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

transformed into modest ‘re’āya’ of the Ottomans, while the other still insisted on the
traditional nomadic-tribal habits and resisted against the Ottoman imperial regime.
The opposing Turkoman elements of central and southern Anatolia politically
organized around the Karaman dynasty against the Ottomans. It stands to reason to
argue that, especially in the fifteenth century the continuous clash between Karaman and
Ottoman states was indeed the struggle between two modes of state organization:
‘bureaucratic-imperial sate’ and ‘Turko-Mongolian tribal confederation’.
Already before the Ottomans, by the mid-thirteenth century, the Karamanoğlu
dynasty appeared as the leader of a powerful tribe or tribal confederacy, which usually
rose up against Anatolian Seljuks and Mongol governors of Anatolia. Faruk Sümer finds
plausible Yazıcıoğlu Ali’s suggestion regarding their ethnic origin that suggests they
were from the Afşar tribe, one of the twenty four great Turkish clans, and among five
great clans which produced the ruler dynasty 360 (the others are Kayı, Eymür, Yazır,
Beğdili). 361 After the suppression of Babāī revolt, in which they actively took part,
Karamanids moved to the Mut-Ermenek region under the leadership of Nūre Sofi. Under
Karaman Beg, Mehmed Beg, and Güneri Beg in the second half of the thirteenth
century, the Karamanoğulları became the champion of the Turkoman struggle against
Mongol-oriented Seljukid rulers and thus Mongol domination in Anatolia, at times by
fighting with Sejukids or Mongol armies at times supporting the more Turkoman
oriented candidate to the Seljukid throne. 362 There is evidence that Mongols regarded
360 Faruk Sümer, “Karāmān-oghullari”, EI2, IV, p. 619; “Karamanoğulları”, DIA, 24, p. 454.
361 Faruk Sümer, “Avşar”, DIA, 4, p. 160.
362 The reader might remember that Mehmed Beg of Karaman (d. 1277) declared, for the first time,
Turkish as the only official language, forbidding the speaking any other language in “divan, dergāh,
bārgāh, meclis, meydān”. Sümer puts special stress on two policies of Mehmed Beg’s: supporting the
Turkish language and initiating the war of independence of Turkomans against the Mongols. See Sümer,
“Karamanoğulları”, DIA, 24, p. 455; Şehabeddin Tekindağ, “Şemsüddin Mehmed Bey Devrinde
138