TURKOMANS BETWEEN TWO EMPIRES: THE ... - Bilkent University

The social milieu in which the seeds of protest grew was principally Turkoman
groups who still continued their traditional tribal culture and habits. For a long time the
Karamanoğlu dynasty became the champion of tribal polity against Ottoman
imperialism. By the fall of Karaman, the tribal forces, which could not resist against
Ottoman’s great military power by themselves, had to rely on a new fulcrum. The
ideology of this protest, on the other hand, was developed on the grounds of a ‘mal-
Islamized’ mystical religion of Turkomans which later incorporated the Safavid Order.
In contrast to the Rumelian protest, in Anatolia the resistance was quite active taking
arms against the Ottoman’s imperial army and engaging in bloody combats when
necessary. 353
It is delineated above that, starting in the time of Orhan, the Ottoman center
gradually distanced itself from the Turkoman culture. In the works of the fifteenth
century Ottoman historians, one may notice a clear differentiation between settled-
‘Ottomanized’ subjects and ‘untamed’ nomadic elements; the former group is usually
referred to as ‘Türk’ while the latter as ‘Türkmen’. 354 Đnalcık also notices that Ottoman
353 One may observe the footprints of different characteristics of these two movements of protest in
Bektashims and Alevism, the former proliferating mainly in the Balkans while the latter being primarily a
product of Anatolian qizilbashes.
354 See, for example, APZ, pp. 142, 143, 168, 169, 188, 224. Aşıkpaşazāde uses the term clearly for
nomadic Turkish tribes (that is referred to throughout this study as ‘Turkoman’). In one occasion, for
example, he narrates how Yörgüç Pasha, the tutor (lala) of Murad II, punished a nomadic group called
‘Kızılkoca Oğlanlarınun Türkmanları’ in Amasya-Tokat region, for the latter used to plunder the settled
subjects. See APZ, pp. 168-9. The word ‘Türkmen’ is nothing but a derivation of ‘Türk’, in which the
suffix “men” intensifies the meaning, which might be understood as ‘hundred percent ‘Türk’. (See V.
Minorsky, “The Middle East in the 13 th , 15 th , and 17 th Centuries”, JRCAS, 27, 1940, p. 439.) The origin of
the term might be traced back to the second half of the tenth century. For further reading on the origin and
meaning of “Türkmen” see Đbrahim Kafesoğlu, “A propos du nom Türkmen”, Oriens, vol. 11, no.1/2,
1958, 146-50; “Türkmen adı, manası ve mahiyeti”, J. Deny Armağanı, Ankara, 1958, 121-33. Kafesoğlu
revises Köprülü’s view, which says, principally basing on Divan-i Lügat-i Türk, that the branch of Oğuz
tribes who converted to Islam were called Türkmen. (Türk Edebiyatında Đlk Mutasavvıflar, Đstanbul, 1919,
p. 152). To him, the usage of this word goes further back, principally originating from “Kök-Türk”.
Kafesoğlu sees a semantic liaison between two words. The word “Türkmen” is composed of two parts:
“Türk” and the suffix “men”, which reinforces the meaning of the main word. Thus, “Türkmen” means
pure, noble, and real Türk. As for the word “Kök-Türk”, again we have two parts: an adjective “Kök”
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