Turkish

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthony Appleyard" <mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk>
To: <INDO-EUROPEAN at XKL.COM>
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2000 12:32 PM
Subject: Re: Turkish

>   Someone wrote:-
[snip]
>   Re Greeks in Anatolia, in the 1960's or 1970's I read a UK scuba diving
> magazine article about Turkish sport scuba divers, and one of them was called
> Triyandafilidis, which is clearly modern Greek for "son of Trinity-lover".

[Ed Selleslagh]

On the other hand, lots of Greeks have hellenized Turkish names, e.g.
Karamanli's, the former prime minister. (Or Italian/Venetian ones: Kapodistrias
= Capo d'Istria).

> ?  Dawkins(1916) is a study (mainly) of Cappadocian Greek ...

[snip]
> On BBC TV (=UK TV) news from Kosovo during the recent Kosovo troubles I saw
> road signs in various languages including Turkish (e.g. {U"sku"b} for
> {Skopje}). Is there still an outlier of Turkish speech there, or what?

[Ed]

When I was there several decades ago (before the big earthquake) the city of
Skop(l)je had a vast Turkish quarter from every point of view: language,
bazar-like streets with artisans making Turkish coffee or hammering away at
copper coffee sets, historical mosques etc. (There were more ethnic buroughs: a
large Gipsy shanty town, the traditional Christian-Orthodox one, and the new
part built under Tito). On the countryside there are many very Turkish-looking
villages with minarets etc. In general, Macedonia is extremely multi-cultural,
but often with physically separate communities (Albanian, Turkish, Gipsy/Roma,
Slav-Macedonian (close to Bulgarian), Serb,...). The use of its name for a
fruit cocktail has some very good reasons.

As opposed to Bosnia-Hercegovina (Bosna-Hersek in Turkish; Hercegovina < Hersek
Novi) where the Muslims are generally converted Serbians (one more reason to be
hated by others), in Macedonia the Muslims are generally ethnic Turks, except
in the area near Albania where virtually all are ethnic Albanians.

[snip]

> Likely many Bulgarians knew enough Turkish for necessary dealings with the
> Ottoman Turkish authorities, until Turkish authority and Islamic rule were
> slung out of Bulgaria bag and baggage in the Russo-Turkish War in the 1880's.
> For more information about those events and their causes, see a history book.
> Likely afterwards very many bilingual Christian Bulgarians totally rejected
> all things Turkish including the language, and the Bulgarian government seems
> to have systematically renamed nearly every place with a Turkish-looking
> name, e.g. Hasi-ko"y -> Khaskovo, except for a few large towns such as
> Kazanl#k (# = the hard-sign), and Eski Dzhumaya, which (I think) was
> renamed to Dimitrovgrad in Communist times.

[Ed]

And in a more recent period there has been some quasi-officially sponsored
action against ethnic Turks in Bulgaria, leading to almost collective
emigration/fleeing to Turkish Thracia. Similar things happened (happen) in
Greek Thracia, like forbidding Turkish-speaking schools and prosecuting its
proponents for 'menacing the unity of the country' etc... In the Balkans,
historical memory is very long, and cultural tolerance is still in its infancy.
Bosnia and Serbia are only exceptional (in recent times) in the intensity of
what happened.

Ed.