It's not like all of Anatolia was magically replaced by Turkish nomads around the 1300s. Its blatantly false to educate these people into thinking that they all descended from a group that made up, what, less than 10% of the Anatolian population at the time they arrived?
Actual ethnic Turks were known to be just one of many groups in Anatolia, all the way up to the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Sure, the modern nation-state is "Turkish", but as a republic with an undeniably rich multicultural history, its tragic to insist on tying this label to a specific ethnicity not just someone born in Turkey.
Byzantine history IS Turkish history - its a part of the shared history of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Albanians, Yazidis, Tatars, and so on and so on. Its an awesome part of world history, and its a shame that its not appreciated more by the people who partially descended from them
And why is that? Because they've been conditioned to believe this one official origin story? What a load of horseshit.
>The extent to which gene flow from Central Asia's original Turkic nomads has contributed to the current gene pool of the Turkish people of Turkey, and the question regarding the role of the 11th century settlements by Turkic people in Anatolia, has been the subject of various studies. Several studies concluded that pre-Turkified, pre-Islamized groups are the primary genetic source of the present-day Turks of Turkey (i.e. Turkish people).
en.wikipedia.org
I realize this is all a pipe dream, especially with politics today. This is just a thought I had, and I wanted to bring it up to discussion. Im Turkish-American. I have no idea whether that means I'm ethnically Turkish or not, and frankly, it doesn't fucking matter. There is no "Turk" in Turkey. Its just a mass of assimilated peoples over thousands of years of history.
Being an ethno-nationalist Turk makes about as much sense as being an ethno-nationalist Hittite or Lydian.