignored Anatolia and gone to Egypt as planned, I doubt they could have completely displaced the native population like we saw in Anatolia. More in likely, they would be culturally absorbed, like the Mamlukes.

As for an actual homeland, well, traditionally, it was thought to be beyond the Oxus.

Do you happen to envision there was actually Turkish colonization of Anatolia ? Because it never happened. They actually assimilated with the native inhabitants. Yes those "Turks" today are actually Turkified natives, but still Greek in genetics. That's how the Turkish identity originally worked.

However, maybe Egypt was a little bit to advanced compared to the contemporary Anatolia. However I don't think Turkification of Egypt is out possibility. Besides it was the country that most of the muslims were Sunni but were ruled by a Shia dynasty. Maybe if they won't see the Seljuks as liberators, at least a lesser of two evils. Turkish Egypt would be much more Arabicized, of course. Or not ?
 
Do you happen to envision there was actually Turkish colonization of Anatolia ? Because it never happened. They actually assimilated with the native inhabitants. Yes those "Turks" today are actually Turkified natives, but still Greek in genetics. That's how the Turkish identity originally worked.

However, maybe Egypt was a little bit to advanced compared to the contemporary Anatolia. However I don't think Turkification of Egypt is out possibility. Besides it was the country that most of the muslims were Sunni but were ruled by a Shia dynasty. Maybe if they won't see the Seljuks as liberators, at least a lesser of two evils. Turkish Egypt would be much more Arabicized, of course. Or not ?

I'm not sure about all this. There is no doubt that there are enormous pre-Turkic elements in the modern Turkish population, but they are not simply Turkified Greeks. First of all, the population of Byzantine Anatolia wasn't Greek, except along the coasts - there were Hellenized populations, but also un-Hellenized peoples. Especially on the plateau, the larger part of the population fled to the coastal areas, as the economic/ecological situation couldn't bear the large influx of horse nomads. In order to assimilate other peoples, you have to have some number of your own, otherwise you'll get assimilated, as happened to the original Turkic Bulgars.

Civilizationally, I don't think Egypt was that much ahead of Byzantine Anatolia.
 
I'm not sure about all this. There is no doubt that there are enormous pre-Turkic elements in the modern Turkish population, but they are not simply Turkified Greeks. First of all, the population of Byzantine Anatolia wasn't Greek, except along the coasts - there were Hellenized populations, but also un-Hellenized peoples. Especially on the plateau, the larger part of the population fled to the coastal areas, as the economic/ecological situation couldn't bear the large influx of horse nomads. In order to assimilate other peoples, you have to have some number of your own, otherwise you'll get assimilated, as happened to the original Turkic Bulgars.

Civilizationally, I don't think Egypt was that much ahead of Byzantine Anatolia.

Isn´t that essentially the reason Anatolia got turkified? There were simply so many various smaller nations in the area.

Wouldn´t Egypt be more homogeneous? I´d imagine if the Turks had settled in Egypt there´d still be a big arabic speaking, and coptic speaking population.

But it´d still be interesting. The turkish north african empire.
 

Baskilisk

Banned
I started to do a timeline where they settled in Poland and the North German Plain, kinda like the Hungarians.

I don't think there has to be a resurgent Byzantine Empire to keep the Turks out -someone just has to conquer and settle that land first.
 
Isn´t that essentially the reason Anatolia got turkified? There were simply so many various smaller nations in the area.

Wouldn´t Egypt be more homogeneous? I´d imagine if the Turks had settled in Egypt there´d still be a big arabic speaking, and coptic speaking population.

But it´d still be interesting. The turkish north african empire.

Partly, but there were also a very large number of Turcoman settlers.

What do we mean by "Turkified"? If you mean just Turkish speaking, that's a pretty complicated situation. In OTL the elite spoke Turkish well into the 20th c. If ALL the Turks that ended up in Anatolia went to Egypt instead... It's hard to say. Arabic was of the same language family that was spoken in Syria and Egypt, so Arabization was a lot easier. Turkish is so different that's unlikely. But if the Turkish element is as large or larger than the Arab element, it could go any number of ways.
 
Do you happen to envision there was actually Turkish colonization of Anatolia ? Because it never happened. They actually assimilated with the native inhabitants. Yes those "Turks" today are actually Turkified natives, but still Greek in genetics. That's how the Turkish identity originally worked.

However, maybe Egypt was a little bit to advanced compared to the contemporary Anatolia. However I don't think Turkification of Egypt is out possibility. Besides it was the country that most of the muslims were Sunni but were ruled by a Shia dynasty. Maybe if they won't see the Seljuks as liberators, at least a lesser of two evils. Turkish Egypt would be much more Arabicized, of course. Or not ?

Post-Manzikert Anatolia is actually one of the exceptions to this rule. Alexius Comnenus spent the early part of his reign retreating from the highlands and taking whatever Greek speaking Christians he could get on his way out. He effectively ethnically cleansed the interior for the Turks.

The coastal areas of Asia Minor, though, were for the most part Greek speaking right up through the early Ottomans. EDIT: Of course, except for the obvious parts like Armenian Cicilia.

It wouldn't happen in Egypt because no Egyptian ruler is going to be taking his subjects off the land and absconding someplace else with them.
 
What do we mean by "Turkified"? If you mean just Turkish speaking, that's a pretty complicated situation. In OTL the elite spoke Turkish well into the 20th c. If ALL the Turks that ended up in Anatolia went to Egypt instead... It's hard to say. Arabic was of the same language family that was spoken in Syria and Egypt, so Arabization was a lot easier. Turkish is so different that's unlikely. But if the Turkish element is as large or larger than the Arab element, it could go any number of ways.

Ah, but the Egyptian dialect in OTL was influenced greatly by Coptic, so if we have a Turkic language in Egypt, it would probably make a bit sense that this Turkic language would have some influence from Coptic.
 
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