Turkmen, Iraqi
Nation | Active
676 CE to 2057 CE
The Iraqi Turkmen are an Turkic ethnic group and the third largest ethnic group in Iraq after Arabs and Kurds.
They mainly reside in northern Iraq and share close cultural ties with Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iranian Azerbaijan, and other Turkic countries.
Their language is closely related to Azerbaijani Turkish, a Turkic language mutually intelligible with Istanbul Turkish, spoken mainly in Azerbaijan Republic and Iranian Azerbaijan.The Iraqi Turkmen are the descendants of various waves of Turkic migration to Mesopotamia beginning from the seventh century until Ottoman rule.
The first wave of migration dates back to the seventh century, followed by migrations during the Seljuk Empire (1037–1194), the fleeing Oghuz during the Mongol destruction of the Khwarazmian dynasty (Kara Koyunlu and Ag Qoyunlu), and the largest migration, during the Ottoman Empire.
With the conquest of Iraq by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1534, followed by Sultan Murad IV's capture of Baghdad in 1638, a large influx of Turks settle in the region.
Thus, most of today's Iraqi Turkmen are the descendants of the Ottoman soldiers, traders and civil servants brought into Iraq during the rule of the Ottoman Empire.Following the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the Iraqi Turkmen want Turkey to annex the Mosul Vilayet and for them to become part of an expanded Turkish state.
However, due to the end of the Ottoman monarchy, the Iraqi Turkmen find themselves increasingly discriminated against by policies of successive regimes, such as the Kirkuk Massacre of 1923, 1947, 1959 and in 1979 when the Ba'th Party increasingly discriminates against the community.
Although they are recognized as a constitutive entity of Iraq (alongside the Arabs and Kurds) in the constitution of 1925, the Iraqi Turkmen are later denied this status.
Claims of their population range between hal a million to three million.
Regardless of this uncertainty, the Iraqi Turkmen are considered to be the third or the fourth largest ethnic group in Iraq.
According to the 1957 census, which is recognized as the last reliable census, as later censuses are reflections of the Arabization policies of the Ba'ath regime, Arabs form the largest ethnicity followed by Kurds (21%) and Iraqi Turkmen (5%).
The Iraqi Turkmen predominantly live in the north of Iraq, especially in Tal Afar, Mosul, Arbil, Altunkupri, Kirkuk, and Baghdad.
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Nomadic, Turkic-speaking warriors have been moving out of Central Asia into Transoxiana (i.e., across the Oxus River) for more than a millennium.
The Abbasid caliphs had begun importing Turks as slave-warriors (Mamluks) early in the ninth century.
The imperial palace guards of the Abbasids were Mamluks who were originally commanded by free Iraqi officers.
By 833, however, Mamluks themselves are officers and gradually, because of their greater military proficiency and dedication, they begin to occupy high positions at court.
The mother of Caliph Mutasim (who comes to power in 833) had been a Turkish slave, and her influence is substantial.
The Turkish commanders, no longer checked by their Iranian and Arab rivals at court by the tenth century, are able to appoint and depose caliphs.
The political power of the caliphate is fully separate from its religious function for the first time.
The Mamluks continue to permit caliphs to come to power because of the importance of the office as a symbol for legitimizing claims to authority.
A military family known as the Buwayhids occupies Baghdad in 945 after subjugating western Iran.
Shias from the Iranian province of Daylam south of the Caspian Sea, the Buyids continue to permit Sunni Abbasid caliphs to ascend to the throne.
The humiliation of the caliphate at being manipulated by Shias, and by Iranian ones at that, is immense.
Several Samanid cities had been lost to another Turkish group, the Seljuks, a ruling clan of the Kinik group of the Oghuz (or Ghuzz) Turks, who live north of the Oxus River (now called the Amu Darya).
Their leader, Tughril Beg, turns his warriors against the Ghaznavids in Khorasan.
He moves south and then west, conquering but not wasting the cities in his path.
The first historical references to the Turks appear in Chinese records dating around 200 BCE.
These records refer to tribes called the Hsiung-nu (an early form of the Western term Hun), who lived in an area bounded by the Altai Mountains, Lake Baykal, and the northern edge of the Gobi Desert, and who are believed to have been the ancestors of the Turks.
Specific references in Chinese sources in the sixth century CE identify the tribal kingdom called Tu-Kue located on the Orkhon River south of Lake Baykal.
The khans (chiefs) of this tribe had accepted the nominal suzerainty of the Tang Dynasty.
The earliest known example of writing in a Turkic language will be found in that area and has been dated to around CE 730.
Other Turkish nomads from the Altai region had founded the Gökturk Empire, a confederation of tribes under a dynasty of khans whose influence had extended during the sixth through eighth centuries from the Aral Sea to the Hindu Kush in the land bridge known as Transoxania (i.e., across the Oxus River).
The Gorturks are known to have been enlisted by a Roman emperor in the seventh century as allies against the Sassanians.
Separate Turkish tribes, among them the Oguz, had moved south of the Oxus River in the eighth century, while others had migrated west to the northern shore of the Black Sea.
The Turkish migrations after the sixth century had been part of a general movement of peoples out of central Asia during the first millennium CE that is influenced by a number of interrelated factors — climatic changes, the strain of growing populations on a fragile pastoral economy, and pressure from stronger neighbors also on the move.
