Turkification - Turkification in The Late Ottoman Era

Turkification in The Late Ottoman Era

During the 19th century and early 20th century, the Ottoman Empire was composed of ethnically diverse populations such as Arabs, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Pomaks, Armenians, Kurds, Zazas, Circassians, Assyrians, Jews, and Laz people.

With the rise of Turkish nationalism, a belief among some Turkish nationalists was to form a modern homogenized nation state. One of its main supporters was sociologist and political activist Ziya Gokalp who believed that a modern state must become homogeneous in terms of culture, religion, and national identity. This conception of national identity was augmented by his belief in the primacy of Turkishness, as a unifying virtue. As part of this belief, it was necessary to purge from the territories of the state those national groups who could threaten the integrity of a modern Turkish nation state. As a result of this policy, the Young Turk government launched a series of initiatives which marginalized, isolated, incarcerated, altered borders, deported, forcefully assimilated, exchanged populations, massacred and conducted genocide against its non-Turkish minority populations. These policies resulted in the Armenian Genocide, Greek Genocide and Assyrian Genocide. The Anatolian Greeks numbered around 1.5 million people, most of them had fled to Greece after the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), and eventually this was legitimized by the governments of Turkey and Greece with the population exchanges. The remaining Pontic Greeks and Karamanlides were exchanged for the Muslims of Greek Macedonia.

This has been considered as ultimately completing a “Turkified” state.
The lingual turcification of Greek-speakers in the 19th century Anatolia is well documented. Speros Vryonis, providing some relevant accounts, believes that the Karamanlides are the result of partial turcification that occured earlier, during the Ottoman period.