The Turks

Turks are related to the Huns, Avars and Hungarians. They arrived to Asia Minor from Тurkеstаn (the regions east of the Caspian Sea). Turkish religion is Islam, and the first records of them date from the 6th century Chinese sources. In the 11th century, the Seljuk Turks make a break to the Byzantine Empire. They were a dangerous, war-waging nation. Their janissary army was particularly powerful. They were regardless of life and readily died for their faith, as it taught them that one who died for God – Allah, would go to Paradise and live forever. In the Ottoman period, which fell in the early 20thcentury, Turkey was one of the greatest world powers, whose territories spread from Egypt to Buda, Hungary. Turkish nation is actually a blend of Asian ancestors and Indo-European peoples – the Greeks, the Kurds, the Armenians, the Georgians, the Slavs, so in anthropological terms, they do not differ much from the Europeans.

LANGUAGE

Turkish is an Altaic language. In Europe, the Altaic language family include Hungarian and Finnish. By 1928, Turkish was written in a somewhat altered version of the Arabic alphabet. Since 1928, the Latin alphabet is in use, containing 29 letters.

RELIGION AND TRADITION

Parallel to the Turkish invasions, Serbian people were being converted into Islam, with its strongest roots in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the communist Yugoslavia, the Islamised Serbs were proclaimed a separate nation – the Muslims. Today, they are called the Bosnians.

GEOGRAPHY

A small community of Turks who stayed among the Serbs was until recently scattered in towns of Macedonia and Kosovo and Меtоhiјa. The largest community was in Prizrеn.

HISTORY

The Turks were settled in Serbian towns in masses, where they were mostly in trading business. They lived according to their own tradition in separate quarters, çarşı. The Serbs were mostly settled in rural areas.