Among those who migrated were the Oguz Turks, who had embraced Islam in the tenth century.
They had established themselves around Bukhara in Transoxania under their khan, Seljuk.
Split by dissension among the tribes, one branch of the Oguz, led by descendants of Seljuk, had moved west and entered service with the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad.
The Turkish horsemen, known as ghazis, are organized into tribal bands to defend the frontiers of the caliphate, often against their own kinsmen.
Armenia had been annexed by the Eastern Roman Empire in 1045, but religious animosity between the Armenians and the Greeks prevent these two Christian peoples from cooperating against the Turks on the frontier.
Although Christianity had been adopted as the official religion of the state by King Tiridates III around CE 300, nearly one hundred years before similar action was taken in the Roman Empire, Armenians had been converted to a form of Christianity at variance with the Orthodox tradition of the Greek church, and they have their own patriarchate independent of Constantinople.
After their conquest by the Sassanians around 400, their religion had bound them together as a nation and provided the inspiration for a flowering of Armenian culture in the fifth century.
Large numbers of Armenians, when their homeland falls in the late eleventh century to the Seljuks, are dispersed throughout the Empire, many of them settling in Constantinople, where in its centuries of decline they will become generals and statesmen as well as craftsmen, builders, and traders.
The Seljuks, while they engage in state building, also emerge as the champions of Sunni Islam against the religion's Shia sect.
Tugrul's successor, Mehmet ibn Daud (r. 1063-72)—better known as Alp Arslan, the "Lion Hero"—prepares for a campaign against the Shia Fatimid caliphate in Egypt but is forced to divert his attention to Anatolia by the ghazis, on whose endurance and mobility the Seljuks depend.
The Seljuk elite cannot persuade these ghazis to live within the framework of a bureaucratic Persian state, content with collecting taxes and patrolling trade routes.
Each year the ghazis cut deeper into imperial territory, raiding and taking booty according to their tradition.
Some serve as mercenaries in the private wars of Roman nobles and occasionally settle on land they have taken.
The Seljuks follow the ghazis into Anatolia in order to retain control over them.
Alp Arslan routs the imperial army at Manzikert near Lake Van in 1071, opening all of Anatolia to conquest by the Turks.
The Buyids are ousted in 1055 by the Turkic-speaking Seljuks.
The caliph in Baghdad gives Tughril Beg robes, gifts, and the title, "King of the East" in 1055.
Because the Seljuks are Sunnis, their rule is welcomed in Baghdad.
They treat the caliphs with respect, but the latter continue to be only figureheads.
There are several lines of Seljuks.
The main line, ruling from Baghdad, will control the area from the Bosporus to Chinese Turkestan until approximately 1155.
The Seljuks win control of most of Anatolia within ten years of the Battle of Manzikert.
The Seljuk sultanate in Baghdad, although successful in the west, reels under attacks from the Mongols in the east and is unable—indeed unwilling—to exert its authority directly in Anatolia.
The ghazis carve out a number of states here, under the nominal suzerainty of Baghdad, states that are continually reinforced by further Turkish immigration.
The strongest of these states to emerge is the Seljuk sultanate of Rum ("Rome," i.e., Byzantine Empire), which has its capital at Konya (Iconium).
Rum becomes dominant over the other Turkish states during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The society and economy of the Anatolian countryside are unchanged by the Seljuks, who have simply replaced Greek Christian officials with a new elite that is Turkish and Muslim.
Conversion to Islam and the imposition of the language, mores, and customs of the Turks progresses steadily in the countryside, facilitated by intermarriage.
The cleavage widens, however, between the unruly ghazi warriors and the state-building bureaucracy in Konya.
The success of the Seljuk Turks stimulates a response from Latin Europe in the form of the First Crusade.
A counteroffensive launched in 1097 by the emperor in Constantinople with the aid of the crusaders deals the Seljuks a decisive defeat.
Konya falls to the crusaders, and after a few years of campaigning imperial Greek rule is restored in the western third of Anatolia.
Nine Seljuk sultans rule Baghdad between 1118 and 1194; only one dies a natural death.
The atabegs, who initially had been majordomos for the Seljuks, begin to assert themselves.
Several found local dynasties.
An atabeg originates the Zengid Dynasty (1127-1222), with its seat at Mosul.
The Zengids are instrumental in encouraging Muslims to oppose the invasions of the Christian Crusaders.
Toghril (1177-94), the last Seljuk sultan of Iraq, is killed by the leader of a Turkish dynasty, the Khwarezm shahs, who live south of the Aral Sea.
Before his successor can establish Khwarezm rule in Iraq, however, Baghdad will be overrun by the Mongol horde.
A powerful Mongol leader named Temujin brings together a majority of the Mongol tribes in the early years of the thirteenth century and leads them on a devastating sweep through China.
He changes his name at about this time to Genghis Khan, meaning "World Conqueror."
He turns his force of seven hundred thousand west in 1219 and quickly devastates Bokhara, Samarkand, Balkh, Merv, and Neyshabur (in present-day Iran), where he slaughters every living thing.
Pillaging and burning cities along the way, Genghis Khan reaches western Azerbaijan in Iran
before his death in 1227.