February 11, 2005

How Turkish are the Anatolians?

The Anatolians are the ethnic descendants of both the indigenous populations of Asia Minor who converted to Islam (and were thus spared from the genocidal campaign of the Ottomans and Kemalists during the early 20th century), and also of non-indigenous populations from the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central Asia. From Central Asia came the Turks, who were the main agent for the Islamization and during the last century Turkification of Asia Minor.

To what extent are the Anatolians descended from Central Asian Turks? The study of Cinnioglu et al. (2004) discovered an occurrence of 3.4% of Mongoloid Y-chromosomal haplogroups in Anatolia (haplogroups Q, O, and C).

According to Tambets et al. (2004) the occurrence of Mongoloid haplogroups in present-day Central Asian Turkic Altaic speakers (Altaians) is at least 40%, with an additional 10% which might belong to haplogroup O which was not tested in this study. According to Zerjal et al. (2002) this percentage is for various Turkic speakers: Kyrgyz (22%), Dungans (32%), Uyghurs (33%), Kazaks (86%), Uzbeks (18%).

It is clear that the percentage of Mongoloid ancestry among the Turkic speakers is very variable, yet it is clear that the Proto-Turks must have been partially Mongoloid in lieu of the fact that all current Turkic speakers possess some Mongoloid admixture. The average of the six Central Asian population samples listed above is 38.5% and may serve as a first-order estimate of the paternal contribution of early Turks, who (judging by their modern descendants in Central Asia) were more Caucasoid paternally and more Mongoloid maternally.

Using the figure of 38.5%, the paternal contribution of Turks to the Anatolian population is estimated to about 11%. In lieu of the approximation, allowing for 33% relative error in either direction for both the true frequency of Mongoloid lineages in Anatolia and in early Turks, we obtain a range of 6-22%. It would thus appear that the Turkish element is a minority one in the composition of the Anatolians, but it is by no means negligible.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Unfortunately this post has lots of mistakes as well as the research you posted. First of all, there's no research regarding the genetics of Oghuz Turks and Anatolian Turks comes from Oghuz branch. If Oghuz were Mongoloid people and if they are assimilated in Anatolia how come Oghuz Turks in Iran, Azerbaijan and North Iraq has no difference? They all look similar to me. Also recorded history says there were MANY Turkic people with blond hair and blue/green eyes. Even original Kırghiz people described this way in Chinese sources.

Another mistake (i want to believe it's mistake) of this research is comparing Anatolian Turks to most distant Turkic people, who highly mixed with Turks. If it was honest research it must have compared Anatolian Turks to other Oghuz Turks. Not Kazakhs or Kırghiz.

Yet another mistake on your article is comparing Dungans with Anatolians. Dungans are Muslim Chinese people, not even related to Turks.

I can go on and on to prove my point. There's extensive records regarding these subjects and i find written history more reliable.

And i suggest you to concentrate your energy on proving how Greeks are not highly Turkified people, how hundreds of thousands of Christian Karamanlis (i.e Orthodox Turks that were settled in Central Anatolia by Byzantine Empire before 1071) are actually Greek and such subjects.

If you can do what i say, instead of trying to prove opposite of well documented history, maybe then i may think just because you have high cheek bones, dark hair, almond shaped eyes and so Turkic looking that even among nomad Turks of Iran no one would think you are a Greek doesn't mean you are not a Greek...

Dienekes said...

Also recorded history says there were MANY Turkic people with blond hair and blue/green eyes. Even original Kırghiz people described this way in Chinese sources.

These were Turkified Indo-Europeans (Iranians/Tocharians). The original Altaic speakers were similar to Mongols but they assimilated Indo-European speakers during their western expansion.

The Turks, when they arrived in Anatolia were certainly not fully Mongoloid, but rather variable Caucasoid-Mongoloid mixes. Over the years they became more Caucasoid as they admixed with native Anatolians (Greeks, Armenians, and others).

Onur Dincer said...

A lot of baseless assertions from Pecheneg/Kaygysyz/Arslan Giray (no doubt that they are one and the same person) again (actually he is repeating the same stuff all the time). He is making a lot of strong assertions without providing any evidence. A little close examination reveals the falsity and weakness of his arguments. I suggest him to grow up and read some literature of genetics, craniology, archaeology and history (not pseudo) and also to respond to the arguments themselves rather than to the straw men of them. This will be my last post to him if he does not respond.