Macedonians(Greeks)???


Is this why the dispute over FYROM?

These Turks were mostly from the ethnic branch known as Turkmen,or Turcomans,and their arrival in the land that was to become modern Turkey is the basis of one of the most controversial and insecure doctrines maintained by the republic:that Anatolia was,to all its intents and purposes,always Turkish.As one textbook has it:

Turkmen gorups flowed into Anatolia and settled there,welcomed by the people who were unhappy with the old Byzantine administration,which certainly never represented this country.Very soon it was completely Turkified.Of course they did not find Anatolia empty.But its population was very small.A new Anatolian Turkish civilization was born.

This official version has the grace to mention that 'the Europeans never accepted this'.Almost all the people of this land,Turkish textbooks are quick to assert,are descended from these incoming waves of nomadic Central Asian tribes.This thesis is disputed outside Turkey.But until the 1990s,few were allowed to challenge what this meant for millions of Turkish citizens who knew perfectly well that they were not ethnically Turkish and who at home spoke Kurdish,Arabic,Laz or any of a dozen other minor languages.Few had any choice but to learn the official republican history of the Turks.